Diadem Graphics

While surfing the internet searching for material on computer graphics, you may have come across the term "pixel art." What is pixel art? The answer: a niche movement in the computer graphics world. Pixel art refers to "drawing" an image pixel by pixel. The emphasis of pixel art is the use of intricate techniques to create an image (pixel by pixel) without any artificial filters, smudge tools, or similar methods. I would call this an approach of intricate simplicity.

In pixel art you usually begin by drawing the outline of your image (usually called lineart). After this you choose the colors you want to use, called a palette. You then proceed to apply these colors. Sounds simple, right? Maybe, but from my experience it's not as easy as it looks. Every shading, effect, or whatever else you need must be done without the use of the fancy filter techniques often employed to produce a similar look. Many pixel artists even discourage the use of things like line tools, circle tools, or anything else that denies complete manual control. Some, however, fuse pixel art techniques with other methods.

So who uses pixel art? The technique was primarily utilized by the video game industry before its switch to using 3D models. Sprites, as they were called, could be easily controlled in terms of factors like transparency and animation. With the rise of the internet, sprites (and pixel art in general) also took on roles as forum avatars, and from there were used by amateur game designers and finally transformed into a little known art form. The whole notion is a little bizarre if you're not into game design, but interesting in its own right. If you're interested in pixel art, I suggest checking out a little site called Pixel Samauri, which has a bunch of tutorials and examples. I have also included a few examples of my own stuff below.