Original title: "The Pixel Art Revolution Will Be Televised"
Original source: Aidan Moher, Author, Hugo Award Winner
Original Compilation: Rhythm 0x21
After a year of baptism, the NFT market has become more mature after several ups and downs. It is not difficult for careful collectors to find that more and more professional artists and creative teams have begun to participate, and they have brought "Hollywood-level" NFT works. For example, Prime Ape Planet, NFT Bored Bunny created by artists from BMPC, and the much-anticipated HAPE, C-01, etc. It is in sharp contrast to the pixel art that was previously regarded as crypto-native.
Some people think that pixel art comes from the community. Representatives like CryptoPunks, Worldwide Webb, and CyberKongz represent not only the creation of pixel art but also the spirit of encrypted originality. Some people also think that 3D technology has reached the level of indistinguishability to the naked eye, and the pixel-style NFT is more due to the technical compromise in the early development of the metaverse. The 3D NFT is a manifestation of our embrace of technological development.
So is pixel art imprisoned by technological development, or is it an extension of people's "nostalgia"? In "The Pixel Art Revolution Will Be Televised," Aidan Moher delves into what makes pixel art what it is today, through interviews with Pixel Artists at Extremely OK Games.
Rhythm BlockBeats translated the original text as follows:
Developed by PLAYING CHUCKLEFISH, "The Windy Country" brought me a feeling of returning to my hometown, which for me has never been experienced before. After it was first revealed in 2018, I was immediately drawn to this Zelda-esque adventure element, colorful narrative, and complex and diverse character relationships. But most of all, I was blown away by his gorgeous sets and high-resolution environments constructed from pixel art.
After the game was officially released in 2019, my brother described "The Windland" like this: "The world it creates is like we grew up in it since childhood." "Kingdom of the Wind" also entered the game platform of Extremely OK Games. Previously Celeste and Eric Barone's massive farming simulator Stardew Valley (also from CHUCKLEFISH) have also joined the platform. They cleverly use the retro aesthetic of pixel games to cater to nostalgia. This makes Extremely OK Games a fast-growing collection of games focused on pixel art. While many of these titles appear to work equally well on Nintendo and Sega's gaming systems, Extremely OK Games is actually able to offer more sophisticated graphics optimization and gameplay.
But how does a weird pixel game like The Windlands make such an impression at a time when people are chasing realism and powerful 3D engines? The developers of these games believe that pixel art is not just a product of obsolescence, nor is it a technical compromise and limitation. Rather, it is a thriving art form that is inseparable from video games. After Sony and Nintendo tried to kill him 25 years ago, pixel art is seeing a renaissance, largely thanks to the popularity of indie games like Celeste and The Windlands. The popularity of pixel art is not only because of its nostalgic charm, but also because it has become a bridge to modern games.
Four Pixels of Creativity
"Pixel art has a lot in common with Impressionist paintings," says Pedros Medeiros, a pixel artist from Canada's Extremely OK Games. Pedros was also a visual artist for the game Celeste. Known for his pixelated and impressionistic style, the artwork he creates often has more appeal and more emotional impact than many AAA masterpieces with sky-high budgets and world-leading technology.
Like Monet's Impressionist paintings, Pixel Art asks players to fill in the blanks with their own experiences, forming a uniquely personal relationship with their creator. Pixel art is inherently limited by the canvas. Unlike other types of visual art created with brushes, watercolor pencils, or 3D polygons, pixel art creates one block of color (pixel) at a time. Usually pixel art canvases are low resolution. Celeste's main character, Madeline, doesn't even have an actual in-game face. "It's only four pixels," Medeiros said. "But what the player sees is a face, right? The face they see is different from what I see."
I grew up in the 90s when Nintendo's 3D adaptations of its Mario and Zelda series were eye-opening. And Sony is aggressively suppressing 2D pixel art games on its brand new PlayStation. Despite exceptions like Castlevania X: Symphony of the Night and Suicide Margin 2, the connection between pixel art and players has been stifled by businesses chasing new technologies.
Christina-Antoinette Neofotistou, a pixel artist with decades of experience, said: "The prosperity of indie games in the past decade has given rise to the rise of pixel art. Many small teams with small budgets can also develop the equivalent of the 90s "triple-A" masterpiece."
Neofotistou is an illustrator, animator and game developer. He is best known for his work on the animated film Pixel Wars. He has also participated in the game of the same name of "Space Jam: The New Legend" produced by Warner Bros. The game screen is composed of colorful pixels, and the game style is reminiscent of the classic GBA game "Street Fighting".
“Pixel art is essentially about solving geometric problems,” Neofotistou said. Pixels are like tiles in a mosaic, crossing and overlapping each other to outline an ideal shape, and integrate your own wishes into it. The artist deciphers a puzzle in the simplest possible way. And the end result is often amazing "how did they complete this work of art with so few pixels"
Much of Neofotistou's inspiration comes from Susan Kare, the icon designer for Apple's first computer, the Macintosh. Also a pioneering pixel artist. She has created many classic game works such as "The Secret of Monkey Island", "The Sand Machine" and "Prince of Persia" and so on. She herself was heavily influenced by Pre-Raphaelite and Golden Age illustrator Beatrix Potter. In her view, this constant flow of inspiration demonstrates that art can transcend time and mediums.
Both Medeiros and Neofotistou believe that pixel art is not a style, but rather an artistic medium, and it is up to the artist to incorporate their own style into it. By comparing the game screens of Celeste and The Windland, it is not difficult to see that both are pixel art, but their tone, texture and visual impact are uniquely defined by the creators. “As a medium, the use of pixel art ebbs and flows with trends in the same way that oil paints give way to watercolors,” says Neofotistou. Nostalgia is a market demand formed by the generation that grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and has disposable income. Pixel art is generally affordable and grows with these users, so artists and fans naturally expect it to return to the mainstream again.
“I think there are games that almost use nostalgia as a kind of pillar,” Medeiros said, explaining that he believes pixel art can break away from nostalgia and create new experiences. Artists like Medeiros and Neofotistou created new changes throughout their long careers. These changes are breaking gamers' expectations of modern pixel art.
"There's no denying that pixel art games evoke a sense of nostalgia," Medeiros admits "even with modern games." But anyone who entered the Celeste game out of nostalgia was in for a pleasant surprise. Although there are many players who are nostalgic for the game because they were in that era, there are still many players who were born after the "8Bit" style, and they were also inspired by the visuals, which formed a warm response. As such, Medeiros deliberately avoided relying on nostalgia when designing the game's visuals. "That's not the feeling our game wants to convey."
times have changed
The limitations of the unique display hardware on CRT televisions create pixel art. Low resolution, saturated fluorescent colors and low frequency signals make pixel art more creative. On the other hand, modern pixel art is redefined by artists based on ultra-clear high-resolution displays. For example, OLEDs have changed the way artists create and brought new opportunities and challenges.
Neofotistou recalls: "Looking back at the early days, when many pixel artists thought low resolution and pixel quality was a creative obstacle, they all preferred higher resolution, but artists who did not accept the constraints could not make Artists should be able to use limited resources and tools to create more works when their own level has been raised to another level."
Although the artist Kazuko Shibuya of "Final Fantasy" once admitted that he was limited by the technology of game equipment in the 1980s, and left regrets. But Neofotistou and Medeiros prefer to create their art through a combination of different tools rather than art defined by technology. This is what separates modern pixel art from its predecessors. Neofotistou said: "If based on Nintendo's conditions at the time, the same technology, the same time, and the same budget, I still have confidence that I can do better than Nintendo's artists at that time."
"Pixel art not only had creative implications, it opened new doors for making games," says Medeiros' colleague Maddy Thorson, who was also a writer and designer on Celeste.
"Games in pixel form, because the files are so small, we were able to store all of Celeste's game graphics in computer memory," she explained. The entire game of "Azure" is built around the concept of "trial" and "error", which is also the most heinous difficulty in the game. Players will "die" frequently due to difficulties. There is a "shameless" death counter in the game. The game graphics are stored in the system memory, so the player will restart the game immediately after "death", reducing frustration, and because " The number of "counter" increases, which will make the player feel "addicted".
perfect pixel
Pixel art was once dominant, then abandoned, only to be reinvigorated by artists like Neofotistou and Medeiros. Their work, inspired by the indie game studio boom, has grown into a mature medium that is here to stay for a long time. Just as the simple pixel art of the 80s was replaced by more sophisticated technology in the 90s, a similar evolution is taking place, with pixel art being rediscovered as a modern technology. The limitations of technology are already fragmented, and the future of media is full of infinite possibilities.
“Pixel art doesn’t need to be classified as retro. We use the tools that best suit the vision we’re trying to achieve,” says Neofotistou.
Medeiros sees a future in pixel art, one full of experimentation and novel techniques. Even if the current pixel art movement dies out at the tail end of the indie gaming boom, things that use pixels don't and won't. “We’ve only scratched the surface of the most intuitive level that pixel art as a creative medium has to offer,” Neofotistou said.
"From ancient Greek and Roman mosaics to stained glass, to cross-stitch, weaving, and bead art, to dot-matrix printers and cheap liquid crystal displays on the front of buses or rice cookers, placing scattered dots on a grid to represent images, this This practice is not going away anytime soon,” Neofotistou describes.
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