(If any of this seems standoffish or stubborn, I apologize, I'm just genuinely curious and trying to psuh these questions a bit)
Too much colours and AA = badly done what photoshop would do better. Everyone knows about this kind of art. face has 20 shades, super smooth gradiant, but they always look like poorly done photoshop
I'm not asking as much about smooth shading/gradients as I am about a broader palette. Let's say that you had a 100x50 sprite of some random character. That character's clothing has a wide variety of hues and shades - black shirt with a big rainbow graphic on it, multi-colored hat, some crazy plaid pants, multi-colored sneakers, a gold watch, a diamond necklace, a multicolored bag (I know this is ridiculous, but play along). The artist only uses 3 hues of each color, one base, one for highlights, one for shadows. They also use a couple of outline colors, and a couple of colors for AA. In the end, they create a sprite that uses 80+ colors, but it still is undeniably a piece of pixel art, created pixel-by-pixel. And (again, play along here) it's beautifully pixeled, beautfully detailed. Do you believe that, if they had limited themselves to 16 colors, and lost a lot of the color detail within the piece, the end result would've been better? Or do you think that you don't necessarily need a limited palette in order to qualify something as pixel art?
restrictions are definitely important. who cares if you can make an awesome sprite, if it uses 256 colors? i basically always stay with 16 colors, for what i do, ive basically never needed more. the mindset that less colors = less pretty is a false mindset.
I'd pose the same question here. I'm not saying that something with more than 8/16/24 colors is automatically more beautiful - but what if you're able to fit in additional detail, smoother AA'ing, more accurate or vibrant color, by using 80+ colors in a small sprite? If the detail and visual impact of the piece would be downgraded significantly with a limited palette, and the limited palette would serve only as a reference to old-school video game vernacular, why not use a larger palette?
Is a limited palette a necessary part of creating pixel art? Or is it merely a style/technique to use when creating pixel art? Do you consider something like this:
http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/wp-content/uploads/shop/EBY_FooBar_35t.pngTo be "legitimate" pixel art? It's certainly created pixel-by-pixel, and it certain draws on the same sort of vernacular that limited-palette pixel art does, but it uses a gigantic palette because there's no need for it to restrict that.
Small palettes make for better animations unless someone is willing to animate a main character for 2 years. Good keyframing makes for efficient animation that doesn't need superfulous inbetweening. Smart tile usage means you get to reuse assets instead of drawing the whole thing. Useful selfi-imposed restrictions are the ones that maximise your capacity to make assets in good time-schedules to meet your deadlines. They don't have to do with platform limitations anymore, they have to do with empyrical knowledge of how to make a game and make it as fast and good as you can.
That makes a world of sense. I hadn't thought about that.
About pixel art in general, I enjoy restrictions because they're inherently tied to the Computer Aesthetic from whence this art-form came. In working with restrictions one finds novel ways to approach both his subject matter and his intention towards creating art. If he's just doing cg work, but in smaller resolution, then that's that, but it's no pixel art. Draw once in c64 hi-res restrictions and what I say will become clear.
So then, do you believe that a piece can't reference the "computer aesthetic" if it doesn't work within the strict guidelines that pixel artists of the past were forced to use? I definitely understand the idea of drawing upon that vernacular, but do you believe it's impossible to refer just as strongly to that sort of subject matter without imposing limitations on yourself? Is the idea of pixel art that inseperable to palette restrictions?
If one were to create a piece in C64 dimensions with 2x1 pixel ratio, but used an unlimited palette, do you think that the dimensions and 2x1 ratio would still qualify it as a legitimate piece of pixel art?
Say you create a piece of vector art, 10" by 10", that uses a limited 16-color palette. You then create a piece of pixel art, 100x100, of the same subject, that uses an unlimited palette but still is obviously done pixel-by-pixel (instead of, say, taking the vector art and compressing it down). Which is more "legit" as a piece of pixel art?
Is the main qualifier of pixel art its restrictions of palette/size/etc? Or instead, is the qualifier the visual effect of being able to see the individual pixels, the harsh square edges, the use of dithering, etc?
I believe artists should be concerned with minimizing their palettes, using no more colors than needed. I extend this philosophy to other art as well, such as fiction. For instance, there should not be in a short story a paragraph that adds nothing to the story, and can be deleted with no loss to the integrity of the story. Likewise, in pixel art, there should be no extra colors that add nothing to the image, and can be deleted with no loss of integrity of the image.
Why do you have a strong belief in minimalism? Why not extravagance? Do you consider Gabriel Garcia Marquez to be a mediocre author? What about Dostoyevsky? Do you feel that the importance of every word or paragraph or pixel or color is determined by the artist or the audience? Do you believe it's on the author or the audience to determine the significance of a tangent passage that seemingly has nothing to do with the story?
My impression with 3d is taht if you only have so many polygons for your sphere then you make your sphere with those polygons and in two years with 1.5 times as many polygons you then use your extra polygons to make it more sphere like. Its an evolving process that reduces this year's good art to rubbish the next. That art doesn't endure. Pixel art doesn't compromise like other computer asthetics. It is damned restrictive, but when someone make a ball with 4 pixels or 9 pixels, they make it that way cause they want to, not because they think its close enough. And the art endures. At least for us here.
I'm sure there are 3D artists that hate unnecessary polygons, or prefer a retro style with specific restrictions - would you tell those people that their art is rubbish because it doesn't push the limits of technology? What would you think of a human model with very limited polygons, but brilliant texturing, lighting and animation?