AuthorTopic: The Future Of Pixel Art  (Read 37137 times)

Offline Meta|Fox

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #70 on: August 04, 2006, 03:56:28 am
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I've tried to put a little thought into this before posting, it's been going through my head a lot the last couple of days.

I think we can all conclude with one thing: Pixel art will not die. I have yet to see a single artform dissapear no matter how endangered it may be.

Now, I've read the suggestions that we need to promote Pixel art as an artform to preserve and educate. While this is a good idea in many ways, it's not as simple as that. Pixel art is in all respects a digital medium and can be regarded as the very basis of all digital art (that it's made out of the most basic part of digital visual media: pixels, and that it was the first digital media computers could produce. This includes text.) As many of you are aware, digital art is usually frowned upon by cometees of 'finer arts' unless its printed on a peace of paper or in physical form. If pixels are not shown on some sort of screen, the purpose and basis of the pixel piece shown is changed (meaning, for example, that it is no longer digital in the same sense). Also note that pixel art, like all the other art forms when they originated, is a practical art style. It was and still is made to do a job, be it to show icons on your PC or to show a character in a game.

Of course, putting a printout or a screen showing pixel pictures on display at, for example, a museum would help shed some light on pixel art, is it a good idea to let it evolve as an artform rather than an active tool? First of all, as I understand it we still don't have a pinned down set of ruled defining what exactly is to be defined as 'pixel art'. The view that the common man has about pixel art usually goes along the lines of: "a picture made of dots on a computer" or "what people use when the machine isn't good enough for 3d". It's a good idea to educate the common man, but if the view of pixel art shifts from computer generated art to a fine artform, then pixel art is going to evolve in that direction. If you were to make a large, grand pixel picture and put it up for display, it is going to look stunning. Personally however, I don't feel that this is what pixel art is meant for and partly the reason Digital painting was made.

But let's say that this is the direction that we take pixel art. I've had to learn and study modern art for 3 years as part of my general arts class, and modern artists have a tendency to stretch the borders quite a bit. There are artist that paint by hand single frames from comic books and show it off as something new due to the production method. If people start hand painting square tiles, is this still what we were hoping to show the world? One of the forms of art I loathe the most are the kind of people that paint large, messy squares on a canvas and go into endless elaborations of what it represents, how the strokes where made, why it was made and so on. This is not out of ignorance, I understand very well how and why this is done and the artist are, naturally, able to explain themselves. However, I do not like this art direction at all because it is art for arts sake. It is made by artists for artist and the only people that can judge them have to go through extensive learning to do so. So why am I mentioning this? Because that is the direction Pixel art might go if it is to be regarded as an artform by the general public. I do not want to see smeared ms Paint lines on display at some fancy house with some guy explaining that its his 'soul rage representing the horizon of hope'.


It seems to me that pixel art isnt actually an art at all. its a craft. Generally, non of us really attach signifigent meaning to our pixel art, we do it for our own enjoyment or as a means to an end.

(id write more but im reallly busy!)


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Offline ndchristie

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #71 on: August 04, 2006, 04:06:22 am
pixel art has a tough break because it is not taught at fine arts schools where students really learn to make meaningful art.  much of pixelart is driven by technique and rarely concept, though there are some notable figures that do more interesting things.  however, so far as the majority of pixel art remains game-oriented or at the very best art for the sake of being visually interesting it wont be truely respected as an art form until it is widely used as a way to communicate deeper meanings.  most of what is considered 'real art' reaches emotionally beyond where most pixelart tends to reach
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Offline Helm

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #72 on: August 04, 2006, 06:28:25 am
pixel art has a tough break because it is not taught at fine arts schools where students really learn to make meaningful art.  much of pixelart is driven by technique and rarely concept, though there are some notable figures that do more interesting things.  however, so far as the majority of pixel art remains game-oriented or at the very best art for the sake of being visually interesting it wont be truely respected as an art form until it is widely used as a way to communicate deeper meanings.  most of what is considered 'real art' reaches emotionally beyond where most pixelart tends to reach

Agreed, more or less. What's interesting is that a lot of the digital art on the internet also suffers from being empty. It's just stuff that looks good, like deviant-art-cool-anime-girls-and-gun-omg-robots etc or it's bad fantasy with a really silly symbolic undertone "The harp represents DEATH and the lady is playing it she's going to DIE" so it's not only that pixel art isn't getting a break, content-wise. There's just a lot of pretty painting going on, without most of it meaning anything.

But I believe as far as here goes, as long as we help people with their technique, and years pass, and they grow older... if they stick with (pixel) art, they'll either eventually find it personaly mandatory to stop doing empty art, or they'll quit. it's a personal decision, you can't force anyone in making deeper art in any field.

Offline Skull

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #73 on: August 04, 2006, 03:10:02 pm
New plan of action : Pixel Art Camp.

 ::)

Offline jagged software

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #74 on: August 05, 2006, 04:54:02 am
Skull: I'm with you on that one dude.

Offline ndchristie

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Re: The Future Of Pixel Art

Reply #75 on: August 05, 2006, 06:10:34 pm
I blame a bastardization of the tenets of postmodernism and contemporary art where people think that because the unique experience is created by the viewer, the art itself does not have to mean anything; but this simply makes all art turn into the same shit weve seen over and over again and it has no meaning for anyone.  philosophically i would consider myself a post-modernest, but not in the way that the movement seems to currently exist as a movement of bland shit and self-indulgence sprinkled with unhealthy pessimism.  i think that (great) art should mean something to the artist and serve as a method of communicating something equally important to the masses, which is then open to free interpretation.

which is why a media steeped in game-art history will have an uphill battle to be regarded as a real art form.  most game art is made for one reason with two faces: to be visually attractive in either a realistic or abstract way, and that goal simply wont get digital art respected for anything but the artist's technical skills.
A mistake is a mistake.
The same mistake twice is a bad habit.
The same mistake three or more times is a motif.