
In general, the construction of a pixel image can be very similar to that of a digital artwork, particularly during the early sketching phases. The exact point at which this occurs and the conditions for a piece to be reasonably called "pixel art" have been the source of great disagreement among professionals and enthusiasts.

Many experienced pixel artists recommend not using more colours than necessary.Īs images get bigger in resolution, pixels get harder to distinguish from each other and the importance of their careful placement is diminished, to the point that the concept of pixel art falls apart. Additionally, many pixel artists are of the opinion that in most cases, using a large number of colours, especially when very similar to each other in value, is unnecessary, and detracts from the overall cleanliness of the image, making it look messier. Pixel art as a medium mimics a lot of traits found in older video game graphics, rendered by machines which were capable of only outputting a limited number of colours at once. If the pixels play an important individual role in the final composition, it will be broadly regarded as a pixel art piece by most artists independently of the techniques that may have been implemented to achieve that result."Ī common characteristic in pixel art is the low overall colour count in the image. The following is a better way to interpret it: " The process that leads to the final artwork is less relevant than the final result.
ASEPRITE DITHERING SOFTWARE
Modern pixel art software incorporates tools that automatically place multiple pixels at once (such as fill tools, line tools, and brush tools), therefore defining pixel art as "art in which an artist has placed each individual pixel" is not accurate anymore. When purposefully editing in this way, changing the position of a few pixels can have a drastic effect on the image. The majority of pixel artists agree that an image can only be categorized as pixel art when the pixels play an important individual role in the composition of the artwork, which usually requires deliberate control over the placement of each individual pixel. The concept most likely originated from the word sprite, which is used in computer graphics to describe a two-dimensional bitmap that can be used as a building block in the construction of larger scenes. A much more popular variation is the term spriting, which sometimes refers to the activity of making pixel art elements for video games specifically. The phrases " dot art" and " pixel pushing" are sometimes used as synonyms for pixel art, particularly by Japanese artists. Standard digital artworks or low-resolution photographs are also composed of pixels, but they would only be considered pixel art if the individual pixels were placed with artistic intent, even if the pixels are clearly visible or prominent ( see Definition). The precise definition of pixel art is a subject of debate, but an artwork is usually considered as such if deliberate thought was put into each individual pixel of the image.

Because of these self-imposed limitations, pixel art presents strong similarities with many traditional restrictive art forms such as mosaics, cross-stitch and fuse beads. Older forms of pixel art tend to employ smaller palettes, with some video games being made using just two colors (1-bit color depth). Most works of pixel art are also restrictive both in file size and the number of colors used in their color palette because of software limitations - in order to achieve a certain aesthetic or simply to reduce the perceived noise. The art form is still employed to this day by pixel artists and game studios, even though the technological limitations have since been surpassed. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers and arcade video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as LED displays and graphing calculators, which have a limited number of pixels and colors available. Pixel art ( / ˈ p ɪ k s ə l- ɑː r t/) is a form of digital art drawn with graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block.
