While many may not consider me a staple in the pixel art community, hell, many of you may not even know me! I felt it neccesasry to kind of write what I have found the general consensus of what pixel art is among the people.

I have been a member of Pixel Joint (a all pixel art based community) for over 3.5 years, much of that time I spent as an administrator. I deal with every submission, in one form or another that comes through that place. We require a voting/approval process for pieces to be submitted to our gallery. This is to ensure quality standards and to try to catch most of the rip-offs that we get on a daily basis.

But I digress, you probably do not want to hear the in's and out's of being an administrator on some other site. I was just trying to establish a bit of a back story as to how I am able to have any knowledge over this subject. I see discussions all the time about what makes something pixel art.

And now, I will try to pool that all into one small (or freakishly huge, dunno, we'll see where this goes) list. Keep in mind, even if any of these may contradict your opinion, these are from some of the most renown and respected pixel artists there are, the know their sh*t. So much so, I will not not even argue it with them!



First off, it has to be created pixel by pixel. This means you had complete control of where every single pixel was placed and HOW it was placed. Blur, burn, dodge, spray can, and opacity. This is where most of the confusion comes from, and where the subject of pixel art can be touchy for some. For the majority, any pixel brush that is not anti-aliased is okay. For example, if you make a custom brush that is an ISO cube, it is okay. The paint bucket or fill tool is okay. This is because you have control over every pixel that you are filling. But with an anti-aliased brush, you can't control how much opacity the surrounding pixels have. The spray can is most infamous, and is not considered a valid pixel art tool to 90% of the artists. It sprays random pixels in a defined area. Random has no place in pixel art, random is basically a way of handing over control to a random number generator.

When it comes to layer opacity, you cannot control the colors of the pixels, thus lack of control and not pixel art.

Second, palette control. Ah, yes. The source of much debate on pixel joint. Palette control is a big part of pixel art. Pixel art stems from the olden days when there was a restriction to how many colors could be on the screen. That is where most of the beauty of it comes from. Working with limited colors, in limited space, among other restrictions. Otherwise, what's the point of taking all that time? Besides, it adds to the challenge of creating it. Anyone can pixel a beach scene using 256 colors... But it takes a true artist to make it using 16 colors, and they usually make it look better.


That is about it. This is what most pixel artists look for when defining pixel art. Every artist is different and has different ideas. But these are a few uniform truths that nearly any pixelist can embrace, or at least respect. If all else fails, if you follow these, you probably won't cause an stir when submitting your art to Pixel Joint or deviantArt.

I didn't touch subject or quality here because everyone sees the world differently and you really can't define what is good/bad art for everyone. Not only that, I wanted to discuss what makes something pixel art and nothing more, for now at least. Your comments are welcome, just remember, that while I completely share these opinions on what makes something pixel art, they are not just mine, this encompasses many many opinions I have gathered and thought it was time to share what I, and others, are looking for.

Toodles.