> almost never includes dithering an anti-aliasing
When you follow the contest link, all three images there on the landing page have dithering, as do the backgrounds and a bunch of examples in the contest rules. Googling pixel art, it’s not a majority that use dithering, but there are lots of examples of dithering. And I’ve just seen a lot of dithering over the years in games and art. So I don’t think your claim about dithering being rare is true.
It is true that anti-aliasing is rare, that’s because it is somewhat antithetical to the intent of pixel art. Anti-aliasing is trying to reduce the effects of visible resolution, where pixel art is intentionally embracing low-res and trying to emphasize the pixels. Anti-aliasing automatically means you’re using a higher resolution and downsampling to a low resolution, where the intent of pixel art is to work at the low resolution in the first place. (Not to mention that anti-aliasing needs continuous color values, where pixel art is often intentionally limited to a small color palette.)
The best pixel art is very creative with the use of pixels and makes different decisions than you would in a higher resolution with anti-aliasing. I think of it a little bit like font ligatures - they exist because they read better and look sharper than antialiasing a higher res version.
For me, anti-aliasing is a fundamental of pixel art precisely for the reasons you say it's not :) The idea of pixel art and the techniques employed is to work _against_ the low resolution, using clever tricks to simulate more detail, higher resolution and more colours.
An example just off the top of my head is this 1988 C64 image by The Sarge[0], using both dithering and anti-aliasing combined with other pixelling techniques to convey depth, texture, extra values and to smooth the edges of a sphere to lessen the garishness of having pixels twice as wide as they are tall.
Your preference is legitimate, and art will always be subjective. I think a big difference is whether you’re trying to show a photo in low res versus do art manually and use pixels as your brush and embracing the limitations. Anti-aliasing is typically a post-process. There are examples out there of careful and manual use of intermediate values in pixel art to make an edge appear smoother, that’s a type of antialiasing. It’s just rare to use more than that and call it pixel art today, because general anti-aliasing makes the image blurry or muddy, and it doesn’t really leverage the pixels, it just works around them.
Good pixel art reminds me of the lego TV families: https://imgur.com/gallery/Cz3zR. It’s such good concept art precisely because it’s as blocky as possible, yet somehow still completely recognizable.
I don’t know if that Sarge cats image is manual anti-aliasing or a more automated process, but for me it doesn’t draw me in or demonstrate a broader emotional range, as you say, compared to some of these examples:
That's the thing, good pixel art should be _as unblocky as possible_. By working against hardware limitations and with the particular properties of a CRT screen, artists are able to create amazing-looking pictures with extremely limited means.
> use pixels as your brush and embracing the limitations
> don’t know if that Sarge cats image is manual
The Sarge's cats are a great example of pixel technique, not composition or emotional depth. It's a sketch, painstakingly drawn by hand (most likely using the keyboard or a joystick), each pixel truly placed and selected individually. It's made using precisely the care for each pixel you talk about, but the care has been taken to hide the inherent blockiness and low colour count.
I suppose it's a generational thing. Having grown up with CRTs and low-res, low-colour machines perhaps creates a different kind of admiration for the immense skill needed to make a lowly C64 or Amiga 500 appear capable of something it's not. Here are a few examples of such graphics from the game Agony from 1992:
> good pixel art should be _as unblocky as possible_. [...] I suppose it’s a generational thing.
Yes, exactly, that might be part of the disconnect here. It used to be the aim to make art unblocky, in the 80s, when there was no choice, when the highest res was 320x200 with 16 colors. Today, there is zero reason for blockiness, ever, you never have to see pixels again. It’s an aesthetic choice to make blocky looking art that is reminiscent of the 80s. And it’s also part of the contest rules for the link you’re commenting on, making it blocky looking is required.
The term pixel art today, unlike 40 years ago, is referring to choosing to be blockier than necessary. If you make something as unblocky as possible, that is now called “art”, not “pixel art”, since it’s trivially easy to get rid of visible pixels and avoid a blocky look. Unblocky is the default, and now it’s harder to be blocky than not.
I do hear what you’re saying - that manual anti-aliasing - is one of the old techniques that made good computer art back in the day. You’re right, it’s true, it just works against today’s pixel art goals.
When you follow the contest link, all three images there on the landing page have dithering, as do the backgrounds and a bunch of examples in the contest rules. Googling pixel art, it’s not a majority that use dithering, but there are lots of examples of dithering. And I’ve just seen a lot of dithering over the years in games and art. So I don’t think your claim about dithering being rare is true.
It is true that anti-aliasing is rare, that’s because it is somewhat antithetical to the intent of pixel art. Anti-aliasing is trying to reduce the effects of visible resolution, where pixel art is intentionally embracing low-res and trying to emphasize the pixels. Anti-aliasing automatically means you’re using a higher resolution and downsampling to a low resolution, where the intent of pixel art is to work at the low resolution in the first place. (Not to mention that anti-aliasing needs continuous color values, where pixel art is often intentionally limited to a small color palette.)
The best pixel art is very creative with the use of pixels and makes different decisions than you would in a higher resolution with anti-aliasing. I think of it a little bit like font ligatures - they exist because they read better and look sharper than antialiasing a higher res version.