The horizontal axis indicates the “retro/future” spectrum and the vertical the “high-bit/low-bit” one. What species of pixel art exist specifically? IGN Japan’s vice editor-in-chief IMAI Shin tries to classify pixel arts in modern games using a two-dimensional graph with two axes ( *1). Still, images that satisfy these conditions are of great variety because pixel art has its sub-categories just as most other art genres. Put briefly, a pixel art is a picture that consists of a set of constituents each of which is distinguishable by a naked eye, square-like shaped, equal to each other in size, and arranged in a square grid, where a slight change in constituents tends to result in a significant change in what is depicted. I proposed a formal definition of pixel art in the previous part. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (Superbrothers and Capybara Games, 2011) Pixel Arts Vary The second part shows a variety of pixel art and considers its diversity in terms of an art-historical notion: style. In this article series, we introduce the features and attractiveness of pixel art as a form of representation, including these trends. On the other hand, in recent years, its characteristics has been widely accepted as a distinctive graphic style that is “old yet new” in a way. The term “pixel art” may imply retro game graphics as it was the mainstream of video game graphics from the 1970s to the 1990s. Pixel art ( dotto-e in Japanese) is a form of visual representation.

8 bit art view point