AuthorTopic: Pixel Art 3.0  (Read 11102 times)

Offline cels

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Re: Pixel Art 3.0

Reply #20 on: April 01, 2015, 03:35:11 pm
Imagine for a moment: Cyangmou is showing what he's been up to recently working on his game project. So he shows a new character asset, explains the backround it has, why he made it, how it goes, what's it for. Maybe he even comments what he doesn't like about other RPGs, and how he aims to do it different, better, as he believes.
And people are like: "Duuuude, where's the gameplay? lol. Why are you telling me about this story stuff I don't care about. where's the game man? Your thoughts on character design and what you think of RPG mean squat without a game, pal. Release something playable now, or rather work on it until you can release, but don't talk around -- leave interpretation and judgement up to us, the player, about the worth of that!"
That would be a good analogy, except it doesn't quite fit the situation. What if Cyangmou posted artwork on a forum for programmers. The programmers would look at the art and go "Alright... now how are you going to code this?"

Similarly, when you're talking about pixel art 3.0 on a website dedicated to artwork by only showing us a program... the artist tend to go "Alright, now where's the pixel art? You've shown us how the tool works, but we've seen nothing that warrants the description 'pixel art'." Obviously, no one is asking for a 3D Mona Lisa. But we haven't even seen the tiniest crumb of artwork, just some doodling to experiment with the tools.

I am not speaking on behalf of anyone except myself. Seeing is believing. Do a tiny demonstration of your idea, even if it's just a 5 minute piece of work, like a small model of a birdhouse or a car or a tree. And then show us how this is pixel art. That has a lot bigger impact than trying to convince people through words.

Offline RAV

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Re: Pixel Art 3.0

Reply #21 on: April 01, 2015, 05:20:35 pm
That would be a good analogy, except it doesn't quite fit the situation. What if Cyangmou posted artwork on a forum for programmers. The programmers would look at the art and go "Alright... now how are you going to code this?"

Similarly, when you're talking about pixel art 3.0 on a website dedicated to artwork by only showing us a program... the artist tend to go "Alright, now where's the pixel art? You've shown us how the tool works, but we've seen nothing that warrants the description 'pixel art'." Obviously, no one is asking for a 3D Mona Lisa. But we haven't even seen the tiniest crumb of artwork, just some doodling to experiment with the tools.

I am not speaking on behalf of anyone except myself. Seeing is believing. Do a tiny demonstration of your idea, even if it's just a 5 minute piece of work, like a small model of a birdhouse or a car or a tree. And then show us how this is pixel art. That has a lot bigger impact than trying to convince people through words.

That would be a good touche, except what others would do wrong in attitude does not justify your own. Rather I would criticize them the same, if they treated his project there like mine was treated here. Ideally, the coders would say: "I'm quite curious about trying to code this. challenge accepted!". or maybe, "this looks pretty fun, but could be hard to code.", or "I noticed a couple things here about your artwork, and that got me thinking about...", or "I'm not sure I understand you, could you clear this up? there might be a problem you haven't considered yet, from my experience." or "not sure if this is the next big thing as you make it sound, but sounds interesting anyway. at least this or that I liked so far, another thing I didn't like", or "would be fun to have a next big thing to play with. would be cool if we could make this work for once.". If he went to a gamer forum, they would say "Oh god, I so wished you could somehow make this work, that could be so cool, very promising art, my imagination goes nuts, even though I'm not sure the gameplay would actually work out."

At any case, if they responded the way you did, he'd not go there anymore. So is that it? You can try back each other up on this.
I can't blame you for being overly sceptical, or not liking it or having no interest in it. I can just tell you if I'm feeling right being here.
It's one thing to ask me out about the tool, because it's unclear yet, to figure how that works for you.
But that's really not how that went down here. No really, there's something else going on here.
To me, the attitudes rather come across as: "I'm looking for anything that confirms my suspicion of why this shouldn't work."
Instead of: "sheesh, would be fun to have something new to play with, hell why not, now let's see if we can make this work"



As to how pixel art of it would look: go to PJ and look at any pixel art there. you could have painted that on the 2d surface of a 3d wall in the tool and exported directly into bitmap, to the very same result, the same .png or .gif. This is regardless of all the 3d stuff you could also do otherwise. What makes the tool a "pixel art 3.0" simply is the principle of being able to do any 2d pixel art as well as 3d voxels, in the same work space, with the same workflow, the same code and data structure, platform specification independent. Is it better than any other pixel tool? nope. is it better than any other voxel tool? nope. The particulars of how it's more than the sum of its parts, make it pretty interesting.

To my understanding, Pixel Art 3.0 is not just what my tool presents. When you read back of how I defined the eras, any modern engine with which you can also make 2d pixel games today, suffices the definition of Pixel Art 3.0. What I do is just my own take on it, a tool aimed as what I believe the most consequential take on it, while not loosing roots. It has not only advantages, but it is another step and offers some interesting possibilities, like you may say LCD has not only advantages over CRT, but it is another step, and it affected pixel art. And the complete virtualization of the screen within a physical host screen, is another such step of display logic that affects it in how we like to go about things. Simply having to scale things up and rendering as texture, already is that virtualized pixel art, and why we've seen all kinds of things happen with that. Things you may not all like on PJ and Pix nowadays. This here is a tailored attempt to be a bit more likeable, while taking some modern advantages, in a way I feel makes a lot of sense to classic pixel art.

« Last Edit: April 01, 2015, 05:51:02 pm by RAV »

Offline Indigo

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Re: Pixel Art 3.0

Reply #22 on: April 01, 2015, 06:58:29 pm
This is getting ridiculous RAV

The reason your analogy doesn't work is because this is a tool, not a game.  One has practical benefits and the other is interactive fiction.  Demonstrating the practical is much more important for a tool than a game.  Don't get me wrong - having a philosophy behind designing a tool is extremely beneficial.  I totally get that.  But you *invited* discussion on that philosophy.  You labeled the thread "pixel art 3.0" instead of "hybrid art tool in development."  You made the *FOCUS* of a large portion of this thread about the philosophy, yet are upset when people try to engage with you about it.

The reason much of this thread is about you and not the tool is because you're perpetuating it.  You're abrasive to nearly anything that is said.  In all honesty I think you're reading people's feedback as much more negative than what it really is.  I see a lot of prompts for discussion and further explanation, but instead of reciprocating those prompts you've been lashing back at it.  Your expectations for this board are unrealistic - It seems like you wanted to mind-dump your ideas and have everyone embrace it and be a pixel art revolutionary with you.  That's not what this forum is about nor has it ever been.  We're here to challenge eachother, to disagree with eachother,  to better eachother.  And you're not playing the same game.

And it's a shame too.  I'd love to continue discussion about the tool itself, as there is definitely a lot of cool things to talk about there, but you've made that discussion nearly impossible.

Here's what I've seen in this thread:

"Here's my philosophy of defining a new era of pixel art"
>>insert debate about the philosophy
"Why does everyone keep talking about the philosophy?!  You simply don't understand the tool!"

"Here's my tool that will revolutionize pixel art"
>>insert requests for practical demonstration, explanation, and trying it for themselves
"I don't have to demonstrate it, but you can't try it either.  You simply don't understand the philosophy!"

This may be an extreme caricaturization, but shows the circular logic I've witnessed.  If you block us on both sides of the discussion, all that's left for us to say is "Looks cool man.  Keep going"

so uhh... Looks cool man, keep going.

---

Quote
To my understanding, Pixel Art 3.0 is not just what my tool presents. When you read back of how I defined the eras, any modern engine with which you can also make 2d pixel games today, suffices the definition of Pixel Art 3.0. What I do is just my own take on it, a tool aimed as what I believe the most consequential take on it, while not loosing roots. It has not only advantages, but it is another step and offers some interesting possibilities, like you may say LCD has not only advantages over CRT, but it is another step, and it affected pixel art. And the complete virtualization of the screen within a physical host screen, is another such step of display logic that affects it in how we like to go about things. Simply having to scale things up and rendering as texture, already is that virtualized pixel art, and why we've seen all kinds of things happen with that. Things you may not all like on PJ and Pix nowadays. This here is a tailored attempt to be a bit more likeable, while taking some modern advantages, in a way I feel makes a lot of sense to classic pixel art.

To this point, I think you've got a solid premise.  Makes sense.  For me personally, as a pixel artist, feel that pixel art 3.0 is already happening (as you have defined it here) - and I'm okay with that.  The high-def stuff mixed with pixel art has been an interesting movement and it's produced a lot of cool stuff.  For me personally though, I would not find any use in the voxel portion of your interpretation of pixel-art 3.0.  Voxel art and Pixel art are such separate mediums that don't really intersect so much to warrant a tool that bridges the two, for me.  I'd probably want to hide all of the 3D stuff completely out of view if I wanted to be productive with this tool.  I can imagine Voxel artists on the other hand finding much more practical use for this than pixel artists - but I doubt they'd consider it pixel art by any stretch of the imagination.  Not to mention voxel art is an extremely smaller niche medium than pixel art.  There aren't any "voxel art masters" out there from what I know.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2015, 07:15:44 pm by Indigo »

Offline RAV

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Re: Pixel Art 3.0

Reply #23 on: April 01, 2015, 07:27:26 pm
A game is just as much about practicability to a player, as a tool to the artist. A tool of entertainment, a tool that presents a challenge to be solved, a usability design problem. And of course for this reason, a game that's only developed with concerns to code or art or business, other than gameplay, is frustrating to a player. This is a known problem. Yet it is not that whenever someone talks about making a game, especially in enthusiasts circles, that it is disparaged until 100% practically proven to work right, and every last prove demanded within WIP, before any pleasant and meaningful discourse about it can ocour. It's more wait and see, and enjoying the media releases and developer interviews meanwhile, and of course every trailer praises it as the best thing ever. part of the fun.

You are very adamant on hinging everything on that I see myself as this big great revolution that makes everything else irrelevant. And talk about my circles.
And I am not able to go about this the way I like, and see myself unable to utilize Pixelation as a development platform the way I'd need,
as well as I am unable to make worthwhile contributions to Pixelation with my work.

But no, I will no longer keep this going. I appreciate your best effort and somehow understand that my attitude is very frustrating for you, and that this does not work is my fault, since I am the oddball here admittedly. That it does not work out with no one here means I am wrong, I am wrong here, I am wrong being here. I do not blame you or anyone for how this must go down, sometimes things just don't fit together, that's life. even though I cannot help it either. Let me close out by stating, I admire your work and certainly advice every young pixel artist to consider your opinion on pixel art and games development over mine. Best of luck and wish you farewell.

This is my last statement. on my own topic. I can imagine plenty people would like to throw something in and after now. Please close the topic now. At least, I'd like to have a semi-graceful leave. Thank you for your time.


« Last Edit: April 01, 2015, 07:34:34 pm by RAV »