A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art • Hacker News Board

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#191

Post by mrob » Wed, May 13, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

brymaster wrote: post #188

mrob wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article even shows a screenshot from Link's Awakening, which was intended to be displayed on an LCD with sharp pixels.

Except that Game Boy games didn't look like that screenshot either. The point being that programmers and artists took advantage of the screens (be it a handheld LCD or CRT television) to compliment their artwork and achieve effects they couldn't pull off by their pixels alone. One can see a Cg shader here that attempts to recreate the look of an actual Game Boy screen, complete with several characteristics including…

Motion blur isn't relevant to static images, and Link's Awakening uses flip scrolling so most of the screen is static most of the time.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#192

Post by enneff » Wed, May 13, 2015, 11:12 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #144

enneff wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Loudness wars" has everything to do with mastering and very little to do with the actual medium. Yes, the onset of the loudness wars coincided with the rise of digital distribution, but you can master a record to be just as loud as a CD. On the other hand, you can't master a record to have as much dynamic range as a CD. That's why classical music enthusiasts tend to prefer CDs.

No you can't. A record cut that hot would make the needle skip out of the groove.

Have you listened to any recently released records? They're loud as hell.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#193

Post by Terr_ » Wed, May 13, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

Drakim wrote: post #142

Terr_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Deus Ex offers a contrasting example. It's almost as old as Half Life (2000 vs 1998), but I think it ages better because the appeal is different. Story/dialog/writing/role-play don't go out of style as quickly as graphics/gun-play.

I replayed Deus Ex recently, and was surprised at how bad it looked, especially the character models. It was so bad that it was ruining my immersion. However, my brain eventually forgot about this and I could continue play, and eventually I stopped seeing crude low-poly models and instead saw just "people".

I think the most bang-for-your-buck comes from upgrading the rendering system, so that the shadows/shading works better. Having ten shades of olive-black in dark environments was always annoying.

Re: A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

#194

Post by egypturnash » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

fgsfdsfgsfds wrote: post #125

egypturnash wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ex-animator from the US here. Most Western animation has historically been done at 12fps ("on twos"); you go to 24fps for very fast motion or stuff you want to be super-smooth. This holds even in big-budget 2D theatrical features[1]. You will also find no small amount of super-stylized motion - dig up "The Dover Boys" (dir. Chuck Jones), commonly cited as the first cartoon to experiment with the smears, multiple imag…

Thank you for sharing your experience. Pencil mileage is a great way to sum up the difference between the two traditions. Sorry for sounding so down on Western animation; it's true that I'm more used to the look of Eastern animation, having invested much more time invested in it (hence my mistake about Western films animating on ones vs. twos; it's been a while since I watched one of the classic Western animated film…

* WARNING * "Raggedy Ann & Andy", IMHO, is NOT A GOOD MOVIE. It is a fascinating trainwreck of obsession. It is a weird damn thing you see when you are five, then halfway remember when you are twenty and wonder if you dreamed it.

The idea of "pencil mileage" works both ways; really thinking about that helped me be able to finally actually enjoy some Japanese stuff.

There is also a strong tradition of Western limited animation; it actually started as the artistic cutting edge with the work of UPA (Gerald McBoing Boing, Rooty Toot Toot). Even Disney played win that domain with stuff like Pigs Is Pigs or Toot Whistle Plunk & Boom.

But then in the 60s, TV came along, and Joe Hanna and William Barbera's sweet gig doing beautifully animated Tom & Jerry shorts was gone; they started doing super-simplified cartoons that were carried largely by the voice talent. This got worse in the 70s and 80s, with tons of terrible toy-based cartoons done on the smallest budget possible (He-Man! GI Joe!). "Limited animation" is a dirty word to an entire generation of American animators.

Or at least it was until John K's "Ren & Stimpy" hit the cable networks, and inspired a new generation of animators. Who're busy making a lot of the TV stuff of today.

(But honestly I think that deep in the heart of every Western animator, there is a grey-toned Fleischer character bopping up and down in time to their heartbeat. Their hallucinatory version of Snow White - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNG8GYrh1mg - is a good example.)

Crash and Spyro are great examples of what can be done when a 2D animator's mindset is applied to 3D games! It carries on nicely from all the gorgeous 2D work on games like Aladdin or Earthworm Jim. I would love to see people come back to that mindset in video games. Guilty Gear Xrd is the first ray of light in the clunkily-puppeted darkness in a long time.