Ryu that background sucked ass it was just a 'token demoscene' reflex that I'm trying hard to abandon. Not every surface needs texture even if I can draw every service to have texture.
blu you ask all the questions I was thinking about privately too.
First of all I don't know how I feel about it, yet. I think it looks more handpixelled at 2x zoom than any cgi-reduce ever would, but curiously, at 1x zoom it looks like a cgi image which is a very uncanny thing to experience - at least for my own art. I don't expect myself to do this again any time soon, but I do not think the experiment was a failure. This *is* controlled, not in any absolute degree (no, Ryu, not every pixel here is consciously placed and pondered on) but as compared to the pixel placements of the majority of pixel art submitted and accepted in Pixel Joint (or of those that we critique here in Pixelation) it's well beyond the median (with this I mean to suggest that even simpler pixel art pieces aren't very controlled due to the artists' inexperience with how pixel clusters work together. Just because someone is using only the pencil tool in ms paint it doesn't mean they're minding their pixel placements as much as they should or could). There is a degree of chaotic unintentionality in the basic brush-strikes but that exactly was the exercise. When we purely pixel sometimes, we tend to default to the single-pixel control brush because that's the comfort zone of pixel art but there's much to be gained from 'messier' doodling that exposes the subconscious. The effect of this piece is in the end this: doing the classic "I ripped off a Boris Valejo painting for my demoscene submission" only I didn't rip anyone off. Just how when you have to repixel something that wasn't first made for pixels you end up with novel approaches, the same here. I'd never have pixelled hair strands like these if I started with a pixel doodle base for example.
I am not exactly challenging any system (I won't die of sorrow if PJ won't allow this) but I want to consider some common and repeated 'words of wisdom' about intentionality and control in our medium that people with less or sometimes even none at all experience with what it takes to pixel capably tend to propagate because their communities are based on such 'common wisdom'. I feel extra responsibility because it is parts of what I've said in the past that have been construed often, so I felt the need to check out the other side and see if it's viable. It is in the spirit of demystification and critical thinking that this was made. I don't want to mock anyone, just scrutinize easily said truisms. There is, I feel, always something useful to be gained artistically and aesthetically from looking under such rocks. However yes, I did start making this when that thread about 'what is NPA in pixeljoint?' was made, although I didn't work on it after that for like, 8 months, it's done now.