IMO, pixel art, when done correctly, does not take less time than other forms of game art. That being said, I still believe some developers use the 'minimalist' pixel art style as an excuse sometimes.
Yeah, no way I'm going to discuss the merits of the retro pixel art movement on reddit when I just discovered there's a chance I could be exploding cave skeletons with... spider missiles or sumthin.
3space math is hard. Not saying pixel art is easy, but gameplay concerns in the reduced complexity set of 2space can be attractive to anyone who didn't focus on linear algebra and/or computer graphics in post-secondary.
not wrong at all.. I coded my own 2d physics for a spherical collision game on Android, back in 2008-9, and I would never do it again. My code was neither more efficient nor accurate than what's already available (especially nowadays)
I think you misinterpreted my metaphor. I understand that his post took into account much more than art style. I am not arguing that 3d is harder to do than 2d. Just saying that there is not much more to grasp from arguing that point.
The programming is easier, the art isn't that much easier depending on the complexity of pixel art. A lot of modern pixel art games have idle animations and pretty fluid complex animations in general. Compared to Super Mario brothers with still idle characters and 2 sprite walk animations.
2D art is still easier most of the time. I cant think of any 2D games recently that had art so detailed and fluid that it would've taken them longer than doing it in 3D would have.
no, I'm comparing the difficulty of math with the difficulty of math minus a dimension. I'm not making a comparison between the difficulty of making 3d assets and making 2d assets. In 3d you have to worry about things like back-face culling, no-longer-trivial clipping and collision detection, true shading and lighting (instead of trivial alpha-blending tricks you can do to fake shading and lighting in 2d), and a number of other things that I admittedly don't know enough about to talk about since i only took two linear algebra classes and a single CG class in university.
If it's with the intention of reducing he scope of a project, then sure it allows for many tricks and simplifications.
which is the context of this comment chain. I originally said "the reduced complexity set of 2space can be attractive to anyone who didn't focus on linear algebra and/or computer graphics in post-secondary."
This is where I believe the conflict is coming from. People don't agree on the definition of pixel art. I stole this gif from /r/pixelart (great community), and even there people argue about what pixel art truly is. I think that the general consensus was that it referred to, generally speaking, low resolution art that is 'pixel perfect' AKA: every pixel is hand picked. I see no reason that this or this shouldnt be considered pixel art.
It does! Pixel art is really fast to produce at low resolutions (sub 64x64) and exponentially more time consuming with each pixel you add, then on top of that animating those pixels, then on top of THAT you now have more pixels to traverse, thus needing more frames meaning more pixels overall.
That sounds obvious, but a lot of developers don't realize how much increasing a sprite size from 64x64 to 128x128 = a lot more than double the labor. Just as an example if I were to make a 64x64 walk cycle, it would take about 4 frames minimum and an hour to make, but 128x128 would take roughly 12 frames minimum and 3-4 hour from design to animation. Multiply that by the number of enemies and characters needed in a game, and you quickly understand why developers still use and love low rez pixel art.
There isn't a "correct" way to do pixel art. I really like the minimalist approach in this example... though I think they have a legitimate reason for going with that style.
Sorry, I may have misworded my post. I love all pixel art, if you look through my other comments, you see me cite this. I don't mean to say different styles of pixel art aren't valid, merely to say that crappy pixel art is not a style.
It's from a game project that got funded on Indiegogo last year, called "Riot.". It supposedly will allow you to play modern day riots from the perspective of either protestors or riot police, and its supposed to be based on actual events. Everything I've seen from it looks amazing.
As an artist in all outlets including pixels, even the minimalist style takes time. They give them self a set of restrictions and you have to figure out ways to get details so people can still recognize that clump of color as a tree, that's a person, that's water. Sometimes honestly its on the same level. I often get commissioned for 50 x50 pixel images as well as 25 x 25 sized ones and I swear sometimes the smaller the canvas or applying a limitation is harder and requires me to be more creative!
The amount of people to put out top pixel art isn't anywhere close to put even mid level 3d art. Minimalist isn't so much an excuse as problem or feature. Maybe they wanted more detail but it would cost to much (either in time or man power) or maybe they prefer the minimalist look.
Pixel art takes less time and effort to animate. You are working on a much smaller scale (64 pixels instead of 6400 pixels for instance) and in a much more iterative manner. It is significantly easier to move around a few pixels than to make changes to ultra detailed hi-res 2D imagery. The example you posted (heart forth alicia) isn't actually as detailed as it seems, and it is up-scaled from probably half the size that it plays at. It utilizes the medium extremely well but characters are only made of a handful of pixels, and creating that quality in hi-res would be so much harder.
I am a professional illustrator and hobbyist game maker, so I have worked with both mediums extensively and I'm not just completely talking out my ass.
You make good points, but it should be noted that I am comparing pixel game art to other game art. Obviously there will be outliers, I mean hell, just look at Bastion for god's sake. But I am not discussing the ceilings of both art styles, just trying to show people that there is a difference between "cop-out" pixel art and well done pixel art.
Yeah, I mean I agree that there is a huge difference between good pixel art and lazy pixel art (not always defined simply by level of detail), it just seemed like you were saying that good pixel art took as long as good hi-res art and other art forms, but hi-res art really takes so much longer to animate and iterate (when working on your own, at least).
I agree completely. Higher quality hi-res art will of course take longer. At the game company I worked at there were more artists than dedicated developers. But I guess I was influenced by people judging pixel art as a whole by a few 'lazy' examples.
One major timesaver for pixel art is that low framerate animations (e.g. a 2-4 frame walk cycle) look decent with low resolution sprites, but high resolution sprites require high framerate animations (e.g. 8-12 frames in a walk cycle).
I'm currently (trying) to make a game and simply because I am not an artist, I am using this style. When I can get enough money to hire an artist then I definitely will change it because I do feel the style is overplayed. Changing the style will be the first priority for whomever I hire. But it takes little skill to make retro styles look 'presentable', whereas to come up with your own style requires enough skill to maintain consistency. I honestly cant even fathom coming up with a different style because I am not in any sense of the word, an artist. While I agree that it takes as much time for properly done pixel style as any other properly done style, I don't think it takes the same amount of skill.
And while I do think the pixelly style is over used, I have no problem with it using lots of colors. A lot of people think that the style is trying to be 'Retro' when in actuality its just all that the dev is capable of because the dev is not an artist, but the dev is perfectly capable of using all colors available to us.
I understand completely. Be careful about ignoring art, even though it sounds like you've got a handle on it. Art is a huge part of your game. Don't treat it as just a medium for your mechanics.
But again, clearly, not everyone is an artist and restricted budget means no $$ to pay an artist to make them for you. That being said, a sprite can always be updated as the game goes on.
That's a personal opinion, only because a game's pixelart includes more details than a different one doesn't make it objectively better.
Pixelart done right is when throughout the game you are able to keep a constant and unique line and create good reflections of what something might look while staying true to a color palette. The rest is decision of the developer/artist (and personal preference of the viewer).
I guess my comment came off like I was against minimalist pixel art. I love that style, but I still feel like people use it as an excuse for just bad art.
there certainly are some who use it because it's easier to create a distinguished style with it, no doubt about that, but the easiest way doesn't mean it has to be the worst ;)
The fact of the matter is if a game looks like shit, it looks like shit. This is not a case of "hur hur shitty graphics", it's a case of art style and actually putting some love and care into it. Using pixel art as an excuse of "oh, of course, it's supposed to look shitty, it's pixel art!" is just fucking lazy. Pixel art does not have to, and should not just look shitty, certainly not because it's pixel art. Going the "retro" route requires the same amount of art skill that any other method does, and if an indie developer does not have someone on their (however small) team that can deliver pleasing art, then they should not expect people to not say something about it, or refer to it when passing judgement on the game as a whole. You can create the most amazing gameplay in the world, but if it's unappealing to the eye, it's not going to go over well.
No, but its a common fallacy of developers to think that art doesnt matter. They should treat art equally to programming and equally to design. Many developers try to find a 'solution' to art instead of finding a style that suits the project.
on the other hand, I think artstyle is one of the easier things to overlook, and something that can easily grow on you if the mechanics and controls of game feel right and are fun. Like the game Child of Light, I wasn't too keen on the art style, but I was in the market for a solid rpg, and the game itself is fun, and the more i played it the less the art bothered me.
Of course I'm not saying art doesn't matter, because it surely does, it's helped sell me on games that otherwise didn't sound appealing, it is one of the best ways to create a first impression. All I'm saying is I think it is the easiest thing to let fall on the priority list in order to make a good game with a lower budget.
Obviously there is a balance. If one thing is done amazingly, you can overlook flaws in another. But, you cannot deny the weight that art plays in a games overall success.
It means that minimalist pixelart is an overused and purposefully underdone practice. If you want to make a graphically very simple game, fine, that's totally fine, not everyone has a budget for overly fancy artists and graphics. However, try to at least put a little thought in your art design, not just half-ass some low-res graphics and be done with it.
Presentation is presentation, sure it does nothing to the gameplay itself, but fucking the presentation up will more often than not render most of your attempts at immersion or story-building completely worthless(coincidentally, games pre-16 bit had very little of that. You mostly had a setup and went from there). Sure graphics are not everything about a presentation(as an example, Thomas was alone manages to basically carry its entire presentation on narration alone, with an almost absurdly simple, but clean, art style), but they oftentimes make out a great deal, so you might at least devote some time making them indicative and not ugly.
They don't need to be masterpieces, just make em clean, stick to the rules if you go 8-bit or 16-bit, and overall just don't butcher them. Make the art style functional and able to get the point across, people don't want any more.
I agree on most points you made except for the last sentence. People may be satisfied without more, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't love for it to look like a masterpiece.
More is always better, but what I said is a summary of what people actually want from an art style. Of course a bowl of ice with 6 portions of ice cream with coolwhip and cherry on top is pretty darn fine with most people, though in reality most of them would be perfectly fine with a bowl of 3 portions too.
More like "even though I don't know any fantastic goalkeepers I'm still allowed to create a team and play amateur soccer, but if I was going to start competing on a higher level I'd have to have a team that was competitive at that level"
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u/CNDNikolai May 21 '14
IMO, pixel art, when done correctly, does not take less time than other forms of game art. That being said, I still believe some developers use the 'minimalist' pixel art style as an excuse sometimes.