Pixel Art - Part 2 of 2
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 by Sergio
The Spartan (above) by Telemachus Stavropoulos aka Helm uses a limited colour palette comprised only of black, red, green and blue (zoom in if you don't believe me) blended together to synthesise a greater variety of colours and tones. You might be aware that most colour computer screens (be they CRT, LCD, plasma display or LED display) use a similar method to display anything. Separate red, blue and green light sources comprise each pixel and are seen as a single colour by the human eye. Every pixel in The Spartan is either one of these coloured light sources at its full intensity, or black, the absence of any colour at all. Helm describes his work better than I could:
"It's an examination of what happens when clusters of these bright pixels come into various permutations to fake a fidelity that they'd be incapable of achieving alone. A holistic effect that occurs when all the disparate parts are acutely controlled. There is a beauty in this process for me that makes me return to this medium again and again."
The Spartan embodies ideas of purity in pixel art. Though Helm himself admits that the work is flawed, when I look at it I find many reasons to consider pixel art one of the most important media to arise through the development of technology. I love the idea of creation through limitation. Given that pixel art (like most digital media) is typically stored as discrete data, the number of possible combinations that can be made within given restrictions is finite. Thus, I would speculate that some level of perfection is possible. Pixels can be coloured; arranged; rearranged... and eventually a state will be reached where no greater combination of pixels can be made. That is an opinion I have sometimes, anyway.
For those interested, check out Helm's blog or his musings on pixel art.
As I plan to say no more about pixel art, I thought I'd close with a couple of my favourite works of pixel art by revered pixel artist Fool. Click to see them full size:
This is a great topic Sergio. I found both of your pixel art posts very interesting.
My first impression of The Spartan is that it made me think of velvet paintings; both generate the same kind of intensity and also share some similar aesthetic concerns (kitsch, pop culture, self-reflexivity) and both evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Another thing that I find interesting is that pixel art is a very deliberate and manual process - it seems to me to simultaneously celebrate and challenge digital aesthetics.
I'm curious as to whether there are pixel artists who set themselves the challenge of matching the level of hyperrealism that can be achieved using vector graphics?
anna: http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/23153.htm
Hey, that's great. Interesting to see how competitive the challenges are!
Thanks for your comments and compliments, Anna.
There's some fairly realistic pixel art out there (here's some examples) but I don't know if I've seen any that quite reaches the uncanny valley levels of most "photorealistic" vector art.