I've become some what obsessed with so-called 'pixel art' over the last few weeks. I think that the requirement of complete graphic simplification is what does it for me, plus the fact that I just love teeny-weeny little things (don't even think it) that, when blown up to, well, a relatively less teeny size look all blocky and retro. It reminds me of Leisure Suit Larry and the drawings I used to do of the X-MEN using Basic on my ZX-81 back in the early 80's.
I like this site in particular, zoggles.co.uk. I find the animations very satisfying and somehow even calming. I like what the unnamed artist says about how he went about teaching himself the craft: "When I started, the internet didn't exist and all my reference material was from game magazine screenshots, from pausing various games and staring closely at the screen and from looking at other similar artforms. Ancient mosaics and tapestries employ a lot of the same techniques as pixel art and often with strikingly different style."
I have no such admirable commitment to the art form, but here's a couple of 'pixel-doodles' I did this past Sunday afternoon. The first one doesn't really work at its real size, but I don't mind it when it's blown up. I would think that to be considered even passable something like this should work equally well on the small scale and large scale, so I think it can be sately called a failure:
The next one is more me drawing in my own style, rather than trying to conform to some preconceived notion of computer iconography. It works okay, I think, and actually looks better small; the blown up version looks all jagged and kind of crappy. I drew it while listening to this BBC documentary about acoustics. Part of it dealt with a theory that the sites where primitive rock and paintings were made were chosen for the echo effects provided by the locations:
Actually, since writing this, I have discovered via wikipedia that "a common mistake is to think that any drawing or doodle done using the pencil tool is pixel art. This is not true, since pixel art is categorized by the method of drawing (pixel by pixel), not the results (therefore, special renders and automated filters do not apply either). Such drawings are actually called oekakis. Okay-so these cannot be called genuine pieces of pixel art, I can deal with that. I have a more ambitious isometric illustration I've been working on that has been causing me a lot of frustration and I may post if I don't totally hate it when I'm done. Let me tell you, these are a lot harder than they look.
