I like that there's "something for everyone".
So I kinda agree with everyone here.
Love his anecdote that reminds artists not to be simple tool-can-do monkeys.
And that he was picked as game artist precisely for his experience in non digital.
Something like "Easier to make an artist go digital than a technician do good art."
And yet I find it interesting that he's actually very much torn on the matter of tools non the less.
Throughout the video you'll find quotes that go either way, like I would expect from a master.
He critisized a common over-reliance on tools for art,
and yet also the quick rate of tool obsolescence for industry.
He loved exploring the creative depth of the pixel art tool with his general art knowledge.
This difference in experience too is what made his art clearly stand out on the high end.
For him, the genre definition of PixelArt pretty much was what you could do in Deluxe Paint.
He spent many years developing his art techniques specific to pixel art and this tool,
becoming the perfect fusion of general and specific art knowledge.
To a point, a decade of experience let him do things that make any artist blush today.
Just by seeing these videos explaining colour cycling and pattern tiling,
you are so very far away from producing his level of quality,
even if you use DeluxePaint, but especially if you've never had
any experience with pixel art tool technique at all.
Your experience in other arts is most important,
but that doesn't make pixel art shallow.
Pixel art is really not just a matter of applying dithering or aa by pixel,
but the specific creativity of the common workflows to a certain ruleset,
manifest in the mechanics of palette, tile and sprite features,
that have you do a planning for world building that's unique.
While switching tools away from what he understood for pixel art,
didn't stop him from being a great artist, he did feel missing something,
something fulfilling he really liked doing, that gave him identity,
not just as about any artist, but as a pixel artist. Inspiring.