You are fooling yourself. The Japanese are no better than anyone else. What is happening is that you often like them so you are open to like them and you unconciously seek them and are prepared to admire and thus your brain has a positive collection of thoughts regarding Japanese sensibilities...

Edited by jalonso - 04 April 2013 at 10:07am

Alabamians are the best you're all nuts.

But it is interesting that Asian pixel art tends to have some stylistic similarities that give it away as non-Western. I haven't done enough analysis to know what those qualities are exactly, but I can tell a Chinese pixel when I see one!

Here are some examples pulled from PixelJoint:



Ghosteye (China)



llshadow (China)




ivancat (China)









Seta45 (Japan)



pel (Japan):



Syosa (Japan)




heriet (Japan)




This could just be cherry-picking (and admittedly is to a degree), or it could be the influence of anime/manga/contemporary Japanese art more generally.

This piece is by Chis, who is from New York according to her profile, but feels distinctly 'Japanese' to me:



It isn't just the anime-inspired face and anatomy, though that obviously contributes, but also the desaturated palette with flat darks that tend toward purple.

It could also just be individual artists influencing one another through the web. I would say the Pixeltendo crowd had a bit of a shared style, and there's Curelicious (Cure + Delicious) here at PixelJoint, among others. I would test my theory further, but can't remember the names of any Chinese/Japanese pixel sites.


Edited by cure - 08 April 2013 at 10:56pm

Well, two things seem to give a "Japanese" look to those creations.

1 - Lots of well used dithering

2 - Pastel colors

 

I think thats pretty much it.

On all but one of the Japanese pixel arts a light yellow is used as an outline which I thought was interesting