Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

dinofarmgames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 194 posts

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#41

Post by agumonkey »

dragontamer wrote: post #38
agumonkey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I found neither impressive, both are pretty standard level animations in their domains.

Indeed. But the Fire Emblem sprites were redrawn with details from each of the characters in the game. Amelia from FE8 for example, was the only blonde female paladin, and her long-blonde hair would blow in the wind during her critical hit animation. The animations were incredibly personalized to the characters, a true feat for a game with several dozen playable characters (and random mooks to KO). In contrast, the 3…

Sigh, the "benefits" of industrialisation and new tech. Fortunately I hope that 2d or 3d pros and cons are known and mastered enough so people can go back to produce artful games.

Similarly to movies, early 2K era movies were speaking too much of CGI, now SFX aren't attractive anymore, you got to give density.

ps: about the level of effort, I think it's not fair, 3d modeling and animating was hard, but more than that it made people focus on low level details rather than 'impressionist' ones. You had to care about all angles and didn't have time nor knowledge on what made a good animation. Same goes for old animations.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#42

Post by Htsthbjig »

Agreed.

Some of the greatest film movies ever created are black and white, ironical because most of them were recorded in two colors but the color was lost(as the only copy that not degraded over time were the black and white television copies).

But if you tried to make a film that last 20 seconds like the first Lumière movies, or without sound like Chaplin most people won't understand it.

Even Chaplin got nearly bankrupt trying to stay with silent pictures.

Most people can't understand that making a movie without sound is actually harder than with it, as a movie without sound feels weird and you have to apply lots of work in order to fight this limitation.

So it just does not make economical sense when 99% of the people do not understand the work behind and you have to make something 99 times more expensive to those that do in order to live of your work.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#43

Post by vacri »

I found it interesting that the author denigrated a fighter from Street Fighter IV with 'arms don't work that way', then immediately turns around and says that the pixel art for the next fighter is far better because 'she looks like a whip cracking', despite spines not working that way. It feels like the author is applying different standards at times.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#44

Post by fgsfdsfgsfds »

dragontamer wrote: post #22
fgsfdsfgsfds wrote: post #8

Sounds like they should have been developing for PC instead of mobile. The average mobile user plays exploitative "freemium" garbage to kill time in lines. How can you expect them to appreciate the art behind it? Meanwhile, "retro"-style games are doing gangbusters on Steam, selling to people that actually appreciate those styles of art, music, and game design.

While you have a point (and I've given you a +1 vote because of it), the fact remains that the "average person" I know thinks that Street Fighter 4 animations were better than Street Fighter 3. The Chun Li discussion happens a lot in my circle of friends, and I'm always in the minority. Very few people appreciate classic pixel art.

That's fair, but if you want to make art, there's no sense in trying to appeal to everyone. The guy that disregards pixel art probably wouldn't see your traditional art for what it really is, either. You can be depressed that the "mainstream" doesn't appreciate what you do, you can crush your spirit trying to pander to them, or you can have fun in your cozy niche with a small handful of fans and peers that really get you.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#46

Post by javajosh »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #42

Agreed. Some of the greatest film movies ever created are black and white, ironical because most of them were recorded in two colors but the color was lost(as the only copy that not degraded over time were the black and white television copies). But if you tried to make a film that last 20 seconds like the first Lumière movies, or without sound like Chaplin most people won't understand it. Even Chaplin got nearly ban…

>But if you tried to make a film that last 20 seconds like the first Lumière movies, or without sound like Chaplin most people won't understand it.

For any given object, over a large enough population, most people won't be exposed to it; those that are won't understand it. Hit TV shows might reach 10M viewers in the US - out of 350M.

FWIW I think the OPs move is slightly premature: there's a movie coming out soon called Pixels that will certainly raise the profile of this style: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2120120/

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#47

Post by Goronmon »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #17

It is the duty of an artist to fulfill their vision, not someone else's. For this reason, many prominent artists go unknown in their lifetime. The masses are attracted to "bad" art like Thomas Kinkade (I use quotes because the art is not actually bad, just lacks the originality that art connoisseurs seek). I would actually argue that you will have to make a choice between being a popular artist and being good artist…

And it may well be the case that you don't have the luxury to make this choice.

Which, unfortunately, is usually the case when it comes to game development.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#48

Post by drzaiusapelord »

fgsfdsfgsfds wrote: post #8

Sounds like they should have been developing for PC instead of mobile. The average mobile user plays exploitative "freemium" garbage to kill time in lines. How can you expect them to appreciate the art behind it? Meanwhile, "retro"-style games are doing gangbusters on Steam, selling to people that actually appreciate those styles of art, music, and game design.

There's this cognitive dissonance with a lot of game devs who damn well know mobile is a ghetto, but want the big bucks mobile can occasionally deliver. So they try to justify mobile development thinking they'll be the ones who make the "mature" game that will be "appreciated." Instead, freemium mouthbreathers leave 1 star reviews because "it looks funny on my phone."

Don't blame the game or the style. Blame your chosen audience.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#49

Post by Eric_WVGG »

The thing that bothers me about pixel-art is that too many young artists are obsessed with the past, and not exploring the possibilities of the new technologies, tools and modes of thinking that are available to them.

It's as if every musician under twenty was content to play in the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Don't get me wrong, I love pixel art — Paul Robertson and the Sword & Sworcery guys are doing some of my favorite work — but if the artists of yesterday were stuck in their own pasts… you know?

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#50

Post by dceddia »

vacri wrote: post #40
DanAndersen wrote: post #13

This article reminded me of a trend I noticed when reading the book "Masters of Doom," which discussed (among other things) the graphical improvements that made games like Wolfenstein and Doom so impressive. Very often, the book's prose would start sentences something along the lines of "though the graphics were crude, etc etc etc." These sorts of lines, constantly repeated, irked me, not because they weren't technic…

When Half Life came out, it was amazing. I went back to retry it half a year ago, and it looked awful. And what was a wonderful intro sequence was now unskippable minutes of a slow ride past crude polygons and very low detail environments. It was interesting seeing how my opinions had changed.

Funny, as I was reading the parent post my mind jumped to Half Life too. What an amazing game! Part of me wishes I could un-see all the stuff that came after it, so that I could go back and play it with my original excitement intact. Instead, it seems my mind is happy to find flaws at every turn and compare how it actually looks to how good I remember it to be.

It's even worse with older games. I tried to play the original X-Wing in DOSBox a while back, and wow, I couldn't believe it. Did it really look that bad back then? Maybe my 486 DX2 and 14" CRT made it look better somehow.

Post reply on HN