Art Movement 芸術運動

In this post, I am to pick an art movement that I am interested in, research on it and write about it. For this case, I have picked pixel art as I love games, and many games that I have played are in pixel form. Besides, pixel art is an incredibly interesting art movement, so it makes me want to learn more about it and well, write about it too !

Pixel art is considered as a form of digital art, where objects are created or edited in the pixel level, which is the tiniest entity in a single object when it comes to digital art (almost like an atom to a piece of metal). Basically, pixel art is mainly used as graphics for most old computers, consoles, graphing calculators and mobile phone games.

Below is an example of old computers' GUI which, obviously, is pixelated. (It's hard to find screenshots of it, but attached is an example of a program used.)

MPX Linux

Pacman

Yes, Pacman is a well-known pixelated game played on PC. Next is an example of how graphing calculators' screen can show pixelated art (It's so amusing *_*):

Bird on graphing calc

Isn't that cute? Next comes gaming consoles, especially those like Gameboy Advance and Playstation (1):

               

                      Pokemon Red

Pokemon Fire Red

Who can forget about Pokemon? =u=

Maria Super Bros

Also, not to forget, there's also the pixelated GUIs of mobile phones used in the past (and some still used now) [As I said before, it's hard to find real shots of the items on the real devices, so here's a screenshot of the exact same game but from an Android phone]:

Snake on Android

"Pixel art" is a term published by a couple of researchers from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center named Adele Goldberg and Robert Feagel in the year 1982. With that being said, the concept has actually been created 10 years back. For example, pixel art can already be found in the SuperPaint system by Richard Shoup back in 1972. Besides, mosaic arts, bead arts, cross-stitches and the like are cousins to pixel art. Just as how pixel art works by pixels, those traditional arts work by boxes (mosaic), beads and so on.

Here's an instance; take Pikachu:

  

   

From left: Pikachu pixel art, Pikachu cross stitch, Pikachu beadwork

Don't they look somewhat similar?

In pixel art, there is also such thing called as spriting. This is where pixel artists create 2D pixelled items - be it characters, or objects - which will then be integrated into a larger scene. These 2D pixelled items are named sprites. Sprites are especially important when it comes to video games, as the system cannot compute too many pixels at the same time. Making sprites beforehand makes things much easier, and programming will be easier too. Here are examples of character sprites and their integration into games: 

Final Fantasy Human Character sprites

Final Fantasy II: Fighting Behemoth

Even now, there are still games that still use pixels as pixels have brought a big impact so far in terms of graphic interfaces and games. The following are examples on games played nowadays which utilize pixels:

The mass multiplayer online interactive game Habbo Hotel is a good example of how pixel art is used in games:

Habbo Hotel

Minecraft, which has been played by many players globally, appreciates the existence of pixels as much too, and places them in a 3D form which gives it a more modernized feel and enable players to navigate as how they do in first-player shooter games:

Minecraft

Tetris has been around since the olden days, and it has been revived when a programmer adds this game to Facebook's list of games and applications. Surprisingly, there are so many players who play Tetris that it is almost uncountable. As we can see in Tetris' boxes, it is inspired by pixel art; and in fact, the olden days' Tetris IS played in pixels! Here's a shot of Facebook's Tetris Battle:

Tetris Battle

Mass multiplayer online role-playing games like Maple Story and Ragnarok Online utilizes the use of sprites really well:

            

              Maple Story               Ragnarok Online

Ib is a horror game produced in Japan. It is indeed made in pixels, but it can still give the eerie vibe around it (I stopped right after chapter 2 because my heart cannot take it anymore). There are also other Japanese horror games which are pixelled such as Mad Father and Corpse Party. Here are screenshots for Ib for some illustration:
           

            Ib main menu                  Ib gameplay

Indeed there are many games that use pixels, and I can give more examples but this post is starting to get too long. XD Usually, the music that go along well with pixel art is usually 8-bit music! (These two are a couple made for each other >w<).

In any case of interest, here's a link to Baxalah's - a pixel artist who just LOVES pixel art - tumblr. He shares other works from pixel artists, as well as post his own pixel arts in his tumblr. Do open the link if you're interest, and enjoy the 8-bit music which is integrated in his tumblr too!

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆ http://baxalah.tumblr.com/ ☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

(**≧∇≦)/

That's all for this post ! Cheers!~

Disclaimer: Quite an amount of the notes such as definitions and history and facts are paraphrased from Wikipedia. It kinda hurts me inside to study from Wikipedia, but what other choice do I have, aye?