Indeeed! It certainly is cheating as far as I'm concerned. It is an interesting topic of conversation though. Where do you draw the line with pixel art? (Excuse the pun).

I consider certain things within the realm of pixel art. I often fiddle with the contrast or brightness of ALL colours upon completion of a hand pixelled work, or in order to select colours during or before you've started. However, any reduction of colours, or special effects that actually alter the placement or arrangement of hand pixels. I consider transparancy or layering devices to fit under this second category.

I can't really see how someone could consider my techniques to breaking the laws of hand pixelling as it deals with the image as a whole and is only used upon completion of the actual pixel piece. Its no more cheating than the fill tool!

However opacities seem to be a technique which skips the hard ships of blending colours. I can understand how layering techniques could be used to select colours, but not to actually create form or subject matter such as water or glass. THAT would be skipping. It is often very obvious aswell, not very effective unless they go to great lengths to hide it, whereby you're probably better off just knuckling down and doing it by hand!

I wonder is there is any official stand on this matter...

I do all manually in MS Paint. Used to and i truly think that this is the right thing. Its true pixelart. people didn't have all those layers and opacities in the olden days before and just look at those classics.

With photoshop, there came in those idiots who cannot even draw a proper house. people are used with automation, and automation is not your creation,  especially when the program automation is not your creation.

Well, from that point, you can now argue that its not even your creation if you use usual Paint like program, since that automates too. And then on, it turns really philosophical. Just to create simple pixelart, as your creation, you have to create a computer and programs in it...

Ok, now, forget what I just said. That was some bad philosphy. Pixelart was born with simple automations and in programs (or not?), but it didn't have any opacy layers and stuff.

Ok, now to the point. What I want to say is that actually doesn't matter if you use some automated opacy or not, but you should know the basis of drawing and basis of opacy first. You just don't learn if automation does everything for you. I don't even use layers as i am trying to be more precise on my work and try not to make mistakes. I don't say i am pro, I am very much beginner and that is my vision of proper learning.

I am just sick and tired of those punks who come and claim they are beginner dadada and they don't even know how to draw a house from children class level.

Usually those are guys who come and ask for tutorials because they are too laizy to find some out for themselves and usually they don't even look at the program if somebody is not telling them to do so...

I am laizy too, but usually I try to figure things out by myself, it takes time but at least I know why and what I am doing. in fact, i am too laizy to read all those tutorials (especially all kinds of tutorials about program use) and i prefer to find things out piece by piece, manually.

I have used automation and I have got screwed by it. I hate that opinion that photoshop is best for pixelart, I mean, just look at it, too many functions and windows and automations and layers and stuff, it messes up. Keep things simple and you win!

Meh...not another one of these "pixel purist" threads!

As far as I'm concerned, I think as long as there is some level of individual pixel manipulation, it doesn't matter whatever other tricks you throw in.  If it makes your work look better, and is more efficent, then bravo for you.  If you're producing commercial work, only the end product matters, and not the means of production.

The only reason that things like these were not used in traditional games is that most of the technology didn't exist.  If Leonardo da Vinci were around today, I guarantee you he'd be a ground-breaking 3DS Max artist, or utilizing some other technology to it's fullest potential...

For me pixel art is about exploring iconic representation, dithering, hatching, shading, limited color palettes and making every pixel count. Any tool to help with color selection seems completely valid in pixel art to me. It just saves time with having to use the damn fill bucket over and over again.

I personally use opacity in some of my pixel pieces to add "dirtyness" and shadows, etc. That's not to say I don't enjoy a good purist piece every now and then. As an artist, I don't like to have limitations. As a future job opportunity though, it is excellent practice to limit your colour selections as many paid jobs require it (ie: cell phones, video games, etc).

To repeat myself: it is good to be able to restrict your palletes. You gain more knowledge and skill this way as people like Ryan-gfx, zi-, and others have. Full respect to them for doing what they do and how they do it.

Anything can be made pixel by pixel.  Its all about knowing your colors and contrast and AA.  If youre making this image for a game or something, where time is of the essence, then hey, use all the tools in your arsenal.  But if its art, and considered 'pixel art', then using something other than pixels is kinda cheating. ;)

Meh, I guess I like the "style" more than the rigid definition of technique.  Call me a traitor.

i think layers arent and opacity is cheating

more from a stylewise view, because when you use opacity, you are letting the machine decide which colour should be put in a certain place, thus taking away some of the colouring style the artist has

and layers are to me just tools to make long animations faster

eg, when i in paint need to make a cloud move left in 5 frames and have another animation in 10 frames, in paint i got to make eacht frame manually, though in things like Gale i only have to make a certain amount, since layering will fix the rest
but it doesnt take away from what i intend to do with the pixels

its kinda like the paint bucket, sure i could do every pixel manually, but if i want the whole screen to be the exact same colour, whats the point?
there is a difference though with things like the spray can: a tool that lazy b#stards use as a substitute for dithering

edit:
allso stylewise, its great that those demosceners can make such realistical images, but to me they look more like filtered CG's of photos.
NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BAD about sceners, but to me pixel art is about big pixels (like 3x or at least 2x on a normal monitor) and making it look like youre playin things like the SNES again
even though its nice to sometimes let go of those limits and just use over 100 colours on a piece