Categories are so innate to the working of the human mind -- we do it regardless whether we talk about it consciously or not. But the moment we verbalize it, at least it becomes questionable and directable as you become aware of how you tick. Even this discussion about the sense of it uncovers what needs to be uncovered. Just that you are not better off having no discourse at all, but the right discourse at the right measure. I guess as of now we have established what this should be about and what not.

re: photo & "copy", since we are at it...
Post-modernism has not only defeated the idea of authenticity, but of originality at large. It's not anymore about whether a work is derivative, but more or less complex composition of derivative -- what transformative effort was added. Photo-sourcing is only consequential philosophically. The integration of literal photo copy into artwork is no invention of computers, it existed long before in kinds of installations/collages/mashups; Photoshop merely "perfected" this artform, not least on non-literal grounds. It's a different effort rather than less, as is a different taste. Personally I come from the modding scene of games; the approach of re-use, interpretation and modifaction of assets is a natural idea to me, and I recognize admirable skill there in its own right, it's not so much about some cheap "tricks", it's about having good ideas, it focuses on the conceptual aspect of art -- that's why few are actually good at it even though everyone thinks it looks easy enough to be good at it; like, most custom maps in Warcraft3 terribly sucked, it needed very special personalities to pull off the good stuff, and I don't mean Dota...

Frankly, it is weird I find myself "defending" techy art here, when in other places I mostly held high the classic history of arts at large and pixel art in form of age old cross-stitches and tapestry in direct ancestry. I don't think there is just this big mainstream of anti-classic art out there. Now there are countless of concurrent streams out there, non of them really threatening the other. Maybe there is this sense that some form of art is felt under-appreciated than it deserves. But in the end it's all ... you know... holistic. It's all there to learn from and have fun in. Aside from a professional job in which you serve demand.

Classic and pixel art should not feel so high-brow as to ignore trend and Zeitgeist. Rather it should search for ways to invade every other (plat)form, an active effort for relevancy, rather than taking attention for granted. That is to say, the artist must realize his existence beyond egoistical interest, and absorb society's interest as part of his own. A wholly growth experience, a grown-up existence. "I" is nothing without "we". "you" are irrelevant, and "we" are incomplete.

So the purpose of this topic might as much be the past of pixel art as its future off-spring, with their own peculiar challenges but obvious lineage in translation.

like(1) this(2)?

That "smudging"-technique looks relatively fast in the hands of a very talented expert, considering the high resolution.
For a HD technique, it looks more artistic than photo-sourcing and more detailed than vector art.

@conceit
But maybe it has some fun composition, or just presents a cool scenario, that is an aspect too. At the least the technique represents an interesting idea in general and cleverness in applied utility. Maybe you shouldn't look at that so much as painterly artistic in critique but creatively opportunistic. It's cool and funny to see a scooter wrangled into samus armor. Now that's something you don't see everyday.


@Helm
While I agree that filtering for your time is important, I also try to find the good aspects in what I happen to observe. There is often something little to be learned still.

Really, most of all I find it simply amusing and amazing that it is possible at all to produce content good enough this weird way -- it's almost performance art to watch, like some street juggler -- than I could concentrate too seriously on why this good enough is not great enough.

I understand your motive, but think about this scenario, if I were to take up on your attitude from my point of view:

As a machine coder I have my own standards what quality software is. I could go around and make fun of people writing scripts in simplified high level language environments, not take their work serious and filter it out to save my time. But I don't. I have seen people do surprisingly clever stuff on all kinds of level, that I can respect. And whenever I saw just another trendy tool come in with roll-eyes, it wasn't long I saw to my surprise someone figure out a creative way to make good use of it anyway. Not shockingly world shattering from my perspective, not even useful for myself directly, but little neat things that gave me joy to the craft and maybe indirectly affected some ways I think about my own work. I also realize that for certain types of work certain tools and environments are very effective, more than others, a time saver when shit hits the fan, so it can't hurt to expand the horizon.

From a coding and higher mathematics perspective there is nothing -- nothing at all-- thrilling about pixel art games, least of all games made with tools like GameMaker, etc. It's a waste of time from that perspective. But it would be pretty dumb on my part to ignore your work, which has other obvious qualities, on the sole merit that it is not furthering my own professional interest immediately, that it's a waste of time since it's not blowing my mind on every possible aspect and especially not in the one I'm most interested in. That would be hysteric.

Rather I just lay back and enjoy the show, with the relaxed expectation it will have a good influence on me in another way. Progress in self-development not only comes forcefully, but also just how it happens. Like we can't always be awake, we have to sleep too, but that sleep is not a waste of time actually, important processes of understanding happen in it too, which improve the next phase of being awake. I don't believe much in waste of time, if its not always the same kind of time. It could very much be a waste of time to stick to your sole interest, and exposing yourself to some "crap" might suddenly give you a leap as the best thing you ever did. Or not. You never know. There is no solution to the problem, things happen.

So yeah, that smart asset reinterpretation technique and that great choreography I can very much appreciate as such even if the package as a whole has flaws elsewhere, I'll easily ignore those if that which it is about is great on its own, I feel enriched about having seen it, as I would looking at your game even though I don't care technically at all.

What is astounding and inspiring artistically about this technique is the fluent reinterpretation and repurpose of objects as something else entirely--the greatest skill of modding.
Maybe if you watch some in this gallery of videos to such mindset you can find something that impresses you creatively?
Other than that it is the natural order that potential has to be created first, and the artistic soul is ever so curious to explore.

---

Another example I'd like to provide in general is this movie.

The guy who made it put so much sweating effort and heart blood into it, yet when you watch it as an experienced pixel and classic artist, you find obvious flaws in its visuals presentation, you might say it looks cheap and lazy. He didn't make any of the models and textures, he just arbitrarily took them all from the net, you might criticise him for not learning to create it all himself to match, and failures of aesthetic sense, so much that you'd blind yourself for what great he did accomplish. What he did was animating and directing the movie, producing one of the most badass fighting choreographies I've ever seen in my life, even though his animation is not perfectly spot on in execution and there's some bad melodramatic writing at times. If we lived in a world of only classic and pixel art, without the flexibility of modern 3d tools, he could have never made that movie, just because he can't even draw a straight line and knows jackshit about color. And even though there are so many flaws to criticise, we would have been all the poorer without it, we had missed the pleasure of some fantastic ideas--his ideas, no one else's, no matter how much more talented on this or that. These tools don't replace artistic ability--not everyone getting a hand on it will suddenly produce anywhere near something impressive as those guys--but it unearths hidden ability, gives it a chance--he's not good at this or that, but he's good at something--and outstanding results will always be rare.


Posts merged, please refrain from double posting - Crow

"Asian". I remember Cure once made some remark on that somewhere.