/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3768860
>>3768860
It's not about the screen res, it's about image res. In early city buidling sims, it's mostly pixel art, because houses were tiny sprites, less than 32x32 px. Bit depth wasn't there yet to guarantee smooth anti-aliasing, too.

As for where to draw the line, I think that by definition, "pixel" art needs to be pixelated. It should present limits for artwork. Picrelated is the best example which comes to mind.

This is why SD style was so popular in NES times: with gigantic heads, you could actually draw meaningful expressions and detail on characters' faces. Having 3 pixels to draw an eye instead of 0,5 pixels to do it presented quite an advantage. Think of Castlevania, on the other hand. Not only the character had no face, the outline of his body was also weird brown.

I think when it comes to the point where you can freely draw gradients, irregular shapes, eyes and facial features without any tricks, the artwork slowly goes out of pixel art territory. And also, I think it should be specifically drawn in low res to qualify. Just taking a photo of Schwarzenegger and downscaling it while reducing it to 4 colors is not "art".