Fil :: Pixel Art Detail

awesome artwork

Oooo -  I'm really spamming this list with two identical copies of my comment.Apologies to all. (Damn that enter-button).

I'd just like to apologise to turbo_bnx for my apparent discreditation of this piece in my last comment. I didn't mean it so sound so critical. I think there is a place for nice conversions like this, but unfortunately the pixeljoint community tend to frown on such work.

Strangely, although pixeljoint has a stringent pixel-art criteria, for some reason it does not restrict the number of colours used (so long as you have WIP).

I'd like to know, after all the effort you've expended in producing a 'retro' art version of this original, will you be producing a version that conforms to a particular 'retro' format - e.g. Amiga or C64?

Before I start my rant, I'd like to say that I initially thought this piece was great, and was about to defend its to the death from the criticism it has recieved; but then I investigated further. I have a problem - far bigger than the fact that this piece is 99-percent plagarised (this piece takes plagarism to another level - but that's another story) - my problem is with pixeljoint's vetting system....

This is my first visit to pixejoint in a couple of months. I refused to take any further (graphical) participation in pixeljoint after a couple of colleagues of mine were disheartened to find that their original, legitimate pixelart pieces were deemed to be invalid pixelart by pixeljoint. You may be thinking "but plenty of  unproven artwork is submitted for approval, and is refused" - but these guys used to work for Team-17, and none of the work they had submitted failed any of pixeljoint's criteria other than the fact that because it was so old, it had no 'work-in-progress'. Fair-enough, we thought; but then, pardon my French, how the feck does this 'Fil' piece pass the pixeljoint scrutineers ?

Am I being rash in my thinking that pixeljoint has a fundamental problem with its 'vetting' system in the fact that it allows almost complete copies of work (with or without supporting references), whereas 'old master' works, which were produced fifteen year ago with D-Paint, by the artists who worked on the likes of Project-X are barred ?!!!

Has pixeljoint 'missed a trick' by alienating the artists who originally, over a decade ago, produced game artwork in the style that pixeljoint itself is founded?

I am sorry if I opened up a can of worms on this piece, It was not my intention to insult turbo bnx in any way and as I stated previously, I realise that this sort of pixelling requires a great deal of skill, However, I do stand by the fact that, when placed overlaying the original, it appears to have been traced, but I may be wrong and if so I apologize to turbo bnx.

Like a lot of other people here seem to be saying a reference to the original artist or artwork would have been nice and had Rodney Matthews not have been one of my favourite fantasy artists I may not have even questioned it in the first place, I'm staring to feel sorry that I did.

I do not discredit the work involved in creating large pixel pieces and would not label it as unskilled.

Sorry turbo bnx, you are clearly a talented pixeller and I did not wish to offend you, perhaps you just need to be more honest about your sources of inspiration in future. 

This is the last I shall say on this piece.

I aggree with ptoing that it does involve a certain amount of pixelling skill, but still find it hard to believe the fact that it wasn't traced, as I pointed out earlier; this image, when placed on top of the original one found at Rodney Matthew's web stie is exactly the same size in almost every aspect. Now using a reference from a book or magazine would never result in this happening, maybe using a grid method on two windows; one with the original image and one to create in could possibly result in closer similarities, however, even then you would expect to see some degree of distortions in the proportions of the finished picture, even most of the demoscene pictures on the amiga and ST suffered from exactly this.

Try it yourself with Pshop or Graphics Gale, use two layers and see how closely they overlay.

Now if turbo bnx created this purely with pixel talent then I am very sorry for my opinion, but there appears too many factors to suggest that it required a little less effort than people may think at first. 

I have to admit that the pixelling skills used here are highly impressive and I can find no fault with the background image, however I have my doubts about a couple of things.

You see, the elephant type creature, along with the tribal drummer seen riding it are part of a classic picture by the legendary fantasy artist Rodney Matthews (one of my favourite artists.), entitled 'Drum Boogie', , now I find nothing wrong with copying a picture into pixel format if you want to, but when comparing this picture with the original found on the official Rodney Matthews web site's gallery page, the two share some almost remarkable similarities.

By overlapping the two using layers in Graphics Gale it is clear that they are pretty much exactly the same size, which would be nearly impossibe if copying from an external source, indicating that the original was in fact used as a trace layer.

Now although I am impressed by the skill used to create this picure I find the finised result a little less remarkable than I first thought. 

hi guys. thank you very much for your comments. i'm so busy these days. i'm going to answer your posts later.. tnx again

When I saw this I almost screamed aloud. No! My existence! Where is it?!?

That is quite an impressive piece. How long have you been pixeling? Do you do it professionally?

nothing to crit here, top-notch-stuff (wow!).. i love the detail you've given to that piece.. 7/7

Holy poo. This rocks too much ass. I love the attention of detail given to the elephant, and how leafy it looks. My only issue is with the elephant rider's left arm. It kinda looks deformed, or smaller than a body of that size would allow. Also the perspective of the elephants right hind leg seems off to me.

But other than that, this is pro. You might wanna post some wip animations to just to dispel any non-believers if you truly did this PIXEL BY PIXEL. If you did, well than your stay here will be very enjoyable...Godly job guy, lookin' forward to your upcoming works...