The History of Pixel Art

[0xDB]

If PoP makes the list, Karateka must go on it as well.

[Cure]

Since both Karateka and PoP are creations of Jordan Mechner, we can get away with listing Karateka and segue to PoP in the description.

As for eBoy, I can strike it from the list if enough people feel it's not relevant enough, I just don't want to omit it purely because we, as fancy pixel artists, scoff at the technique or feel the degree of their popularity was unwarranted.

[Atnas]

eBoy is absolutely relevant.

I do not personally care for it, but it is very widely recognized and culturally relevant. Perhaps beyond mario it's something that a lot of people think of when they hear the words pixel art.

[surt]

Your screenshot for SuperPaint is clearly from a Macintosh which is more than a decade later. So even if it is from a much later version of that program I don't think it's very relevant to the timeline.

EDIT: according the the descriptions on Wikipedia they don't appear to be related at all.

[Cure]

Oops. You'll have to forgive these slips, my first computer ran MS-DOS and I missed the 80s.
Maybe something from this page would work better.

[MAVW]

I think we should keep Eboy, as Gil said, even if they did more harm than good to the community it doesn't disqualify them as historically relevant pixel artists.

They may have a very limited technique to their work but it's undeniable that they pushed pixel art to a more mainstream view beyond the "videogamy art style" view pixel art has.

[Helm]

It's insane to say eBoy didn't leave an impression on the popular perception of pixel art. It's like, a thousand times more influential than the cultural footprint of pixelation.

[0xDB]

The history of crapxels is deeply intertwined with that of pixels. Without the one, the other could not exist and vice versa.

[Gil]

I think it was somewhere around Habbo Hotel that people started realizing isocrap wasn't the promised land

[ndchristie]

Perhaps consider cellular automata, especially the game of life (1970)