Pixel art Documentary

[xhunterko]

Has anyone else seen this yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mqAZ06dwKU&feature=player_embedded

I think it's interesting and unique at the same time. What do you guys think?

[Mathias]

Wonderful video. Thanks for posting.
Funny that I'd already seen like 75% of the source footage he uses for the video part of his presentation.

I think that whatever the roots of pixel art may be - what led to it's proliferation, whatever it's history is, it's here to stay, as a valid and worthwhile digital "medium". It'll never be embraced on a mainstream scale as anything other than quaint due to it's "prerequisites" to being able to really appreciate it. That includes looking past the supposedly immature strong association with mere ancient video games and mis-perceived lack of expressive capability. I think pixels will always be an acquired taste.
Pixels are still attractive to many, though. For many reasons. Some reasons are that it is simple to get started in, unlike for instance more-daunting full-color digital painting, doesn't require expensive software/tools, pixels command an almost automatic iconic aesthetic, etc.

Pixel Art is only as deep as the artwork being created with it. Pixel art is often used when another medium may a better choice. It's not a holy grail, but I sure am glad I found it.

[7321551]

For a documentary dedicated to pixel art, that video contained surprisingly little attractive pixel art.

There were a few brief excerpts from skilled artists, but "Passage" seemed to overshadow much of it - putting the merits of that game aside, I would be hard-pressed to find a worse example of the methods that distinguish competent pixel art.

Some bits that jumped out at me:

[...] and part of me feels like it's a bit of a cheat as well - you know what I mean? Like - I'm not a particularly good fine artist so there's something nice about distilling it down to pretty much I suppose its most basic level of information [...]

Pixel-art: the expedient solution when traditional skills fall short.

The pixel movement's strength lies in its abstract simplicity.

As opposed to representational or complex pixel art, which I guess doesn't lend strength to the pixel-movement? Or is outside the pixel-movement?

Or maybe I'm a crank.

[Lavalevel]

Hey guys! Thanks for posting this. I'm actually the author of that video and seeing as I'm thinking of perusing pixel art a bit further I figured I should join your nice forums.
I agree with all your comments 7321551. I guess it's a bit of a simple look at it, more directed towards people not too familiar with the scene.

[7321551]

Hi LavaLevel. Thanks for being gracious about it - I was a bit excessively harsh.

I watched it again, & I think what I found least accurate was the way in which the brief history seemed to jump straight from early systems like the Atari 2600 & NES to the present-day indie developers appropriating pixel art. Many would consider the 16-bit era to be pixel art's golden age if there was any, so it merits at least a look-in.

Overall it was a respectable take - well-researched, decent interviews, well-edited. The comparison to videogame music at 5:15 is a good point, they are analogous, & benefit from constraint & bring out essential qualities in a similar way.

My main gripe is that I think it would have benefited from a more thorough timeline - or at least a few more examples plucked from the Mega Drive, SNES, PC Engine, & Arcade. I think if this was my initial introduction to pixel-art I would be a bit underwhelmed because of the examples used.

[Gil]

I personally find the artists shown to be bad examples.

Joe Brumm is a great animator, who explored pixel art, but if you were to look at stills from the animation, you'd notice a very average level of pixel art. So, while I'm a big fan of his pixel art video, it's not because of quality pixel art work.

The rest of the examples is largely similar. Their excellence is not through the merit of pixel art.

You paint a good picture of 8bit revival in terms of art, music and animation, but as said, for pixel art 8bit was only the silver age, which was followed by its culmination during the 16bit era. I advice you to check out late SNES games, such as Chrono Trigger or Bahamut Lagoon for examples of pixel art pushed to the extreme. These aren't necessarily the best examples of good pixel art, as they were often too ambitious and lost a bit of the symbolic simplicity that was inherent to the mid-16bit era pixel art. It might be a good idea if someone were to create a good history of pixel art.

[Darien]

I think these critiques of the video are a bit silly.  I don't think the goal of the documentary was wow anyone with amazing pixel art; it was more about examining how in recent years pixel art has begun to be noticed more in popular culture.  For better or worse, the pixel art that people have been paying attention to is usually put into the media of games or videos, and is not what is considered around here to be great pixel art.  Passage may not have great pixel art, but it is much more culturally relevant than just about everything on pixeljoint.

[Helm]

Darien, true but then it is culturally relevant as retrogame  art, not as pixel art per se. Hence the point of the documentary could just as well have been 'retro-looking computer art' which includes some pixel art and pixel art theory and concepts but not all of it.

This is the problem on coming to pixel art from an indie game angle too hard, as it could be about coming to it from a demoscene angle too hard or any other angle. If one is making a documentary about the demoscene he'd have to talk about pixel art briefly. If they were making a documentary about the NES, they'd have to talk about pixel art briefly. But only if they were making a documentary about pixel art would they have to talk about all the aspects of it fully.

It is in this way that the documentary is unsatisfactory. Not in that it doesn't show 'kewl pixel art from my buddies at pixeljoint' but in that it seems slightly uninformed about the history and various strands of the artform through 30 years of evolution. 30 years are a long time and even a primer documentary about a subject should have at least a cursory knowledge of the timeline. If the person making this documentary doesn't have a bell ringing in their brain when I mention every one of the below terms, they're not yet equipped to make documentaries on the subject

1. Spacewar!
2. coin-op
3. Macintosh & the concept of '1bit'
4. dithering/stippling
5. sprite
6. demoscene
7. deluxe paint
8. indexed palette
9. 16-bit game consoles

and then stuff like indie game scene, retro-revival, pixelly music video, pixelation/pixeljoint and the like.



EDIT: wait, I didn't mean for my reply to sound damning for the project. It's well-done, good editing, good visual examples, interesting interviews, great music! It just leaves a lot to be desired as a public record of something that has a lot of facets and depth to it.

[Helm]

To crystallize my concern. Any treatment of pixel art needs to mention the dynamics between the desire for people to 'fake' higher fidelity using pixel art than it is traditionally considered able for (which lasts up to today)  and the recent nostalgia-fuelled desire to return to the symbolic quality of 'pixels as pixels' as a food for imagination. The documentary leans decisively to the right. Some would say that pixel art gets qualified as 'art' exactly when it becomes 'pixels as pixels' but that's really worth a longer discussion than presented.

[xhunterko]

My brain went fizz at 1 and 3. Those will have to be wikipedia research items later.