The History of Pixel Art

[Ai]

The mention of dithering makes more sense with the context of CRT being the previous technology. Dithering worked pretty well on a CRT. Although to be fair, increasing screen sizes may have contributed to the 'blatant' appearance of dithering on LCD screens.

[RAV]

I agree that there can be a preference of techniques based on display tech. But I think it's a mixed bag in what happened with dither, and other factors are more important. So I'm concerned if it may look like the display tech is the deciding reason for or against dither in particular.

The primary motivation for dither was getting around the limited colour depth for things that required more colour. Displays were capable of more colours long before the processing. Dither was already on the decline before the LCD, because of the higher colour depth in processing. And if we still would have had 8-bit by the time LCD became popular, people would still have dithered like hell. Dither often looked like crap on CRT too, because of the crappy preset palette of consoles. But the need for more colour was so strong people did it anyway.

Now as you mentioned, later on with LCDs, something interesting happened, because of the ever higher resolution, dither started to look good again on LCD. Or let's put it this way: pixels became so small, that they became the equivalent to the rgb components of real pixels in the old days. In that, dither colour could become literally indistinguishable from actual colour. But the problem then is, why bother? why complicating your work when you don't need it. We have all the colour in the world. That's what makes dither pixel art retro in the actual sense, because it has problems justifying itself in the modern world.

But that's only half true either. Because besides some subtleties in looks, I've seen people sometimes do interesting effects with dither in a way that obviously relies on being dither. That's the situation we have now. People are looking for ways to differentiate themselves on the market. They see most games don't use dither. So maybe let's try make something with dither. But just being different isn't enough. It must be different in an interesting and relevant way.

"Because I rely on dither, I can do feature xyz."
"Because I don't use dither, I can do feature xyz."

Which side has the better conclusion to that. That's what decides the fate of dither today.

The success of pixel style or technique is no longer about hardware. It's about the features a chosen style or technique can provide or support.

[yrizoud]

Somewhere around 2005-2010, CRT technology got abandoned. I think it's important to note that LCDs got standardized to display square pixels, no matter their resolution, while games of the previous generation used a VGA screen mode,  where pixels are 20%taller than they are wide. A lot of websites don't bother with the difference , and the screenshots of these games are not corrected for display, they appear "flatter" than they should.

[RAV]

You might have heard of that super cheap tinker computer Raspberry Pi.
It's a great success story. And it has the RetroPie project, which is to load it choke full with emulators and roms.
People make even little handhelds out of it, ala Gameboy. Or full blown Arcade stations.
And I keep meeting folks with a RetroPie, at home or in the bag.
It too has a homebrew scene for original pixel art games, either native to the Raspberry or for the emulators.

[Cure]

Dither was already on the decline before the LCD, because of the higher colour depth in processing.

I think it's important to note that LCDs got standardized to display square pixels, no matter their resolution, while games of the previous generation used a VGA screen mode,  where pixels are 20%taller than they are wide.

Seems like this is a more complex issue than I assumed. Maybe it's best to remove the bit about dithering? And add the bit about square pixels? I tried looking into the whole VGA/CGA/EGA etc. shit but quickly found myself in over my head.

Don't you think the first IBM PC and Mac are worth mentioning though?

The Apple II probably deserves a mention. Is the IBM 5150 significant enough to warrant a mention? And in mentioning the Apple II, is it worth mentioning the Commodore PET and TRS-80 as the other 2/3rds of the "1977 Trinity" of home computing? Apple II was the first to have a GUI afaik, so maybe it is the only one of this bunch worthy of a spot on the timeline.

Their first popular 3d shooters like Wolfenstein employed pixel art textures, as a precursor to Minecraft. The Pixel moved on as Texel.

I honestly hadn't thought about texels outside of Minecraft. Is Wolfenstein the first game to use pixel textures? I'd like to hear what others think about the importance of texels in the history of our medium, but it might be worth a mention. That's how Junkboy is making billions of dollars with Notch, right?  I feel voxels and legos are a bit of a stretch, getting this far into the third dimension seems to expand the focus quite a bit.

what's become as important today as hardware in the past, is software development frameworks and game engines.

To me it feels the hardward of the past is more important to the timeline because it heavily influenced the form of the pixel art produced on those machines, and established in the public consciousness what "pixel art", "video game art", and "retro graphics" look like. I can certainly see the argument that game engines are the new consoles, but nowadays its just a given that pixel art can be displayed on all sorts of computers without any significant limitations to the style of art produced, with all ports being vitually identical.

[RAV]

Maybe it's best to remove the bit about dithering? And add the bit about square pixels?

Agreed. We'll have to think some more about the role of dither and techniques another day.



The logical progression for the technical underpinning of pixel art is this: Pixel -> Texel -> Voxel.

Almost every pixel art today and of the last couple years is based on textures in 3d APIs. This had all the creative effects you see with modern pixel art. The fact that 2d is technically just a logical subset of 3d, will keep driving the development. It's interesting to note, Minecraft is both: Pixel art as Texel and as Voxel. Both concepts with the most significant creative influence on pixel art today. Both concepts that each started their mass market break-through with pixel art as driving force once again. For being so "retro", pixel art has a surprising lineage of influence in the digital arts market to this day.

Wolfenstein is probably the most reknown example of pixel art taking first advantage of the 3d virtualization everything relies on today. And that's a PC thing. The IBM/Apple marks the end of all other platforms, it all converged to this, and the PC is the more important of the two. The revival and innovation of pixel art today rely on the decades of technical progression by these dominating platforms.

I'd say, mention IBM and Wolfenstein, as foundation and milestone of how the development of 3d tech started to affect pixel art, and pixel art started 3d for mass market. The other hardware you can skip, like you don't mention every game, just a select few to make your point for what important change happened to the art.


Note: I'm just rambling some thoughts on the matter. Other views here are welcome.

[Cure]

I found this while doing some research, so I'm dropping it in this thread for posterity. A cursory (yet intense) bullet-point history of computer art from the end of WWII to 1990

I stumbled upon this while researching an artist I'm interviewing who was a professional pixel artist throughout the 1980s, which I hope to share with y'all soon.

[Cure]

The aforementioned interview is now online over at PixelJoint.

Check it out!

Lauretta Jones began her career as a freelance digital illustrator, before going on to teach at the School of Visual Art in New York, where she also designed a computer art course. She continued to find new ways to help digital artists as a user interface researcher. She currently teaches botanical art at the New York Botanical Garden.

Lauretta also has a special insight into the world of pixel art during the 1980s, when 8-bit not only meant 8-bit, it also meant state-of-the-art. I was first introduced to Lauretta's work by a 1984 BBC program called "Micro Live," which had been uploaded to YouTube. She was kind enough to answer more than a few of my questions.