What is it ?
The way of the pixel art is something designed by hand Pixel by pixel, it's a tedious form of art and is the main way of creating sprites for video games. Pixel art is something that has been used for a fairly long time to create animations and art, and gives everything that 8-bit feel, mainly because (if you noticed) pixel art appears in lost of 8-bit and 16-bit games.
How does it appear in video games
Even though you might think you're too young to remember any games that are of a lower bit. That's no excuse as there are still lots of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit games being released on the PC today that utilize Pixel art to it's full potential. Games such as They bleed pixels, Cave story, Hotline Miami and a -bunch of other random games all use Pixels as they're form of at work in their games, even though some of the games I gave as an example are still incredibly gory; like The bleed pixels and mostly defiantly Miami hotline; a game of act as fast as you can to paint the walls a lovely shade of brain.
Pixel art was never really an art movement, it just kind of waddled along next to computer games and sat down beside it (which makes it more convenient for me) but don't get me wrong there is still about half a-million billion pixel artist on the interwebs to be found. Some good, some much much worse, but still it's a style and a style needs it's artists yet rather give an example of just one artist, I'll just give you lots of examples of pictures of what pixel artists do; draw with pixels (I also give you these pictures because it's way too hard to find out where the pictures came from, lazy-ness a-hoy).
Black and white
What is it?
Black and white art is a type of art that is (most of the time) completely deprived of any other color besides the shades themselves. By most of the time I mean sometimes you can have a very fetching shade of grey in there somewhere and on violent occasions red, lots and lots of red, thank you Madworld. The style is meant to give the picture or game an artistic and moody feel.
How does it appear in video games?
Try your best to think of a black and white game right now, go on try. Hard snit it ? because when you get right down to it the amount of black and white games in mainstream media is very few and far between. Mainly because black and white games are normally there for art instead of a game, which is disappointing really as you can do allot with black and white in a video game but everyone chooses not to. I'll give you a list of some games that are in black and white: Madworld, Limbo, Vigil: Blood Bitterness and I'm sure there's more but black and white 2 is making the Google searching really hard, but you get the jist, there really isn't too many and I doubt there ever will be, so you'd better enjoy them now. And with the depressing end to that sentence that segways me beautifully into the art portion of this post, Pretty much every artist ever has done some form black and white painting, drawing, photograph or whatever so lets talk about Picasso's black and white pictures that he had for a black and white exhibit one time. All it really did was put his works as if they had been photocopy'd, amazing right ?
Manga
What is it ?
Manga is a type of Asian art (not to be confused with Anime, although go right a-head there's not that much difference and no-one really cares) which came from a type of western art before being modified, giving the characters larger eyes and smaller faces. This type of Art is probably most popular in japan and has proven time and time again that 90% of people who don't live in japan, Think that's all that japan is, which is very clever of them to do so. Manga is a good style to fall back onto for the world of fantasy in video games, often being used for the style more than any other art form. That just means they give the characters pointy ears and funny hats and proclaim it to fantasy.
How does it appear in video games?
The Manga art style brings it's uguu face into the world of gaming mostly commonly through the world of fantasy, some which are good (first Final Fantasy's), some which are really bad (the new Final Fantasy's) and some which are mixed in opinion that you'll never know (Kingdom hearts). The thing about Manga is even though it try's to be it's own thing, it really will only ever stay as a style, more often then not a manga game might come along that wants to be original and it's own thing, but even more often than that it'll just end up copying another game and slapping some skimpy clothing on the protagonist to keep the nerds from realizing.
I'll give you a hint on some pretty good Manga/ Anime games to play, and those hints will be in the form of a list telling you which ones to play. And here they are: Final Fantasy (any of them before 12. In-fact just go play 7-8-9), Every disgaea game, Recettear was fun and then just go and pick and choose between whatever you want and see what turns up best. You might be surprised.. might. I'm not even going to go into the art for manga as there is simply too much, I can however show you some studio ghibli, probably the best producer of anime movies in the world, as they use the Manga style to create amazing fantasy settings and characters, if you've never seen said movies do yourself a favor and go and watch some. Just in-case you were wondering the studio ghibli was founded in 1985 after the very popular release of nausicaa of the valley of the wind (which isn't a ghibli film as it was out before the studio) Their first film was Castle in the sky released in 1986 and is still one of ghibli's most popular films.
Gothic
What is it?
Gothic is a style that originated in France in the medieval times, It started out as mainly sculptures and designs for buildings (mainly churches) and had it's fair share of paintings later on, but when people say Gothic they're normally referring to the architecture and mainly how dark it is. And how it mostly uses pictures of religion to creep me out.
How does it appear in video games?
Covering this topic isn't gonna be as easy as it was for all the others, as there's pretty much no games that just use the Gothic style to play off: Gothic, there I named one, I couldn't really find another, but however the power of horror games came to the rescue yet again and showed me the use of Gothic architecture in their games. A good example Is amnesia: the dark descent, as it's many walls and rooms and covered with gothic style architecture and paintings in the style (if everyone suffered from a horrible facial deformity). I'll try and say some games I've come across that are Gothic, but don't expect too many: Gothic, Medievil, Eternal poison and that's about all I got with Gothic games, that doesn't stop the style form being used though, which is good. The architecture began in around the mid 1200's and all 'pretty' paintings creeped along with it, The art would normally depict some act of god, or a picture of god, or something relating to religion which would of been fun. An example of a Gothic painter would be a lovely French man under the name of Enguerrand Quarton, who was apparently way too lazy to make more then six pictures and apparently too cheap to get them to be protected somehow as only two survived. These two french pictures are called "La Pietá de Villeneuve-lés-Avignon" which I can only roughly assume translates to; "Jesus gets knee dropped by a nun"
and the other is La vierge de miséricorde de la famille Cadard, which must be some kind of early version of snow white and the 13 dwarfs. These pictures have a distinct look about them non the less, and you can see how Gothic art got the way it did by today's standards.
Exaggeration
(Last one now)
What is it?
Exaggeration is a style that can quiet certainly be linked with cartoons, although it's not always the case with things sometimes taking a more quote on quote "realistic" look to it. Exaggeration is found quite allot of video games some relatively old some not, but either way the style is popular, even I make things in it. But that's a long and exciting story for another day.
How does it appear in video games?
The style of exaggeration has appeared in lots and lots of video games as of today, some you might of noticed, some you might just think it's o'-natur-al for an army man's arms to be bigger than his thighs, but either way we're gonna explore how it's in our games, starting with; how it's in our games. Exaggeration is something that's been in video games since video games got their characters for their video games, lets take an example and say someone like Dr Robotnik from Sonic the hedgehog, he's fat so by exaggeration logic he is there for; a ball. Or lets take a more recent game, a quote on quote "realistic" game like I was talking about; Gears of war, they all obviously are in the military and abuse steroids so there for they are; Huge. You can see where exaggeration kicks in, there are some games where it's very apparent and some where it's not, like I said, so here's a handy dandy list: Sonic games, Gears of war, Physconaughts, Team fortress 2, Bayonetta and about a million billion more +1, far too many to cover in one list, but why not do what I do when I don't have enough information ? Google it ~!. And as a result of Googling it I found some caricatures, caricatures, in-case you didn't know, are an incredibly cartoon version of a person and these date back to as far as history as had important people, some have even been found scratched onto walls in ruin's of accident cities. A man called Honoré Daumier is said to be the farther of caricatures, as he made quite a considerable amount of them in his life, they made fun of royals, events and normal day to day things and were published by a french newspaper in the late great 1800's
And there we go that's where art babies come from in video games, I hope you've learnt something from all this, if not go back and read it again until you can say it backwards. Then impress no-one with the new found ability. Make it so number 1.
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