Pixel artist

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An example of pixels. The image looks smooth when zoomed out, but when a small section is viewed more closely, individual pixels can be distinguished. Dithering example undithered.png
An example of pixels. The image looks smooth when zoomed out, but when a small section is viewed more closely, individual pixels can be distinguished.

A pixel artist is a graphic designer who specializes in computer art and can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. [1] [2] [3] Similar to chromoluminarism used in the pointillism style of painting, in which small distinct points of primary colors 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. [4] 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 and anonymous. [3] [5] Pixel design can refer to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated. [6]

Contents

Common uses of pixel design include print and broadcast media, web design and games. [1] [3] [7] 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 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 such as Computer Animation Production System users in post production of animated films and rendering (computer graphics) images like raster graphics. [8] [9] [10]

In the 2000s, pixel artists such as Tyler West, Stephane Martiniere and Daniel Dociu have gained international artistic recognition, due in part to the popularity of computer and video games. [11] [12] For instance the E3 Media and Business Summit, an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry, has a concurrent juried art show, "Into the Pixel" starting in 2003. [12] [13] [14] [15] Jurist and Getty Research Institute curator Louis Marchesano noted that most of the works were concept pieces used in the development of games. [13]

Pixel artists are also used in digital forensics, an emerging field, to both create and detect fraud in all forms of media including "the courts, politics and scientific journals". [16] 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. [16]

History

Computer art started in 1960s and by its nature is evolutionary since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible. The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. [17] Adobe Systems, founded in 1982, developed the Postscript language and digital fonts, making drawing painting and image manipulation software popular. [18] Adobe Illustrator, a vector drawing program based on the Bezier curve, was introduced in 1987 and Adobe Photoshop followed in 1990. [18] Adobe Flash, a popular set of multimedia software used to add animation and interactivity 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. [19] In 2006, Röyksopp released "Remind Me", illustrated completely by pixel art, which the New York Times cited as amazing and hypnotic. [19] (See video here .)

Background

Imagine the smiley face in the top left corner as an RGB bitmap image. When zoomed in, it might look like the big smiley face to the right. Every square represents a pixel. Zooming in further, the individual pixels can be analyzed, with their colors adjusted by adding the values for red, green and blue. Rgb-raster-image.svg
Imagine the smiley face in the top left corner as an RGB bitmap image. When zoomed in, it might look like the big smiley face to the right. Every square represents a pixel. Zooming in further, the individual pixels can be analyzed, with their colors adjusted by adding the values for red, green and blue.

A pixel artist is one of the new media artists that employs technology while also utilizing traditional media and art forms. [2] [3] [20] 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. [2] [3] They are often required to employ imaging and a full range of artistic and technological skills including those of conceptual artists. [20] [21]

In digital imaging, a pixel (picture element) is the smallest piece of information in an image. [4] The word pixel is based on a contraction of pix (for "pictures") and el (for "element"); similar formations with el for "element" include voxel, luxel, and texel. [22] [23] 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. [24] The intensity of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four components such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Neuroplasticity is a key element of observing many pixel images. While two individuals will observe the same photons reflecting off a photorealistic image and hitting their retinas, 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. [25]

Techniques

Pixel art outside the virtual domain using mosaic tiles by Invader Plaque rue du Cirque a Paris.JPG
Pixel art outside the virtual domain using mosaic tiles by Invader
A pixel does not need to be rendered as a small square. This image shows alternative ways of reconstructing an image from a set of pixel values, using dots, lines, or smooth filtering. ReconstructionsFromPixels.png
A pixel does not need to be rendered as a small square. This image shows alternative ways of reconstructing an image from a set of pixel values, using dots, lines, or smooth filtering.

The total number of pixels ( image resolution ), and the amount of information in each pixel (often called color depth ) 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 sampled 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 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 that lose information as lossy compression.

Modern computer-monitors typically display about 72 to 130 pixels per inch (PPI), and some modern consumer printers can resolve 2400 dots per inch (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, which is the basic line that defines the item the artist intends to create. Line arts can be either traced over scanned drawings or hand drawn on the computer itself by the use of a mouse or a graphics tablet and are often shared among other pixel artists in diverse websites in order to receive some feedback. Other techniques, some resembling painting, also exist, such as knowledge of the color theory. The limited palette often implemented into pixel art usually promotes the use of dithering in order to achieve different shades and colors (when necessary); hand-made anti-aliasing 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. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

ASCII art Computer art form using text characters

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.

Rendering (computer graphics) Process of generating an image from a model

Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined in a scene file containing objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. The scene file contains geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information describing the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file. The term "rendering" is analogous to the concept of an artist's impression of a scene. The term "rendering" is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing program to produce the final video output.

Pixel Physical point in a raster image

In digital imaging, a pixel, pel, or picture element is a smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in an all points addressable display device; so it is the smallest controllable element of a picture represented on the screen.

Adobe Photoshop Raster graphics editing software

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole. The software's name has thus become a generic trademark, leading to its usage as a verb although Adobe discourages such use. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics, as well as 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.

Raster graphics Dot matrix data structure

In computer graphics and digital photography, a raster graphic is a dot matrix data structure that represents a generally rectangular grid of pixels, viewable via a computer display, paper, or other display medium. Raster images are stored in image files with varying dissemination, production, generation, and acquisition formats.

Vector graphics Computer graphics images defined by points, lines and curves

Vector graphics are computer graphics images that are defined in terms of points on a Cartesian plane, which are connected by lines and curves to form polygons and other shapes. Vector graphics have the unique advantage over raster graphics in that the points, lines, and curves may be scaled up or down to any resolution with no aliasing. The points determine the direction of the vector path; each path may have various properties including values for stroke color, shape, curve, thickness, and fill.

2D computer graphics

2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them. It may refer to the branch of computer science that comprises such techniques or to the models themselves.

Binary image image comprising exactly two colors, typically black and white

A binary image is one that consists of pixels that can have one of exactly two colors, usually black and white. Binary images are also called bi-level or two-level, Pixelart made of two colours is often referred to as 1-Bit or 1bit. This means that each pixel is stored as a single bit—i.e., a 0 or 1. The names black-and-white, B&W, monochrome or monochromatic are often used for this concept, but may also designate any images that have only one sample per pixel, such as grayscale images. In Photoshop parlance, a binary image is the same as an image in "Bitmap" mode.

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, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is bound to change over time since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible.

Illustrator Narrative artist who makes images for printed and electronic products

An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, which is the reason illustrations are often found in children's books.

Graphics are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, in typesetting and the graphic arts, and in educational and recreational software. Images that are generated by a computer are called computer graphics.

Pixel art Digital art created using raster graphics edited on the pixel level

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of software, where images are edited on the pixel level. The aesthetic for this kind of graphics comes from 8-bit and 16-bit computers and video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as graphing calculators. In most pixel art, the color palette used is extremely limited in size, with some pixel art using only two colors.

Digital 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 graphics tablet and stylus, and software. Traditional painting is painting with a physical medium as opposed to a more modern style like digital. Digital painting differs from other forms of digital art, particularly computer-generated art, in that it does not involve the computer rendering from a model. The artist uses painting techniques to create the digital painting directly on the computer. All digital painting programs try to mimic the use of physical media through various brushes and paint effects. Included in many programs are brushes that are digitally styled to represent the traditional style like oils, acrylics, pastels, charcoal, pen and even media such as airbrushing. There are also certain effects unique to each type of digital paint which portray the realistic effects of say watercolor on a digital 'watercolor' painting. In most digital painting programs, the users can create their own brush style using a combination of texture and shape. This ability is very important in bridging the gap between traditional and digital painting.

Digital illustration Use of digital tools to produce images under an artists direction

Digital illustration or computer 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 models created by the artist. It is also distinct from digital manipulation of photographs, in that it is an original construction "from scratch". (Photographic elements may be incorporated into such works, but they are not necessarily the primary basis

Non-photorealistic rendering

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other artistic modes such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of cel-shaded animation as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation.

In computer graphics, image tracing, raster-to-vector conversion or vectorization is the conversion of raster graphics into vector graphics.

Image scaling Changing the resolution of a digital image

In computer graphics and digital imaging, imagescaling refers to the resizing of a digital image. In video technology, the magnification of digital material is known as upscaling or resolution enhancement.

Computer graphics Graphics created using computers

Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal of specialized hardware and software has been developed, with the displays of most devices being driven by computer graphics hardware. It is a vast and recently developed area of computer science. The phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers Verne Hudson and William Fetter of Boeing. It is often abbreviated as CG, or typically in the context of film as computer generated imagery (CGI). The non-artistic aspects of computer graphics are the subject of computer science research.

The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when people began to experiment with computer graphics - most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established, that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s- most notably by Dr Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-dimensional imagery, though increasingly as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-dimensional realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3D was beginning to appear in film movies, and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3D animation could be used for entire feature film production.

Image editing Processes of altering images, digital or traditional photos and add/paste/and cut words

Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are digital photographs, traditional photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs or editing illustrations with any traditional art medium. Graphic software programs, which can be broadly grouped into vector graphics editors, raster graphics editors, and 3D modelers, are the primary tools with which a user may manipulate, enhance, and transform images. Many image editing programs are also used to render or create computer art from scratch.

References

  1. 1 2 Stacey, Patrick; Andrew Brown; Joe Nandhakumar (2007). "Making Sense of Stories: the development of a new mobile computer game". 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07). IEEE Computer Society; 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07). p. 51. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2007.328. ISBN   978-0-7695-2755-0. S2CID   38174161. "On reflection, he said that 'I would have preferred to have brought in a more professional pixel artist.'" PDF version
  2. 1 2 3 Wiedemann, Julius (2007). Taschen's 1000 Favorite Websites: Style Surfing. Taschen. ISBN   9783822825860 . Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Middleton, Chris; Luke Herriott (2007). Instant Graphics: Source and Remix Images for Professional Design. Rotovision. ISBN   9782940361496 . Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  4. 1 2 Rudolf F. Graf (1999). Modern Dictionary of Electronics. Oxford: Newnes. p. 569. ISBN   0-7506-4331-5.
  5. ↑ Currie, Nick. "Design Rockism".
  6. 1 2 Hall, Branden; Cantrell, Christian; Chambers, Mike; Torrone, Phillip; Heim, Andreas; Thomas, Glenn; Leone, Steve; Kroeger, Craig; Sharples, Fred; Perry, Bill; Hall, Robert; Niedermeier, Markus (2002). Flash Enabled: Flash Design & Development for Devices. New Riders. ISBN   9780735711778 . Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  7. ↑ Swanepoel, Kevin; The One Club (March 2004). One Show Interactive: Advertising's Best Interactive and New media. Volume VI. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN   9780929837215 . Retrieved 2008-08-05.|volume= has extra text (help)
  8. ↑ "So You Want to Be in Pixels: Glenn McQueen". PBS/Nova. November 2000. Retrieved 2008-08-05. (Interview with Glenn McQueen)
  9. ↑ "So You Want to Be in Pixels: Ellen Poon". PBS/Nova. November 2000. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  10. ↑ "Picture Revolution: Special Effects". McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. 12 February 1998. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  11. ↑ Snider, Mike (16 July 2008). "More Video Game Art is Now Museum Quality". USA Today. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  12. 1 2 "Into the Pixel: Submission Qualifications". Into the Pixel. 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  13. 1 2 Marchesano, Louis; Davidicus (18 July 2008). "Into the Pixel video game art". BBC. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  14. ↑ Ted Backman; Jeremy Bennett; Tristan Reidford (2009-07-09). "Advisor". Into the Pixel. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  15. ↑ "The first concept art from Half-Life 2: Episode Three". GamesRadar. 2008-07-10. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  16. 1 2 Dreifus, Claudia (2 October 2007). "Proving That Seeing Shouldn't Always Be Believing". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  17. ↑ Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal, "ACM president's letter: Pixel Art", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 25, Issue 12, Dec. 1982.
  18. 1 2 Wands, Bruce. (2006) Art of the Digital Age, Thames & Hudson. ISBN   0-500-23817-0
  19. 1 2 Pogue, David (15 September 2006). "Art, One Click at a Time". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  20. 1 2 Adams, Cameron; Mark Boulton; Andy Clarke; Simon Collison (2007). Web Standards Creativity. Friends of ED. ISBN   9781590598030 . Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  21. ↑ Remo, Chris (28 July 2008). "Interview: Nokia's Scott Foe - A Member Of The Reset Generation". Games On Deck/Think Services. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  22. ↑ Foley, James D.; Andries van Dam; John F. Hughes; Steven K. Feiner (1990). "spatial-partitioning representations". Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice . The Systems Programming Series. Addison-Wesley. ISBN   0-201-12110-7. These cells are often called voxels (volume elements), in analogy to pixels.
  23. ↑ Foley, James D.; Andries van Dam; John F. Hughes; Steven K. Feiner (1990). "surface detail". Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice . The Systems Programming Series. Addison-Wesley. ISBN   0-201-12110-7. This approach is known as texture mapping or pattern mapping; the image is called a texture map, and its individual elements are often called texels.
  24. ↑ Edwards, Teon (August 2007). "NOVA scienceNOW: Kryptos". NOVA. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  25. ↑ Schwartz, Jeffrey M.; Begley, Sharon (2003). The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Harper Perennial. p. 337. ISBN   0-06-098847-9.

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