Pixel Art

Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of software, where images are edited on the pixel level. The majority of graphics for 8-bit and 16-bit computers and video game consoles, as well as other limited systems like graphing calculators, is pixel art.

Creating or modifying pixel art characters or objects for video games is sometimes called spriting, a term that arose from the hobbyist community.

The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The concept, however, goes back about 11 years before that, for example in Richard Shoup's SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC.

Some traditional art forms, such as counted-thread embroidery (including cross-stitch) and some kinds of mosaic and beadwork, are very similar to pixel art. These art forms construct pictures out of small colored units similar to the pixels of modern digital computing. A similar concept on a much bigger scale can be seen in the North Korean Arirang Festival.

There are some similarities of technique and style between pixel art and older artistic movements like Impressionism, Abstract Art, and especially Cubism.

Drawings usually start with what is called the line art, which is the basic line that defines the character, building or anything else the artist is intending to draw. Line arts are usually traced over scanned drawings and are often shared among other pixel artists. Other techniques, some resembling painting, also exist.

The limited palette often implemented in pixel art usually promotes dithering to achieve different shades and colors, but due to the nature of this form of art this is done completely by hand. Hand-made anti-aliasing is also used.

Pixel art is preferably stored in a file format utilizing lossless data compression, such as run-length encoding or an indexed color palette. GIF and PNG are two file formats commonly used for storing pixel art. The JPEG format is avoided because its lossy compression algorithm is designed for smooth continuous-tone images and introduces visible artifacts in the presence of dithering.

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