I completely understand the idea and concept behind doing an exercise like this (I actually went over my avatar and did a version that was void of single pixels, but alas my computer shut down and I hadn't saved it...) but to inherently change the way you pixel just to eliminate an abundance of single pixels? That's an entirely silly and futile idea in my opinion. Who are we to say what we should or should not do with pixel art? If someone wants to create pixel art that is smooth enough to be a vector image, why shouldn't they? Pixel art is a means to an end, just like any other artistic medium. You can create whatever you like with the medium, and saying "well, they simply could have just done a vector image instead" does not hold any water in my book. Sure, they could have, but in the end it is entirely up to them. It's not a waste of time or a worthless exercise just because what they made could have been made with another medium. People create oil paintings that look like photos-- should we tell them to stop painting or change their style? Of course not.

Elk's incredibly large and detailed dragon pixel art--- could that have been created digitally in Photoshop as opposed to pixels? Surely. It doesn't change the fact that his artwork was impressive, incredibly intricate, and well crafted. He didn't waste any time by not making it in Photoshop instead because it was his choice to utilize pixels in a way that he enjoyed controlling and working with.

The same goes for this concept-- the concept of clusters and "incredibly clean pixel art" is surely interesting and can indeed help us decide where we place our pixels in the future, but I have qualms with the idea that we should eliminate single pixels from the process or dismiss the ideas of dithering and AA for the sake of a more optimal sort of pixel art, since we can't clearly define that term. What the ideal pixel art image should be composed of is entirely opinion based.

Over time my pixeling style has worked to attempt to eliminate banding in any shape or form, and I attribute that to the studies done both here on Pixelation and how I've learned and grown over time as well. I know that the idea proposed here isn't to truly eliminate working with single pixels, but some of the talk that has arisen about AA not being a worthwhile exercise and stating that pixel art that is smooth enough to be vector art shouldn't have been pixeled at all just did not sit quite well with me. Lines like "the bad side about this is that there are lots of single pixels and it looks really blurred if you look at it at 200% or bigger"-- the "bad side?" How is that a bad side? It's entirely up to the viewer. Panda's image shows mastery of several pixel art concepts, and containing single pixels does not constitute a "bad side" in my opinion.

I don't think Helm's original intention with this topic was to propose changing the fundamentals of pixel art entirely, but some of the ideas and arguments that have arisen just seem contrary to the idea of pixel art being just that-- an art form composed of pixels. From my perspective, how we utilize these pixels should not be routinized nor categorized.