WIP (Work In Progress): "The Absurdity of Life"

"The Absurdity of Life"

Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12095
Printed Date: 10 September 2025 at 10:36pm

Topic: "The Absurdity of Life"

Posted By: Cotter
Subject: "The Absurdity of Life"
Date Posted: 05 May 2011 at 12:23am

hi all,

I'm working on a series exhibiting elements of absurdist philosophy. my first piece is called "A Celebration of Life," and http://www.cotterphinney.com/pixels - you can check it out here . this is my first go at pixel art, so any feedback is appreciated.

Replies:

Posted By: tanuki
Date Posted: 05 May 2011 at 1:51am

There's a few issues I'm noticing, which I'll just list off.

• It looks like you saved this as a jpg at some point and then resaved it as a png. Jpg and pixel art don't mix at all, because of the way that format compresses files and creates pixel artifacts. This is addressed here- http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139319#139319 - link . The file size is also very large because this. Making sure to keep pixel art only as gif or png and never as jpg will reduce file size by a lot. I think you can get this to be about 1/20th of the current size just by avoiding jpg.

• The dimensions of this image are huge for pixel art. It also looks like you've quadrupled that overall size by doubling the height and width. In pixel art we build images at a pixel level, so most images are going to be very small compared to other forms of digital art due to the large amounts of time it takes to make them. The larger your image is, the less attention you'll be paying to individual pixels, and the harder it is to call it "pixel art." That's not to say pixel art can't be large, just that it's a common mistake to start out too large.

I think if you were to resave it as a png from the original file and not double the width/height you can easily get the file size down to 1/50th or less of what it currently is.

• The colors are very intensely saturated and there's very little variation of tonal values. I'm not sure if that's intentional, because given the project it might actually be like that for a reason.

Posted By: Cotter
Date Posted: 05 May 2011 at 2:00pm

thanks for the reply

Originally posted by tanuki

• It looks like you saved this as a jpg at some point and then resaved it as a png. Jpg and pixel art don't mix at all, because of the way that format compresses files and creates pixel artifacts. This is addressed here- http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299&PID=139319#139319 - link . The file size is also very large because this. Making sure to keep pixel art only as gif or png and never as jpg will reduce file size by a lot. I think you can get this to be about 1/20th of the current size just by avoiding jpg.

I did accidentally save a piece of the art as a jpg, and that created a ton of artifacts which I spent a long time cleaning up. But I never converted the file from a jpg to a png; I just copy and pasted a small square from a jpg file into the larger png file. I also ran the final png through an app called ImageOptim, and that apparently reduced the size of the file by about 50%. I wonder if I can cut it down further ...

Originally posted by tanuki

• The dimensions of this image are huge for pixel art. It also looks like you've quadrupled that overall size by doubling the height and width. In pixel art we build images at a pixel level, so most images are going to be very small compared to other forms of digital art due to the large amounts of time it takes to make them. The larger your image is, the less attention you'll be paying to individual pixels, and the harder it is to call it "pixel art." That's not to say pixel art can't be large, just that it's a common mistake to start out too large.

They are huge, but that was purposeful. I wanted the final image to cover the observer's entire screen (and then some).

Originally posted by tanuki

• The colors are very intensely saturated and there's very little variation of tonal values. I'm not sure if that's intentional, because given the project it might actually be like that for a reason.

yes, that was intentional as well. I was going for more of an Atari 2600 look than a Sega Genesis look.