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The Decline of Pixel Art

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-palette-at-a-time dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Blake Reynolds, lead artist for a pair of popular mobile games, has put up a post about the decline of pixel art in games. He decries the current state of "HD fetishism" in the industry, saying that games with great pixel art get needlessly marked down in reviews for their pixelation, while games that have awful — but high-res — art get glowing praise. He walks through a number of examples showing how pixel art can be well done or poorly done, and how it can be extremely complex despite the lower resolution. But now pixel artists are running into not only the expectation of high-definition content, but technological obstacles as well. "Some devices blur Auro [their game]. Some devices stretch it. Some devices letterbox it. No matter how hard I worked to make the art in Auro as good as I could, there's no way a given person should be expected to see past all those roadblocks. Making Auro with higher-resolution art would have made it more resistant to constantly-changing sizes and aspect ratios of various devices." Reynolds says his studio is giving up on pixel art and embracing the new medium, and recommends other artists do the same. "Don't let the medium come between you and your audience. Speak in a language people can understand so that they can actually see what makes your work great without a tax."

2 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Money or Art? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There will always be people who will appreciate well made pixel art, just don't expect whole lot of money in it. Blake Reynolds griping about that and changing his niche is like someone complaining why nobody is buying his DOS application anymore in the year 2015.

  2. Old guy here - pixel art reminds me of bad games by geekd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm 45. I played Space Invaders in my local bowling alley when it came out - with my limited allowance. I was 10 (it took a while to get the midwest USA).

    I hate pixel art. It reminds me of bad games. Why limit yourself to an outdated method?

    Gameplay is king, but appearance is important.

    Pixel art holds zero nostalgia for me. Give me something that looks good, and plays great, and I will buy it. Pixelated graphics do NOT look good.