Added: 1 year ago
From: lavalevel
Views: 218,446
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:

All Comments (254)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • I definitely teared up at the end. I may not have been alive [or old enough] to experience some of the greatest art alive, but I have definitely developed a major respect for it.

  • when he say chisel and stone theres a penis 09:40

  • I can say, back in the 90s pc games were with big blocky pixels, not blury like console games. PC monitors were much sharper than TV sets. So being pixelated does not come from emulators. But you might be right, that for some people, who hat a console instead of a pc in the ninties might have a different experience

  • I really wanna try pixel art if anyone knows a prorgram that I can download

    please tell me.

  • @Protomanbeawsome software doesn't matter, but a good software for pixel art it's graphics gale.

    Software can't teach you perspective, color theory, tonal values, anatomy. Which are more important to know to make images than the software used.

    If you can't make good images with paper, ink, pencil and color pencils, photoshop can't help too much.

  • @cristianceron1989

    I am not good at drawing at all,but I think I can ,better create images on a computer

    using small multi-colored squares

  • @cristianceron1989

    I understand art I am just not good at it

  • @Protomanbeawsome It doesn't matter in the end if you're good or not, but more if you had try to learn it. Art (drawing, painting) are skills learned. There's no such thing as "born" talent. What people seem to forget when say: Oh you had talent, it's the effort and time spended in learning. Just don't give up and never give up, keep going.

    I was like you until I decided to learn and now I'm happy with my skill.

    But be smart when training, set a goal for each session of training.

    Good luck.

  • great documentary, that end compilation was quite teary :')

  • Mona Lisa 1956?

  • It's not 11:00 mins. it's 10:59!!!!!

  • <3 harry potter

  • Amazing, creative, and overall well done documentary.

  • 1080p

    720p

    480p

    360p

    

    240p

    minecraft

    your video

  • Gotta love pixel art.

  • zomg it's the IBM 5100!!!

  • narrator wake the ef up man ur mumbling like a bitch

  • If i had a dollar for every pixel in this video I would have lots of money.

  • Pixel art on the DOS PC games in the late 80's-early 90's i always thought was the best. Back as a kid games like the original duke nukem,commanda keen,winter games,street rod2,dave2 and winter games looked so bright and vibrant. Even to this day i still like that style of game gfx. For me in them days you truly got lost within the games. Amazing era it was

  • How was minecraft not mentioned in here?

  • Comment removed

  • i can do pixel art! ______ There. it's a worm.

  • i can get what your talking about i played final fantasy 13... got bored and went to play final fantasy 6 and it's so more fun.. it's got more feel about it the story is sooo much better and they never really cared about graphics just keeping the player entertained i have so much nostalgia to go back and play all these games

  • CAN YOU PIXEL PAINT?!

    I'm creating a cute, "life simulator" game engine. It will enable you to do ANYTHING and its PIXELY!

    But I dont have time to paint and script at same time, so if your a pixel artist that wants to join this project. Check out my channel for videos, and send me a pm.

    Sorry for AD but its hard to find good sprite artists..

  • Amazing!

  • Why is it that chiptunes always sound "fake"? There has yet to be a chiptune song made that actually sounds like it came from an older console... 

  • this guy is talking out of his edge connector, or his RAM pack is fried, 2:41 onwards, complete bollocks, 8x8 since '81....go get an education kid.

  • i think the pixels in the middle of the eye at 0:04 looks like a mario head!!

  • Please cut out Rohrer next time. Mentioning and showing those pixel art music clips is ok, but where is Cavestory, Eboy, Pixeljoint, Henk Nieborg, or actually anything detailed?

    This documentary is about pixels as something abstract, while pixels have become the masters of iconic details!

    And for the old school: There is so many people who did great things with the difficult restrictions and resolutions.. But in stead you have only shown the 'programmer (f)arts'!!

  • Rohrers stuff, ugly or not, it does not represent pixel art the way we know it.

    Not in the old school way, because of its thousands of colors and strangely distorted canvas.

    Not in the new school way, lacking the use of pixel arts powers such as detail or iconism.

    Like he says it, this is just a form of simplified/abstracted art, which has randomly taken shape of pixels. Just as well it could have been vector or whatever else.

    Please discover real pixel art and artists!

  • @Amazerfulify

    I disagree. Pixel art in it's original form, like I mean in the 80's or something could perhaps be called 'simple', but not abstract. It was trying to be as iconic as possible, which is the exact opposite of abstract.

    In modern pixel art people are able to choose if they want difficult restrictions or not, and in most great works I have seen detail is the biggest strength. The power to create high resolution images and yet have control over each single pixel!

  • good information but please turn down the music

  • Not even mentionning eBoy, even if purist hates them, is a shame. But it's very hard to be both objective and exhaustive about pixel art.  It's a good documentary anyway...

  • When you start spouting numbers 23 seconds in, you've already lost most people

  • fantastic

  • well wasnt that nice. 

  • what's a HAYCH-D  TV?

  • 10:17 this is a iphone/ipad game called superbrothers, and its wonderful

  • *Fool, not "thisfool".. Sorry bout that. mixed some names up. Seriously though, check out Fool's work. It's totally awesome.

  • ..I cant believe pixel powerhouses like "Thisfool" "badassBill" and the myriad bamfs of pixelly-goodness from pixel-joint haven't been mentioned. Many of the users at Pixel-Joint are amongst the BEST of the BEST in this whole art-style! Many, like Artooi, famous for the game "Zero The Kamikaze Squirrel" are residents there. As a pixel-artist myself, I'm insulted by this.

  • You know what bugs the shit outta me? All these people making this crappy ISO-style pixelart, it all looks the fucking same!! I hate it!!

  • Demoscene?

    

  • This was really good. Now I want links to ALL of those artists and videos!

  • Hmm I found this really interesting to watch, thanks :D

  • what is the track in the outro?

  • I wonder how some of these guys feel about the new Tron..so, so shiny..so shiny

  • Always glad to see the other Pixel Artists out there.

  • i don't like pixelart because it's old, i didn't even live when the first games where released.

  • the ending scene is so beautiful!

  • they didnt show "out of this world" and not a single mention of Minecraft!!!

  • That was really cool! Thanks for posting. :3

    However, I can't get over the fact he did this whole thing and never once mentioned Cave Story! D:

  • @emazinglyemi That's because he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just a couple of hipsters trying to colonize another obscure medium.

  • Great short documentary

    Thanks for you for posting :D

  • This is touching.

  • Why isn't this talking at all about the golden age of pixel art, the 16-bit era, when all the really amazing stuff was made. "first there were these NES games and you couldn't tell what anything was and then the indie scene rediscovered it 200 years later!". And it doesn't even interview any good (or even decent) pixel artist. I wish someone who actually knows their shit would make a pixel art documentary.

  • Rohrer is fucking painful.

  • hmm pixels are created digitally, but when miyamoto was thinking how to make super mario he drew them on paper first, so tbh you can make pixel art with out a computer, you can draw a grid and use shading or colours for different pixels, i mean im doing that right now im my fine arts class, im looking at miyamoto and what motivated him into making the characters that he made and why he made them

  • @lisn92 It's no longer made using pixels. Like if you draw a picture of a stone statue it isn't made of stone. That stuff is a extension of pixel art, which I do find really awesome though. Miyamoto made Mario the way he is because of pixels, not because he likes the blocky asthetic, he didn't have a choice.

  • Just a bunch of hipsters with the wrong ideas about everything liking something only because they think it's old.

  • It reminded me of xkcd comic xkcd.com/598/

  • the sentiment in this doc was a little over the top. but please stop misusing/overusing the word 'hipster'. it's about as annoying as someone using the word 'artsy'. total over-generalization/mis-catego­rization.

  • I love pixel art. Brilliant docu, although i wasn't always able to understand what he said.

  • This is really impressive. You go into a lot of detail of an intricate but overlooked style of expression. Thanks for presenting such a brilliant view on pixel art!

  • boriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing

  • brazil

    

  • i really loved this, thank you

  • Awesome... I just found out a lot of new things yet I grew up in this era. Pixel music ! I'm going to go look online now for songs!

  • @AngelinaGDu

    You mean chiptunes or chip music? :)

  • 10:15

    can anyone tell me wat that is?

  • This is bad ass dude. 

  • awesome

  • Pixel Art != Low Res Stylization.

  • @Savaril ha ha, programmer lol

  • 1920 by 1080? holy shiiittt

  • Game poems piss me off

  • hey man, nice work. I really enjoyed this.

  • i liekey ^_^

  • this was amazing.

  • This was awesome! Good work!

  • After watching this video IM BUYING 3-D DOT GAME HEROES GO PIXELS!

  • whoa, other people are pissing on this thing in the comments too, and I feel badly--I'll now point out that I liked the documentary (mostly)

  • way to end with an image of voxels, pixel art documentary

  • I pretty much agree with the entirety of this video.

  • Nicely done.

  • Pretty nice, but why didn't you talk to any pixel artists?

    What you're talking about here is really only one pretty small aspect of pixel art (indie developers using it because of nostalgia or because it's easy to produce passable art this way).

    Also, Rohrer must have had the world's worst TV back then. Playing old games on a CRT isn't like he describes it at all.

  • @J0cked Rohrer's description matched my experience... mostly. The part about the effect on the gamer of going from a TV to an emulator did, anyway. The part about not being able to distinguish the fairy's arm from her head solely because of the TV's blurriness... not so much. But anyhow, all the TVs' images I knew as a kid were blurry compared to a perfectly crisp rectangular grid, and that was certainly important. I still prefer to play old games on a TV, for that reason.

  • what is the game at 10:15 ? I looks amazing and I would love to play it

  • @justanotherpatriot Look up "sword & sworcery ep". It's in development.

  • perhaps go to pouet.net and get another perspective on oldskool computer art and it's origins

  • Very moving documentary! Though the idea that the games that shaped my child hood were in fact crappy seemed absurd at first, the realisation that the emotion and stage of my life factored into the enjoyement of the experience, I've always been a believer that game play is the most important, though if given the choice between two very playable games, I will choose the one with the most realistic graphics. Which was a mindset I held throughout my years as a teen. Nowadays I'm rethinking the rule

  • The haiku of the visual arts.

  • Fantastic documentary. Do you mind if I embed this on my indie studio's website?

  • Wow. That made me horny.

  • Nostalgic....  Thanks...

  • I thought this was going to be more about modern isometric-style pixel art rather than some artsy retrospective

  • At 6:10, you actually couldn't have spelled "architecture" - as in 'Frchitecure in Helsinki' - any worse if you'd tried.

  • @videonasty89 Well, I'm sure glad that you obviously got the point of the film.

  • @AnimusBehemoth Aha, I was just taking a stab at him. I saw a heap of other people commenting similar things, and thought I'd pretend to be a nuisance.

  • Epic.

  • totally awesome video.

  • whats it at 10:14 ?

  • Super Mario All Stars in 1983 !??!!? Think not!

  • Comment removed

  • Rohrer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Calling CRT’s “blurry” and saying nothing about the effect of scanlines? Ignoring the fact that manuals such as Super Mario Bros. and Zelda had blown-up pixelicious images of the enemies and items? Ugh.

    This is a bunch of hipsters trying to appropriate a style so they can artwank about the "essence" or "meaning" of the pixel or whatever.

  • @salient47

    More wrong ideas in this video: "pixel art" = "low res," "simple," or "abstract." The false distinction between "created digitally" vs. "created by hand." The implication that you can't be blown away by incredibly detailed pixel art. Of course, this isn't helped by using Rohrer's ugly stuff instead of an awesome example like Shatterhand, Metal Slug, or pretty much any 2D fighting game.

  • @salient47 It's true, they ignored some aspects.

  • @salient47 jason rohrer = hipster? lol.

    everything that rohrer stands for is kind of the opposite of hipster, man.

  • @salient47: it's vga crt's that are blurry at lower res. same reason lcd's are blurry when they are not at their native resolution.

    I hooked up my old commodore 128 to a monochrome monitor from the time and MAN was that sharp. Way crisper than my lcd and much brighter too.

    Its not the blocky pixels that people go on about, it's the phosphor glow, scanline texture that make it look great.

    Check this one out on vector.. O M F G.. nuclear !

    youtube .com / watch?v=-GD2dZ4jYtU

  • @salient47 He also isn't mentioning the fact that CRT screens were lower scale thus the screen wasn't as stretched as it is on emulators... this is why there are many filters and blending options that he never mentioned. if you can see the individual pixels in a game you are doing it wrong.

  • I published this video on the Dutch website WELSTIJL (28 may) Kind regards Sem Mallée

  • I can't believe they spoiled Passage. That game needs to be played, not watched.

    That aside, this is a great documentary, and I really enjoyed watching it.

  • Great train of thoughts. The game Minecraft should realy be mentioned in here ^^

  • wow this was so cool, I love it.

  • As a film critic and film reviewer... this brings me back to my old school gaming days. I love it!

  • sorry, but I couldn't read what is written at 10:13 . great video!

  • good work

  • hey can someone tell me what the clip is from with the guy walking across the water with the moon in the background, it looks incredible.

    great vid btw

  • This was a great listen, thanks for making this @lavalevel!

  • does anyone know the song from 8:53-9:53?

  • ME RIKEY THIS WIDDEO.

  • Junior Senior's Move Your Feet was from 2002, not 2006. Reading comments, I see this wasn't the only mistake in dates.

  • maaaaaaaaaaan, when i saw Only In Dreams i thought of weezer

  • look at the dumpster at 6:14 wtf

  • Awesome, and full of references for even more awesomeness

  • well done.

  • Sosiological study of gaming would be the specific study of these thing

  • Pardon me, I believe this script is specific art studies in the university. .

  • great video :)

  • interesting video, thanks for this look at pixels, and people are ding with them still today, pixel art, is kinda a lost form of art, but it's nice to see people still using them

  • Ah, what a great video! I miss the old days.

  • This really moved me. It brought back memories from my childhood, which I haven't thought of for years.

    Thank you, Simon.

  • @aLbii666

    Same here. Great video.

  • Saw this on Pixeljoint. Fantastic.

  • Pixel is the real art of games !

  • a playlist with all the pixel art videos featured in this doc can be found on my channel

  • fantastic documentary man definitely makes me feel right at home <3

    I love those chiptunes and pixel art...

  • I know for me personally, my love of pixel art is mostly due to nostalgia, however, I think it's possible that it will have an appeal all of its own as an art to those who will not have lived in the pixel era. I have told people for years that portrait painting did not go away when photography came around in reference to 2D animation vs 3D. I think the same can be said of pixel art.

  • @LadyElfie I asked all my interviewees if they think it has value to people not familiar. They all gave a similar response and speculated it would never die out. It will be interesting to see what happens when we get some new screen tech that makes pixels close to obsolete.

  • I'm in the neutral zone on 2D and 3D... I know I've grown up with 2D and played it until PS1 time and the Orignal Xbox, it's just time to move on... A little fact here: Do you want to see a 8-16 bit explosion or a 3D explosion where the true color is... Not bashing on it... But it's what "realism" is bout... =\

  • this is GREAT. thank you so much

  • Pretty cool

  • haha, glad i'm not the only one to be reminded of pointillism when i see pixilated images with a limited pallet.

  • cool video! like venturing thru memory lane... I remember the first time I had played mario & pacman.... :D

  • Comment removed

  • bunch of hipsters

  • Beautifully done.

  • When the first 3d consoles were released,like ps one saturn etc, some wise guys in a couple of game magazines was saying that the 2ds are dead! Well in the way i see it they are not,in fact they grow in houndreds of newer versions of 2d games other with polygons and others with clasic sprites.Like megaman 9-10.The 2ds are never gonna die.....NEVER and this is because those were the games that have started all,golden ages was named,those old days!

  • One of my fav indie devs right now is Hard-Circle. These guys do some really wicked pixel work. Check out there games. I hope to see more from them.

  • beautifull T_T

  • Decent documentary. Didn't overstay its welcome.

  • Very interesting thank you very much for your work. Sad you didnt get paul robertsons interview, I love his work.

  • Beauty. Really glad I stopped to watch that.

  • History

  • ugh, kinda reeks of doucheness. But in a way, I guess Malevich really did kick it all off.

  • Amazing =) Great work!

  • I'm having a hard time understanding the narrator.

  • @yearofox I'm speaking Latin most of the time.

  • @lavalevel Don't be upset. I didn't knock the vid or anything, just telling you what I thought. I think you sound very monotone and the accent, to my ears, is difficult to understand. I would do that part over, the rest seems spot on.

  • @lavalevel, roflol!

  • Thanks for this video mate.

  • so im using 360 pixwel;s?

  • anything imaginable can be embellished the way this artform was

  • i dont get it

  • The song "only in dreams" by star city secrets at 4:02 is AMAZING

  • INCREDIBLE Documentary. Another internet masterpiece.

  • Pixel art has been around for a while now... and it's on its way too I must say unfortunately... I have inclination that the generation who never knew 8 or 16 bit will come of age and not feel a particular special attachment to the pixel style. I wouldn't be surprised if lo-res 3D is experimented with.

  • @thejobloshow I have agree with you on this one. The newer generation growing up with the Playstation 3 or even 2 I don't think care that much About the history of gaming or were it came from

  • Fucking WIN