influence realization

[egypturnash]

You know what one of the big influences on my mode of art is?

Video games. "Pixel art".

Except not the "pixel art" now practiced by people who spent a lot of time in front of their SNESes or Genesises* or their Macs or even their Amigas. No pretentious 320x200 with enough color flexibility to have a little outline around most things.

Some connection was made when I was on my ass in front of the old Zenith TV with the big clicky VHF and UHF tuner dials and the Atari VCS feeding itself into channel 3. Limited color palettes, in big, solid swathes, with the occasional gradient.

Yeah, I could be like most of the people who hang out around the animation industry and work in similar idioms, and claim I got it mostly from Mary Blair, or from fifties jazz album covers, or something like that, and there is some truth to that**. But I think something in my art is harking back to... the VCS. And the Commodore 64. Where outlines were an impossible luxury.

*Mega Drives to those of you outside the Americas
**Only some. My shading methods match up with that school a lot, but my methods of abstraction and my proportions do not - I don't feel comfortable doing 3-head-high stuff on a routine basis.

Comments

[nichiyume.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking this morning how much I like Pixel art, and how even though sometimes I turn on Anti Aliasing for windows, I tend to turn it off. There is a sort of level of comfort that comes from seeing the pixels that make up the letters, as if them being blurry was impure. Not exact. But thats just me...

My favorite pieces of pixels are a website I'm hosting www.bunnysnoog.cyborgcow.net . Look at them go!

[vickshb.livejournal.com]

I'm a pixel artist. Lookit my icon. ^.^

[ted-boomerang.livejournal.com]

I always hear "sprite-making" rather than "pixel art" but that's inacurrate because it's not always sprites.

and although I agree that the atari style of colors is neat:

http://atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=119

you have to admit it looks just plain wrong when they make atari porn :x

[adequatemagic.livejournal.com]

    o    o
     \__/ . o {ASCII ART RULES!}
     /  \
    / oo \
   (_\  |_)
      \@'

[radd.livejournal.com]

I can see it in your style peggy. A lot of your images remind me of some of those old videogame splash screens in feel. Still, you say "pixel art" inspired you and most people will think of today's 'pixel artists' that edit videogame sprites into unimaginative web comics and complain the moment they see somone else using an amorphic sprite blob that looks just a little too similar to their own amorphic sprite blob, when you're talking about broad expanses of flat colour, limited pallets, and no outlines.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I wouldn't normally use the "pixel art" term, but that's what it goes by nowadays. It didn't have a name when I was being exposed to it, and nobody was at all thinking of it as a deliberate mode of expression.

And the generic piece of pixel art is either something isometric, or something trying to feel like it came out of a late-period NES or mid-life SNES game, preferably an RPG. Me, I had formative videogame experiences involving pixels the size of your thumb.

Not that my style doesn't have other things feeding into it, of course. Part of the simplified shapes, blobs of color thing might be due to my being unable to see detail more than six inches away without my glasses. Maybe.

[radd.livejournal.com]

Shhh, just tell people it's your incredible visionary style. That and inform everyone that it will take any artist three times as long as neccessary to finish the piece they want done, then wow them when you have it done so quickly! Made a mistake, but people like it? You did it on purpose! These are the secrets to success!

[unciaa.livejournal.com]

What I miss in most online art, and only tend to see as random book covers, is the style I personally call Old SciFi Magazine, the hand-rendered 3d. Used to be that all science fiction books and games in the 80s had covers like these, but now, they're pretty rare. The only recent games that comes to mind is Moonbase Commander.

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

I like the style that so many home and arcade games used in the early 80s. The games themselves didn't have much by way of detail, so the box and manual or arcade cabinet, bezel, and control panel made up for it with graphic design and cool art. I still remember the artwork in the manual from the Atari 2600 version of Berzerk; if only Evil Otto and the Automazeons looked so cool in the game...

[lediva.livejournal.com]

SNESes

You forgot "*Super Famicoms to those of you outside the Americas".

[/geekpedant]