[duhroach]

Hey, i've noticed lately alot of 'pixel art' showing up. I must admit, i love some of the stuff that's done with it (acryl for example)
Turns some nice pix out.. But i was just wondering WHAT it is, HOW it's done, and if there's anywhere i can find some info on it
~Main

[Sumaleth]

'Pixeling' was a term originally used to distinguish between the old way of doing computer graphics (pixel by pixel with a mouse) and the new 'painted' way (24bit with a graphics tablet).

These days it's definition seems to have blurred somewhat, and generally it's now used to describe the creation of a digital image where the artist works at a pixel-level.

What does that mean? It means you zoom right in so you can only see a very small portion of the image, you choose a 1 pixel sized brush, and you work virtually every pixel individually.

With the advent of 24bit computers and graphics tablets, you rarely need to get that fine these days - smooth shading is easier to do with broad strokes of the airbrush and sharp antialiasing is just a matter of using harder brushes. In the old days, you had to doshading and anti-aliasing manually, literally pixel by pixel and color by color.

I don't think that any of the images posted to this forum recently would be considered 'pixeled' in the traditional sense, but a lot of the artists behind the images (eg. Acryl who you mentioned) come from a pixeling background and so they carry those sensibilities into the realm of 24bit 'painted' art.

Hope that makes sense,
Rowan.

--
Sumaleth
http://impact.frag.com

[duhroach]

Hey thanks sumaleth. Shines alot of light onto my question.
BTW, love the eraser bots.. nice stuff
~Main