Hi, guys, for my first forum post I'm bringing you a discarded design that I did at my workplace, just for a bit of controversy talk.



You see, as a designer (not artist), I find myself using a lot of shorcuts most of the time and I wanted to discuss whether or not a distortion mesh/wave pattern can be used and still be in "pixel-art territory".

Which was just what I did there

I'm a firm believer that it's still pixel and it works so well with graphics from the 16-bit era, simulating those special fx chips from the SNES used, for instance, to rotate, escalate, modify sprites in Yoshi's Island. (although I don't consider the majority of the game visuals to be pixel art, despite being made for absolute care for each pixel)

On the other hand, I feel that those tricks tend to get percieved as cheap and quite unnatural compared to the hand drawn ones, but maybe it doesn't matter that much if it gets to the point.

What do you think, guys?

P.D: I want to point out that not that long ago I used 255col. gradients to "pixel-art" so... maybe I'm just too much of a noob here.

I agree that it's pixel art, it's just not good pixel art, since the process creates banding, jaggies, and noise, and generally doesn't look very good.

If the rotation is quick and the viewer/player doesn't get to look at it for too long and notice the flaws, I see no problem with it since yes, it does get the message across. However, getting the message across is just the bare minimum requirement of the art - ideally, it should also look great. It's always a trade-off between looking great and not taking too long to make, and these methods are just a tool for when time is significant issue.

Maybe it could be better used to make some fast iterations and use those as a foundation to get work done faster.



Yeah, I often have to do those things faster than I would like to, but I don't think I'm that well aware of those mistakes on my own, for now.



Woah, that makes absolute sense! thx
We're so accostumed to play within emulation platforms that we tend to forget how stuff really looked on screen (I actually like those rainbow distortion that the transparent tubes make in Sonic2)

It makes now more sense to me introducing more colors &/or making a well-thought use of them but will the client see that as a involution? as people tend to like dithering in retro-but-sharp aesthetics...

Also, seeing how dithering can make more noise than needed, would be interesting to see if the pumpkin would look less cheap if those distortion effects were actually applied to a dither-less drawing. (or applying dithering manually afterwards to simulate some texture instead of using it to blend colors)