Visual design: About the type and form of pixel art

Do you remember the 1983 Nintendo famous game "Super Mary," the bearded Italian plumber, and the Japanese Konami company 1987 release of the shooting game, "the soul of the bucket" in the two of the mighty Superior soldiers Bill Rezey and Lance Bien. Believe that these two pixel cartoon image in the year to leave a deep impression, but also let me first know the pixel map.


Super Mary Image

Microsoft's operating system, before the WINDOWXP, are using the classic pixel icon, on the one hand, the performance of the computer at that time. With the improvement of hardware performance, vector icons are more and more widely used in the operating system. Compared to the previous pixel graphics can not zoom in and out, vector graphics regardless of texture performance, extensibility, aesthetic degree and other aspects of the advantages, but the pixel style is still its own unique manifestations, and constantly develop a variety of categories, attracting people's attention. The visual effect of the regular combination of pixel particles and the retention of jagged edges gradually evolved into a design style that was popular with many designers and spawned many interesting art categories.

　

Graphic pixel art

Pixel painting is a kind of computer graphics representation with "pixel" (Pixel) as the basic unit. It is characterized by the use of pixel points from the array of patterns to the combination of images, when you enlarge it to a certain extent, you can see the inside of the small particles, that is, pixel particles. Pixel painting in the form of a bitmap (bitmap), from the computer's most primitive image representation method, evolved into an independent digital art creation style, this style is often called "pixel art" (Pixel art). The so-called pixel art (Pixel art) is not a single image, it emphasizes a style, with a clear outline, crisp color, unconstrained style.

This style is similar to the "Point Color Painting School" created by French painters at the end of 19th century. Point Color Painting School is a kind of small color point stack, creating the overall image of the oil painting method. The painter of the color painting school objected to the painting method of color palette on the drawing board, they only use four primary colors to paint, use the color point to stack, as the principle of television display, use the characteristic of human retina resolution is low, make people feel a whole image.

The picture on the left is the "Big Bowl Island of Sunday Afternoon", which is the part of the "Review" of the 1889-year work of the meditation.

La Siula spent two years to draw this monument-related work, each part of the screen is made up of thousands of complementary color small stroke color points, the whole picture in the color of the sense of balance and unity.

When it comes to pixel art, we have to mention Eboy.

Founded in 1998 in Berlin and New York, the team is comprised of four German designers who specialize in public art creation and peripheral product design. Their works are colourful, bold, diverse and wonderfully paranoid, and are widely used in business, attracting many brands like Adidas, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Levi ' s, Microsoft, MTV and Nike.

Eboy's collection of works, interested can go to http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/to appreciate the team more excellent works

I like the pixel paintings that they create for certain cities and show the unique culture of the city, and the details of these works have become the object of many pixel art lovers to imitate.

Eboy works (Pictures from Eboy blog)

This work is tailor-made for Tokyo, Cherry blossom, temples, hot Springs, anime, Tokyo Tower and bustling streets, wear school uniforms of the girls, of course, also have a color culture of the part of the Eboy. These elements of Japanese characteristics are set in the picture, and then integrate the designer's humorous expression techniques, endow the works with strong vitality.

　

Stereoscopic Pixel Art

"I can get paid, but I want to take Lego to a whole new field, and I'm trying to get it into the art gallery and make it into a variety of larger sculptures." I think that's the biggest difference between Lego artists and Lego enthusiasts. "--nathan

US New York artist Nathan Sawaya has shown us another pixel art with Lego (Lego blocks). He was a fan of music and was a lawyer. It's important for him to do what he is interested in! So, he was not a lawyer, when the artist, set up his own studio. He put his enthusiasm into his hobby, gave a bunch of simple geometric form of a new interpretation.

Nathan Sawaya Works, interested in http://brickartist.com/to appreciate his more outstanding works

Nathan Sawaya Works "Chris-craft Speedster"

The piece, which is more than three meters in length, is the largest Lego boat in the world record. Using 250,000 blocks, plus he worked 18 hours a day, it took 10 days to complete.

There are many kinds and forms of pixel art, which are not enumerated here. The development of pixel art depends not on technology, but on the imagination and creativity of the designer, only the life-force design works can continue to be loved by all kinds of new technology and technology in the present.