because i liked to play with LEGO's as a child ;D

Well, because it's the medium I suck least at.

On a serious note it has quite alot of neat and interesting properties like for e.g the presicion aspect, which seems like a masiive nuisance, but over time one starts to grasp how corroborative this can be in the process/result of creating a piece.

The sheer fascination of putting together squares of single color to create all kind of different shapes or to experiment in how they will interact and most of all the influence(which in my opinion/experience is the strongest in pixel art) that the characteristics that define this medium(the grid , persicion, ...)have on the artist, which if accepted can lead to surprising results.

Summed up to me pixel art is a whole new experience every single time I exercise it.

Guess that was a bit too much, the first sentence would've been sufficent to answer this question I guess.

I havent been and its depressing me :(

I do it for three main reasons:
1. It reminds me of the good old days, when one man could make everything for a game and become famous (see: prince of persia)
2. I'm kind of a control freak, and I'm convinced that I have some form of OCD. If I can't control the little details in things, it drives me nuts. This is the same reasoning behind why I also like chiptunes and Jeskola Buzz, and why I've changed just about every aspect of my computer to bow to my will (for example, I use dwm for window managing and claws mail for mail, because Thunderbird uses XUL which doesn't play nice with dwm).
3. It's easily accessible. Yes, I can sketch in a notebook (and I do, at times), but it's hard to take that sketch and get it critiqued on the internet and easily edit it.

I was about to start a thread like this, so I'm happy someone beat me to the punch. First of all, I think it's hilarious that someone made a comment about Lego, for two reasons.

First, it's definitely related to melancholy and nostalgia. In my mind, some of the best looking games in history are still pixelart games. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 looks better than all its sequels.

Second, I think there's something about PixelArt that you also find in Lego, which is why a lot of adults still buy and build Lego. There's a huge adult Lego community.

What these two media have in common, besides the obvious nostalgia, is their simplicity. Simplicity has one advantage and one disadvantage. Its disadvantage is that it doesn't really capture the complexity of the real world. The advantage is that it allows a certain kind of perfection. It's not perfection in the deep sense of the word. A circle drawn in pixelart will never be a true circle (in Plato's terms) but it's easy to avoid the flaws of a hand drawn circle. You can draw a 'perfect' apple, and it won't really capture the beauty of a real apple, but it can be free from imperfections. (And, if imperfection is the point, then it will still be by design) In Lego, you can buy a standard Lego tree. It won't capture the beauty of a true tree, but in a sense it will still be perfect. In your mind, it's a perfect tree.

At least that's how it is for me. If people love PixelArt for other reasons, they're wrong.


Edited by CELS - 17 July 2011 at 12:22am

it's challenging, fun, and hobby.

I think retro/nostalgia is the biggest draw for the general public, but a relatively poor reason for the actual pixel artist to appreciate the medium. I think it’s more important to appreciate the medium for its own merits rather than its connection to an idealized era that makes you feel fuzzy inside.

So my reasons are as follows:

-Cost for materials is zero (a computer being a given), as opposed to traditional media.

-You can make a virtually infinite number of perfect fidelity copies and distribute them in the native media (computer screen). ‘Copy’ isn’t even the right word really. If you look at someone’s painting or print or sculpture online, then you’re viewing a copy of the original, and it isn’t the same experience as seeing the real deal. When you see pixel art, you see it in all its glory, just as the artist saw it when he completed it. Other digital art forms can have this same benefit (easy and limitless distribution in native media), but most of the time you’re getting a resized version of the original, or a file type that isn’t completely lossless, whereas you can’t resize pixel art and get away with it, and you can’t save it as .jpeg without anyone noticing, so you see it exactly as it really is, down to the individual pixels.

-It’s simple to edit and revise work. No eraser marks, no scraping the canvas. If you want to change something, move something around, alter the palette, you can do so quickly and painlessly. This means other people can do the same, so ‘edits’ become an integral aspect of the critique process.

-It’s tethered to the computer. Which means it’s tied to the internet. Your canvas is your gallery is your community, it’s all there on the screen. I think the pixel art community has it made, it’s so easy to share and edit and collect pixel art.

-Restrictions. I think this is why I appreciate printmaking as well. What can you do with only a handful of colors? What tricks can you employ to stretch those restrictions? Restrictions breed creativity.

-Perfecting cluster relationships. After everything is sketched out and shaded and ready to go, it’s down to the nitty-gritty, the best part: the shifting around, push-and-pull task of making those clusters lock into one another. Very Zen, everything in its right place.

I’ll end with a quote from Panda:
I've realized that what I really like about pixel art is not the look, but its process.
The way you build up an image, having full control of everything. Sort of like a puzzle or building something with LEGO.
You have an amount of pixels you can use, and by arranging them in different ways, it just works.
Once you figure out how to start, everything else just clicks together.



Edited by cure - 05 August 2011 at 11:35pm

I used to be (and still am to a lesser degree) quite shy.
It started as an art that I could do by myself, and never have to show anyone anything I didn't want them to see.
No one could accidentally come across it in my room.
I could learn and improve by watching other people without them noticing, and only have to pipe up and ask something if I was comfortable doing so.

That's why I started at least.
I continue because of some of the reasons cure mentioned.
Cost, ease of editing/improving, how tied to the computer it is. (e)Oh, and how easy to transport. Something I could easily bring back and forth between my parents' houses.
I have a lot of free time but no money and few people for the majority of the day. Pixel art gives me a way to quickly and easily reach people about something unrelated to whatever crap is going on this side of the monitor.

If the community wasn't here, I don't think I would be doing pixel art.


(That about sums it up. I think I re-wrote this post eight times trying to cut it down to just why I still do it, and less how I came to do it. Which is hard, because pixels are something that have become a big player in my life, sad as that may seem.)

Edited by ekobor - 14 August 2011 at 10:59am

You think that's bad?
I'm colorblind. Now THAT is bad, or at least when you want people to see the same colors as you do. :P

That's why I like pre defined palettes so much. Can't screw up the colors with them!

Though I've worked with pixels for a very short time, the process is so unique that I find myself loving all the qualities that make it different from other mediums.

Since you're working with literal blocks of color, the outcome is really clean. This is especially attractive to me. Blending can't occur like it does in painting or CG, and that becomes a part of the challenge to trick the eye into seeing a smooth and unified image. I really appreciate the use of illusion in each pixel cluster, which is why the limited pallete is so fun. It makes it not only harder to place pixels, but also to choose colors that work together and allude the viewer to see more color diversity than there actually is.

What I love the most about it is the amount of control I have. I'm a control-freak/perfectionist when it comes to art, and it's so satisfying to finish a pixel image knowing that every one of my pixels has been strategically hand-placed.
In traditional forms of art you must account for a variable of randomness in the picture because of environmental interference (i.e. hand movement), so it can never be absolutely perfect.In pixel art because you're basically stacking blocks that will fit together 100% of the time. The pixel canvas is optimal because you can rearrange these blocks as needed; eliminating the random variable. and while pixel art is visually simple, the process is so much more detailed than any other because you're working with the smallest systematic objects possible. I don't think there is any other sort of medium that allows for such true precision.

Pixel art is minimalistic and meticulously detailed at the same time. That's why I love it. :)
(Sorry for the pseudo-jargon)

Edited by Sooba - 26 August 2011 at 5:52pm

I think it's a reminder of the old games I used to play.
When making anything with pixels, I feel in total control of what I'm doing. When you see a finished piece, you know every single pixel has been considered. It's a very precise and time consuming process, which I think people really appreciate and it's nice to be appreciated.

Never thought I'd be on a pixel art forum; matter of fact, I didn't even know there was such a thing !

My story is probably going to sound rather different than most on here; more on that later........Why do I do it ?    Actually, it started out accidentally; I used to burn a lot of CD's, and I got to making jewel case inserts and labels for them, and it kinda "grew" from there.   But I'm telling you "how" I started, not "why" I still do it.  I've asked myself that question a few times; I guess it started out just because of curiosity; ( I'm still curious ! )  As I got a little better, the "result" got a little better, and it became more fun; after a while, the "results" started becoming "fun to look at"; ( to me at least )

Here's the part that's gonna "kill you"..........until about a week ago, I never knew if anyone else was "doing pixel art" !  

Once in a while I would try to explain it to some one, and most of the time, they don't get very "excited";  I always thought I'd like to have a way to drag a few "pieces" around with me, so I bought a digital photo frame; thing has a pretty decent display, but I had a bitch trying to navigate the thing; haven't used it for a year or so.

So for me, the main reason I "do pixels" is about like why I like to play "free cell" almost every day........because to me, it's fun!  And I like to look at what I've done over a few years,  and see if I can see any "improvement".

In the beginning I said my story is a little different; that's just an "assumption" on my part.  I "assume" most on PJ are in an age bracket, ( just guessing here ), maybe 16 to 30.  If that's in the ball park, then my assumption is correct; if not, who cares ?  Not me !

Right now, I have one big problem;  I know what I've done, but I don't know what anyone else has done.  Until I find out, I won't really know where I'm at.
I'll tell you this much about me............when it comes to "drawing", that is, actually taking a pen or a pencil (or a brush) and actually "creating" a useful image, I'm not even here! I'm nowhere, man!  I have ZERO "artistic" talent or ability;  but what I lack in that regard, I may tend to make up for in other ways;  for some reason unknown to me, I tend to be very patient, I can sit for hours, even all night some times and do very intricate "stuff".  ( I actually discovered that quite a while back when I decided to learn how to facet gem stones.)  Talk about intricate work !

Well, I've been on "PJ" all of an hour now......so I guess I'd better have a "look around"; I'm very anxious to see what you guys are doing.

BTW.........I'm Charley;  

I do it when I'm bored, and I'm an older Powder Gamer, which is a physics simulation game, but when the good players make an upload on it, they make epic pixel art along with the thing. And that's what I did, but most of the pixel art in them is just average. I'm working on one that's really really good. Basically a course for the player where you go through a rusty construction site taken over by aliens.

So I guess Powder Game attracted me to pixel art, then I moved on to things that have more than like 20 colors and a space limit.