Hey guys, at the moment i am putting a lot of time into learning pixel art, it’s super fun and i am slowly starting to get the hang of it. What i need though is great examples of different styles of pixel art over the years, starting from Atari 2600 and up through today. Anyone? 
This is a nice pixel art forum. You might have better luck with your question there.
http://pixelation.org/index.php
http://pixelation.org/index.php?topic=3467.0
Thank you, will check it out!
Off the top of my head…
- Isometric (see Jungle Strike or Battletech for sega genesis)
- Cutesy (See starbound)
- Anime-inspired (see Momodora, VA-11 Hall-A)
- Anime-inspired realistic (see Komajou Densetsu II stranger’s requiem)
- Super retro (See original Super mario bros)
- Vector inspired (see Flashback fro Sega Genesis).
- Nes inspired. (see Super-contra for NES or MetalMech)
Basically…
Style depends on:
- Resolution.
- Proportions (chibi/cartoon or realistic)
- Number of colors in palette (could be as low as 2 or 4, and can go up to 256)
- Visual style when it is discernable (realistic, anime, vector-based, etc).
- Point of view (top, side, isometric, or tilted)
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In my opinion, I would personally study games from the 8/16bit era, and especially Japanese games - I personally think that they really mastered that art back in the 1980s and especially the 1990s imho. I would also analyze why they picked some design choices - for instance, I’ve always been amazed by early Japanese RPGs and the use of the technique we now commonly call ‘Chibi’. Look at Dragon Quest, early games used to draw stick figures for characters (there’s so much you can put in a 8x8 or 16x16 sprite after all, so one or three pixels for a head sounded fair), but Dragon Quest characters had a Chibi design with distorted proportions and large heads, just so they could convey more personality and emotions. So thinking about the reasons behind a design can also be very important. Sorry, I don’t want to advertise my website, but check out http://www.videogameden.com, I have thousands of screenshots there from Japanese games going from the PC Engine, Famicom and Super Famicom. Maybe you’ll also find examples there you may want to study 
Good deal @Arowx posted some.
I just logged in to say I’m not sure what you’re after really because a simple search at Google, etc will give you all of the answers you need.
In this GDC 2016 talk, Mark Ferrari discusses and demonstrate some of his techniques for drawing 8 bit game graphics, including his celebrated methods for use of color cycling and palette shifting to create complex and realistic background animation effects without frame-animation.
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Just watched this one the other day. Great talk.
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The color cycling was very nice. I miss the days of indexed colors where that stuff could be done so easily and quickly. Just change the active palette colors and instantly every instance of that color index on screen was updated. I guess maybe it can be done these days with shaders or brute force I don’t know but misses the simplicity of the old days.
I made pixel art with DPaint back in the day (SNES and Genesis, even did some work on the BattleTech game mentioned above) and yeah, watching that video brought back some nice memories.
There’s something to be said about having limitations versus being able to do pretty much anything. It greatly enhances creativity, and I’ve been trying to bring a little bit of that back in my own new projects lately.
And damn, Mark Ferrari is an amazing artist. Absolutely awesome.
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That’s awesome. I was in game dev back then but again as a hobbyist. The only commercial game dev work I did was on the PC in Direct X technology back around 2001 or so as a contractor. All programming work. But yes I miss those times. And actually many times when I make graphics stuff today I think in those terms still. Like the 3D game project I worked on in Unity I intentionally chose shades of colors for the walls, etc as if I was using color cycling for the movement. Because I remembered long ago doing it. Was the very easy way to simulate 3D (and the only way to really do it at all to actually be playable). You could even do turns that way. Obviously in a very limited manner had to really plan everything out but still that was a big part of the fun.
I agree with you. I think being able to just do anything so easily these days limits creativity although it seems illogical. Just the way it is. Working within constraints breeds creativity.
Deluxe Paint was so popular. I don’t think I ever had that on the Amiga I actually went with what I thought was an absolutely awesome paint program. It’s crazy but I still remember it to this day. Personal Paint by Cloanto.
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That sounds like a cool approach to take. What was the project?
I’ve been playing around with 2D game ideas lately and decided to use GameMaker to do them in. Been using Unity since 2009 and I’m so comfortable with it I thought it would be good for my creative flow to use something totally different.
We used PC DPaint at the studio for game dev and, if I recall correctly, I had it on my Amiga before then. I know I had some graphics program on it because I did graphics (and mod tracking) in the demo scene for a bit. Pretty sure it was DPaint. Getting harder to remember those fuzzy details nowadays, haha. Personal Paint was one I never got to try but I remember seeing it in magazines.
Yes I’ve seen that before, the color palette cycling is insane
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For the record, the single greatest pieces of pixel art in all of human history are:
Street Fighter 3 (Arcade)
Metal Slug (NEO GEO)
Symphony of the Night (PSX)
Prince of Persia (DOS)
Little Samson (NES)
Punch Out (NES)
Secret of Mana 2 (SNES)
Breath of Fire 3 and 4 (PSX)
Pitfall (2600)
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