Pixel Art

What is Pixel Art?

Pixel art is a kind of digital art that is created by drawing the pixels of an image one by one, as opposed to using brushes that algorithmically blend the colors of large areas of an image. The exact definition of the term is debatable. For example, in the strict sense, pixel art implies the use of a limited color palette, such as using at most 16 unique colors through the entire image. This was easier to do in the past: when computer screens could only display a limited number of colors, every drawing application was designed to handle a limited number of colors. As screens became able to display millions of colors, applications stopped supporting features such as indexed palettes, making it actually harder to create simpler graphics. To create this sort of pixel art nowadays, you need a specialized software such as GraphicsGale, Aseprite, or MtPaint. For most, it's enough to merely "look like" pixel art without adhering to constraints of the past, so nowadays we also have pixel art created in general-purpose drawing programs that don't worry much about whether or not the colors can be counted. Even in its strictest definition, most artists wouldn't actually edit pixels one by one, using tools such as bucket fill, line drawing tools, and simple brushes that can draw patterns of pixels that would be monotonous to draw by hand. The important thing is that they could do it by hand if they wanted, it would just be too tedious.

A consequence of older graphics' limited palette was the use of dithering techniques to make it seem like there were more colors in an image than technically possible. Essentially, by creating patterns of pixels, the lights on the screen blended, and what should have been black and white appears gray, for example. These techniques worked better in the time of CRT screens and made the pixels appear "textured" even when they weren't. Modern LCD screens have a much higher contrast, so the pixels look sharper, blocky, and uniform.

In the minds of many, pixel art refers to its use in small sprites found in games, but pixel art can be used to create relatively large illustrations (e.g. 640x480px in size). An online community dedicated to pixel art where you can find such artwork is Pixel Joint (pixeljoint.com).

Observations

Transparent Pink: you may find some tutorials about pixel art that use a specific magenta color, #FF00FF, as a placeholder for transparent pixels. The reason for this appears to be historical: in formats that didn't support transparency, such as BMP, some programs interpreted this specific color as transparent, as it would be unlikely to occur in a natural image such as a photograph. This color is also known as "magic pink" for this.

Palette Animations: one interesting feature old pixel art had that modern pixel art never replicates is the use of palette rotation to create animated images. Essentially, the idea is that the indexes in the palette that a pixel uses stays the same, but the colors or the positions of the colors in the palette change from frame to frame, creating an image that is animated even though its pixel data contains only one single frame.