AuthorTopic: pixel art, games  (Read 4431 times)

Offline tocky

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pixel art, games

on: March 13, 2009, 03:37:39 am
this brought on by helm's ramblethread, but these ideas seem basically out of place there, this is nothing really to do with pixel art as techniques.

(my claim is that) success in art is making stuff that is:

representational - that clearly presents your view of its subject, and
compelling - that affects opinion about the subject, for some targeted group.

Of course, swaying opinion is only a secondary goal, making compelling stuff that does not truly represent your views is failure. Making stuff that represents your views but which does not affect opinion is a form of success, somewhat limited by the fact that nobody else knows that you have been successful.

Looping back to pixel art.
I think pixel art is a very effective medium. It enforces a strong aesthetic, and is inherently compelling. But to some extent it's popularity is linked to video games, and also video games don't much use pixel art any more. What does that mean?

I believe these things about pixel art:
-it is compelling.
-in most people's minds, it is inherently linked to video games.

so people can draw either of these assumptions:
- pixel art is inherently compelling, because the techniques employed are inherently pleasant.
- pixel art is compelling by association, because it is linked with video games.

There are other factors that exist, surely - but I am convinced that both of these statements are true to some degree. The main question I'd like to pose is this: if pixel art is estranged from video games - is that a good thing for pixel art?

I don't believe there are many among us here who love pixel art and do not love either old games, or old technology. As this other stuff falls into obscurity, what will that mean for pixel art? Will new people continue to pick it up?

How many of those here make a living doing pixel art? How many are employed in the games industry? Is there any other viable way to do it?

The link to video games is limiting in a very basic sense: If you try to tackle subjects that aren't games using pixel art, some game-ness seeps in. Obviously that's not appropriate, in a lot of cases. Do people have this trouble?

And so forth. I don't think many here need convincing that pixel art is a viable artform, in isolation of video games. But there's long been a strong relationship between the two, and pixel art still holds a strong video game association. I'd like to hear what people think about this.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2009, 10:41:16 pm by tocky »

Offline EyeCraft

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #1 on: March 13, 2009, 06:47:53 am
Interesting. I personally draw no significant association between pixel art and games, unless the pixel art I'm looking at is deliberately related to games in some way. I think pixel art can stand on its own, aside from games, and I think it would prosper from that.

I think the difficulty of making a living off pixel art comes from the nature of the medium itself. How do you `sell' a pixel art piece? If you display it on a website or whatever, then its already available to a person. If you set up monitors in a gallery and only display it in that gallery, well that could work, but how do you develop enough esteem to reach that point prior to then? It seems like the only way to be able to sell pixel art to people regardless of whether or not its displayed on their monitors already is to have that pixel art be tied up in some kind of function other than pure display, such as games.

I probably could present more thoughts on this topic, but for the moment feel too depleted :blind:

Offline tocky

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #2 on: March 13, 2009, 07:31:04 am
-how do you sell a pixel art piece?

That is an interesting question. I think in theory a pixel artist ought to have the same sorts of opportunities that are available to other kinds of digital artists - and of course being a pixel artist doesn't prohibit you from being any other kind of artist - but you could do things like selling prints, working as an illustrator (book covers, album covers, children's books, clothing, those cartoons they put alongside articles in print publications), you could make pixel comics and print them, you could make pixel cartoons and pitch them to a tv studio or stick them on the web and sell dvds and tshirts. You could get a grant from the government to do something avant-guard and weird. I don't know if anyone actually seeks out pixel art in these fields, but I don't imagine it's impossible for a pixel artist to sell stuff like that. But I still think, generally you'd have more luck with this if the stuff you were doing was game-related, I could see doing illustrations for a games publication, or if you made a pixel cartoon that was designed to resemble a video game, that'd be easier to sell that one that wasn't.

er, not that I have any experience in selling art, or anything.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2009, 10:19:42 am by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #3 on: March 13, 2009, 02:00:15 pm
Yes I think pixel art is compelling initially because of the video game connection, not just for laymen but for connosseurs as well. I think we look at pixel art and get a very strong sense that what we're looking at is a 'living' thing because we've associated pixels with video games, interactivity, movement. That it is also robust as a way to represent images through very restricted means is a grace only some end up interested in, and even they cannot deny the video game connection.

I do not think pixel art trying to sever connection to video games will be useful either for video games or pixel art.

Also on your initial assumptions, I suggest that art that doesn't convey the artist's point of view (in a narrow sense) but conveys a point of view (in the wider sense) is not a failure. I could make a comic about the nazi atrocities and portray the nazis in some kind light for example, which doesn't agree with my political beliefs, but I could do such a good job humanizing the nazis (who were, after all, men and not satans) that the end result will not be without merit. It might be controversal but beh, whatever, that's besides the point.

So I would submit that a more precise idea is that art is with merit when the artist tries to convey something emotionally and/or intellectually honest through it. It doesn't have to be something he himself endorses, it doesn't have to be - to use the proper terminology for once - a morally prescriptive piece of art, merely discriptive. Just as long as it comes from a real place inside a human being. I could feel a very dark frustration tomorrow and make a comic about someone murdering children to let that steam out and although that's something really horrible in the abstract, it could be handled in such a way that it would affect the viewer in a more essential level than them just feeling disgust and rejection.

Offline tocky

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #4 on: March 13, 2009, 10:15:59 pm
I'm more concerned about games severing ties to pixel art (than the other way around) because that seems to be occurring, because the technology no longer requires pixel-level manipulation for the degree of detail desired by games publishers/players, and because in 3d a pixel on a surface isn't the same as a pixel on the screen, and so on.

The other thing is true - I guess I should say that a work is representational so long as it is true to the artist's intentions for the work, whether that suits their general beliefs or not. But again, if you made a nazi-sympathy comic and that spread sympathy for nazi politics, rather than specifically for the idea of nazis as real people, then that would be failure because the stuff wasn't truly representational of your intentions - is my point. Successful art isn't just effective, it's effective the way the artist intended. I don't quite remember how this stuff is related, though, why I included it - I guess I feel like I can't start a discussion about art without first defining a bunch of things, even if it's not the crux of what I'm supposed to be talking about.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 01:26:15 am by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #5 on: March 14, 2009, 08:57:44 am
Quote
Successful art isn't just effective, it's effective the way the artist intended.

I disagree actually. When art conveys the artists intention it certainly makes the artist feel good about what they did, but I think any art that touches people in a human way is successful, even if the audience 'misses the point' by a mile.

Offline tocky

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #6 on: March 14, 2009, 12:28:13 pm
admitted. There is some serious appeal in that.

Can you claim a victory even if things didn't really go the way you wanted? You could. Say, because things seem to have gone better than they would have done if you hadn't acted at all, or because at the very least you did no harm and enjoyed the work and the response was positive on average, or for any of a bunch of other reasons.

For my own sake, I may have an odd view of what is success. If I'm going to spend some hours making something, I prefer that people should get it. It is my stated goal that stuff I make should convey what I intend to those people who encounter it. Anything else that may happen as a result of me making stuff and people viewing the stuff may be positive or not, but it is not the stated goal. I may substitute 'failure to convey what is intended' as 'failure', because that is my belief, but that is not a point on which I expect everyone to agree. There are other ways you could define success in art, but it seems everyone has different views about everything about how to do art.

But then, I'm not sure there's any specific conflict between my position and yours, and I may be overstating my case here. I'm arguing because I like to argue, but I do believe in this stuff.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 12:31:38 pm by tocky »

Offline Helm

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #7 on: March 14, 2009, 02:09:00 pm
Well I probably wouldn't claim success if people missed the point. But if you asked the person that was affected if the thing was successful, they'd probably say yes.

So sure, the artist strives to be understood as intended, but the audience takes what they are ready to take from the art, these two processes are not at odds. A common success between artist and public is not imperative for art to be created I think.

By all this I mean to stress the difference between 'I feel my art has failed' specifically, and 'failed art' on the abstract.

Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #8 on: March 16, 2009, 01:58:02 pm
To contribute to the rabbit trail:
I feel like generally art is most successful if it achieves the intent of the artist, but there are a good many exceptions. The best one I can think of is Ed Wood, a director who saw himself as a great visionary of film and only produced campy garbage. But his films are so wretchedly chintzy that they're actually profound on an entirely different level than what he intended. This is probably all teetering precariously on the brink of the "what is art" discussion though. But I would hazard to say that the success or failure of art is decided more by the beholder and less by the artist, if it is indeed a form of expression.

And to stay on topic:
Pixel art is intrinsically connected to games and gamer culture and that link should be respected, not severed. I would consider it a sub-genre of art if we really wanted to get nitpicky since it's sort of like mosaic art but also a form of digital art. I know that with my personal tastes I enjoy the most pixel art that alludes to nostalgia or gaming culture, it's like peanut butter and jelly to me. You can certainly venture outside of it but it doesn't resonate as much, at least for me.

Of course I might be biased in this since pixel art to me is a means to an end (I use it for games and game-related projects exclusively, I don't pixel for "fun). But even still there are way easier ways to make art for games; having worked with high-def graphics as well I can attest that it is WAY faster and easier. BUT it has a remarkably different aesthetic quality than what only pixel art really has.
« Last Edit: March 16, 2009, 06:05:08 pm by Ben2theEdge »
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Offline Mike

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Re: pixel art, games

Reply #9 on: March 16, 2009, 06:30:16 pm
Sadly I don't pixel for fun either.  I find that my albeit limited art skills don't translate well into pixels.  I don't like that fact that I can't get something looking right in pixels even when I know exactly what I want and could easily draw it out on paper.  Another thing is drawing a straight line in pixels has it's own little rules too and I for one really hate them.  On paper I can draw a straight line at any angle and it will look straight, not so with pixels(though my skill in pixeling is obviously the reason)

I used to really like doing pixel art but the more I dive into it the more I wish I was just drawing on paper.  Or doing art similar to Odin's Sphere, Murasuma: Demonblade, or Boy and his Blob.

Also being on topic:

Pixel art for me is also most appealing in video game form either in mock ups of games, characters, menu screens, icons, or what have you.  As long as it's from a game my interest perks up.  However when I see a HUGE pixel piece of something that could easily be done with a traditional medium I can't help but ask "why?"  I would like to rant more but I fear I may have alienated myself enough already  :P