Pixel artist
Encyclopedia
Graphic designer
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...
who specializes in computer art
Computer art
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation...
and can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Similar to chromoluminarism used in the pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...
style of painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, in which small distinct points of primary color
Primary color
Primary colors are sets of colors that can be combined to make a useful range of colors. For human applications, three primary colors are usually used, since human color vision is trichromatic....
s create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors, a pixel artist works with pixels, the smallest piece of information in an image. The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones. Pixel art is often utilitarian
Form follows function
Form follows function is a principle associated with modern architecture and industrial design in the 20th century. The principle is that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose....
and anonymous
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
. Pixel design can refer to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.
Common uses of pixel design include print and broadcast media, web design and games. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition
Composition (visual arts)
In the visual arts – in particular painting, graphic design, photography and sculpture – composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art or a photograph, as distinct from the subject of a work...
is one of the most important features of design especially when utilizing pre-existing materials or using diverse elements. Pixel artists can also be a specialist in computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
such as Computer Animation Production System
Computer Animation Production System
The Computer Animation Production System is a proprietary collection of software programs, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company together with Pixar in the late-1980s...
users in post production of animated films and rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model , by means of computer programs. A scene file contains objects in a strictly defined language or data structure; it would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information as a description of the virtual scene...
images like raster graphics
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
.
In the 2000s, pixel artists such as Tyler West, Stephane Martiniere and Daniel Dociu
Daniel Dociu
Daniel Dociu is a video game art director and concept artist. He is the chief art director for NCsoft North America and also works for its subsidiary ArenaNet....
have gained international notoriety and artistic recognition, due in part to the popularity of computer and video games. For instance the E3 Media and Business Summit, an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry, has a concurrent juried
Juried (competition)
A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts, either by the competition's stated rubric or by a subjective set of criteria dependent upon the nature of the competition or the...
art show, "Into the Pixel" starting in 2003. Jurist and Getty Research Institute
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
curator Louis Marchesano noted that most of the works were concept pieces used in the development of games.
Pixel artists are also used in digital forensics
Digital forensics
Digital forensics is a branch of forensic science encompassing the recovery and investigation of material found in digital devices, often in relation to computer crime...
, an emerging field, to both create and detect fraud in all forms of media including "the courts, politics and scientific journals". For instance, the Federal Office of Research Integrity has said that the percent of allegations of fraud they investigated involved contested images has risen from less than 3 in 1990 to 44.1 percent in 2006.
History
Computer art started in 1960s and by its nature is evolutionary since changes in technology and software directly effect what is possible. The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. Adobe SystemsAdobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
, founded in 1982, developed the Postscript language and digital fonts, making drawing painting and image manipulation software popular. Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
, a vector drawing program based on the Bezier curve
Bézier curve
A Bézier curve is a parametric curve frequently used in computer graphics and related fields. Generalizations of Bézier curves to higher dimensions are called Bézier surfaces, of which the Bézier triangle is a special case....
, was introduced in 1987 and Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
followed in 1990. Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, a popular set of multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
software used to add animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and interactivity
Interactivity
In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels:...
to web pages, was introduced in 1996.
In the 2000s, pixel artists have been employed increasingly in video games and, to a lesser extent in music videos. These artists have remained somewhat underground until the mid-2000s. In 2006 Röyksopp
Röyksopp
Röyksopp is a Norwegian electronic music duo from Tromsø, formed in 1998. Since their inception, the band's line-up has included Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland....
released "Remind Me", illustrated completely by pixel art, which the New York Times cited as amazing and hypnotic. (See video here http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Royksopp+-+%22Remind+Me%22&search_type=&aq=f.)
Background
A pixel artist is one of the new media artists that employs technology while also utilizing traditional media and art forms. They may have a fine arts background such as photography, painting or drawing but self-taught designers and artists are also able to accomplish this work. They are often required to employ imaging and a full range of artistic and technological skills including those of conceptual artists.In digital imaging
Digital imaging
Digital imaging or digital image acquisition is the creation of digital images, typically from a physical scene. The term is often assumed to imply or include the processing, compression, storage, printing, and display of such images...
, a pixel (picture element) is the smallest piece of information in an image.
The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix (for "pictures") and el (for "element"); similar formations with el for "element" include voxel
Voxel
A voxel is a volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space. This is analogous to a pixel, which represents 2D image data in a bitmap...
, luxel, and texel
Texel (graphics)
A texel, or texture element is the fundamental unit of texture space, used in computer graphics. Textures are represented by arrays of texels, just as pictures are represented by arrays of pixels....
. Pixels are normally arranged in a regular 2-dimensional grid, and are often represented using dots, squares, or rectangles. Each pixel is a sample of an original image, where more samples typically provide a more accurate representation of the original. The intensity
Intensity (physics)
In physics, intensity is a measure of the energy flux, averaged over the period of the wave. The word "intensity" here is not synonymous with "strength", "amplitude", or "level", as it sometimes is in colloquial speech...
of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four components such as red, green, and blue
RGB color model
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light is added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors...
, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black
CMYK color model
The CMYK color model is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key...
.
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is a non-specific neuroscience term referring to the ability of the brain and nervous system in all species to change structurally and functionally as a result of input from the environment. Plasticity occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes involved in...
is a key element of observing a many pixel images. While two individuals will observe the same photons reflecting off a photorealistic image and hitting their retina
Retina
The vertebrate retina is a light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera. Light striking the retina initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical...
s, someone whose mind has been primed with the theory of pointillism may see a very different image as the image is interpreted in the visual cortex
Visual cortex
The visual cortex of the brain is the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing visual information. It is located in the occipital lobe, in the back of the brain....
.
Techniques
The total number of pixels (image resolution
Image resolution
Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail....
), and the amount of information in each pixel (often called color depth
Color depth
In computer graphics, color depth or bit depth is the number of bits used to represent the color of a single pixel in a bitmapped image or video frame buffer. This concept is also known as bits per pixel , particularly when specified along with the number of bits used...
) determine the quality of an image. For example, an image that stores 24 bits of color-information per pixel (the standard for computer displays since around 1995) can represent smoother degrees of shading than one that only stores 16 bits per pixel, but not as smooth as one that stores 48 bits. Likewise, an image sample
Sample (graphics)
In computer graphics, a sample is an intersection of channel and a pixel.The diagram below depicts a 24-bit pixel, consisting of 3 samples for Red, Green, and Blue....
d at 640 x 480 pixels (and therefore containing 307,200 pixels) will look rough and blocky compared to one sampled at 1280 x 1024 (1,310,720 pixels). Because it takes a large amount of data to store a high-quality image, computer software often uses data compression
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
techniques to reduce this size for images stored on disk. Some techniques sacrifice information, and therefore image quality, in order to achieve a smaller file-size. Computer scientists refer to compression techniques
Image compression
The objective of image compression is to reduce irrelevance and redundancy of the image data in order to be able to store or transmit data in an efficient form.- Lossy and lossless compression :...
that lose information as lossy compression.
Modern computer-monitors typically display about 72 to 130 pixels per inch
Pixels per inch
Pixels per inch or pixel density is a measurement of the resolution of devices in various contexts; typically computer displays, image scanners, and digital camera image sensors....
(PPI), and some modern consumer printers can resolve 2400 dots per inch
Dots per inch
Dots per inch is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch . The DPI value tends to correlate with image resolution, but is related only indirectly.- DPI measurement in monitor...
(DPI) or more; determining the most appropriate image resolution for a given printer-resolution can pose difficulties, since printed output may have a greater level of detail than a viewer can discern on a monitor. Typically, a resolution of 150 to 300 pixel per inch works well for 4-color process (CMYK) printing.
Drawings usually start with what is called the line art
Line art
Line art is any image that consists of distinct straight and curved lines placed against a background, without gradations in shade or hue to represent two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects...
, which is the basic line that defines the item the artist intends to create. Line arts can be either traced over scanned
Image scanner
In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...
drawings or hand drawn on the computer itself by the use of a mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
or a graphics tablet
Graphics tablet
A graphics tablet is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way a person draws images with a pencil and paper. These tablets may also be used to capture data or handwritten signatures...
and are often shared among other pixel artists in diverse websites in order to receive some feedback. Other techniques, some resembling painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, also exist, such as knowledge of the color theory
Color theory
In the visual arts, color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations. Although color theory principles first appeared in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci , a tradition of "colory theory"...
. The limited palette often implemented into pixel art
Pixel art
Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
usually promotes the use of dithering in order to achieve different shades and colors(when necessary); hand-made anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
is also used for smoother purposes. A pixel artist will exponentially increase the zoom of whatever they are working on to make adjustments as needed and then view the results until desired changes are achieved.
See also
- Pixel artPixel artPixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level. Graphics in most old computer and video games, graphing calculator games, and many mobile phone games are mostly pixel art.- History :The term pixel art was first...
- DemosceneDemosceneThe demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...
- Digital illustrationDigital illustrationComputer illustration or digital illustration is the use of digital tools to produce images under the direct manipulation of the artist, usually through a pointing device such as a tablet or a mouse. It is distinguished from computer-generated art, which is produced by a computer using mathematical...
- Digital paintingDigital paintingDigital painting is an emerging art form in which traditional painting techniques such as watercolor, oils, impasto, etc. are applied using digital tools by means of a computer, a digitizing tablet and stylus, and software. Traditional painting is painting with a physical medium as opposed to a...
- Fixed pixel displayFixed pixel displayFixed pixel displays are display technologies such as LCD and plasma that use an unfluctuating matrix of pixels with a set number of pixels in each row and column...
- Onion skinningOnion skinningOnion skinning is a 2D computer graphics term for a technique used in creating animated cartoons and editing movies to see several frames at once...
- Pixel art scaling algorithms
- Quantization errorQuantization errorIn analog-to-digital conversion, the difference between the actual analog value and quantized digital value is called quantization error or quantization distortion. This error is either due to rounding or truncation...
- SpritingSpritingSpriting is usually defined as the act of creating partially transparent 2D raster graphics for use in video games, commonly referred to as sprites; by extension, it is also used to refer to the act of creating pixel art, though not all sprites are necessarily done in that style...
Further reading
- Dabbs, Alistair - Interface Design; Watson-Guptill (2002); ISBN 0823025160, 9780823025169.
- NFGMan - Character Design for Mobile Devices; Focal Press (2006); ISBN 0240808088, 9780240808086.
- Raimes, Jonathan; Malcolm Garrett - The Digital Canvas; Abrams publisher (2006).