Hey,

I’m planning on writing a series of blog articles about pixel art, focusing specifically on games and I‘m just canvassing around for peoples opinions.

I’m not sure how long the series will run for or how I’m going to structure it yet but as a starting point I was considering breaking down pixel art into smaller categories and covering those. I’m also considering interviews with artists, some WIP series’ of pieces that I’m going to attempt myself in various different styles and theory articles.

It’s a very big project and I doubt all of these ideas will make it in.

The (sometimes very loose) categories I’ve decided on are:

8 bit pixel art (worldwide) - this will probably be the most general article - This will include home computers (Spectrum, C64, CPC, Apple II etc.) as well as consoles and maybe arcade games too.

Western (weighted towards European) 16 bit pixel art - centred around the ST/Amiga/DOS and hopefully including demo-scene related stuff.

Japanese 16 bit pixel art - centred around the SNES/Genesis and arcades

SNKs late Neo Geo output - I’m thinking Metal Slug up to the SNK/Playmore merger (I think they do deserve a whole article to themselves considering games like Metal Slug, Garou, Last Blade etc. contain some of the most respected pixel art ever created).

Modern Japanese portable consoles - centred mainly around GBA/DS - inspired by almost too many games to list, Advance Wars, FF-Tactics Advance, Boktai, Fire Emblem etc. are some of my personal favourites. I also need to separate it from the next category which is another huge one:

Modern pixel art in general (worldwide) - Cave Story seems like an obvious game to look at as well as Joachim Sandberg’s games (Noitu Love 1+2 etc), Paul Robertson (Baby Pirate whatever-it-was-called, Scott Pilgrim etc.)

So anyway, I’m posting this here, over on Pixellation and the rllmuk retro forum as well to try and gauge peoples opinions on those categories, whether there’s major areas you think are left out (or even whether they’re valid categories in the first place…).

Once I've got the categories sorted I'll probably pick 3 games for each to focus on in greater detail.

Thanks for reading!

- Matt