Talk:Pixel art

Major Reconstruction (Starting on May 2022)

This article presents a multitude of fundamental issues; From the way it's categories are organized, to the incorrect style, prose and focus. Most of the images are not representative of the topic, there is a severe lack of citations and scarcity of reliable sources, there are random mentions to completely niche examples and a multitude of redundant information that is already covered in other pages.

I'm starting a major reconstruction to solve all of these issues, so the page may change drastically during the coming weeks, or even months. Any help is appreciated, specially with citations and references, since most of the problems outlined are a consequence of user generated content that isn't reliably sourced.

List of major issues:

• Lack of focus on the main subject (Pixels as an art form, not Pixels themselves or niche technological details. That is already covered in Pixels)
• Unnecessary focus on history, when there is already an extensive article covering computer graphic's history. The section should focus the history of Pixels as an art form, not of all computer graphics in general (Thus, it should be expected to be considerably smaller)
• Lack of information on actual unique and fundamental aspects of it, particularly in the Techniques and Uses sections.
• The page's format and style is inconsistent within itself, and with Wikipedia's own guidelines.
• Lack of proper citation and proof of relevance for most items in the Software list.
• Lack of proper citation and proof of relevance of the entire communities section.
• The page should probably have a much bigger focus on the use of Pixel art in video games, as that has been its primary function since the very beginning. It currently doesn't even have a section outlined for it.
• Most images are not representative of Pixel art as a whole, and they lack in quality.
• The article needs a decent thumbnail image that actually represents the subject and what people associate to it.

This section may be updated as these issues are resolved and new ones arise.

Note: I have archived all previous conversations as most of them are ancient, and don't even apply to the current state of the article. The ones that do apply will soon become addressed since the issues they rise are contained within this reconstruction project anyway. Consider this as a summary of all the tasks at hand.

ReffPixels (talk) 18:08, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikiproject Visual arts

I have updated the quality assestment in the WikiProject Visual Arts of this page to a C as of 26th May 2022. discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Visual_arts#Pixel_Art_reconstruction

ReffPixels (talk) 10:10, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

September Reconstruction

I have continued Reffpixel's work of reconstructing the pixel art page, hopefully in a satisfactory manner. I am currently working on the following

• Adding to and rewriting History section
• Rewriting Technique section
  • Placement of 2x1 lines and fading lines etc is extremely specific and not of the interest to the average reader.
  • The Technique section should focus on giving the reader a basic, fundamental understanding of how pixel artists work, inspired by Wikipedia articles describing other art forms.
• Removing problematic sections
  • Scaling - Very specific and uninteresting to the average reader trying to understand what pixel art is.
  • Uses - Overlaps with history and probably doesn't need its own section. What are the "uses" of any art form?
  • Pixel artists - Overlaps with introduction, Overview, History and Technique. Contains a lot of irrelevant and problematic facts, like pixel art in digital forensics.
  • List of 10 best-selling pixel art video games - Should be a separate page. Pixel art is more than video games.
• Adding sections describing different approaches to pixel art (1) and central characteristics of pixel art (2), in order to differentiate between all the different types of pixel art and give a better understanding of the fundamental principles.
• Adding pictures according to Fair Use so they don't get removed by bots.

Interlinkedcels (talk) 13:03, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

@Interlinkedcels Agreed to all of this, and cheers for the excellent work you have been doing. The only detail I want to mention is that the Scaling section should probably be split into its own article (Perhaps "Pixel Art Algorythms") as there is sufficient reliable sources to build its own page, and a lot of content that could be tied into it with more recent developments in software. All of that definitely doesn't belong here in the pixel art article, but it shouldn't simply be deleted. ReffPixels (talk) 15:17, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Reff!

I've now gone and updated the article further. Adding most of the stuff I wanted to add and bringing the pictures back with fair use templates. I hope they're not removed again because I missed something.

I also spent some time going through the Scaling, Pixel artists and Uses sections and honestly I didn't find too many reliable sources. Pixel Artists had a large number of sources, but most of it turned out to be junk (IMO) and/or irrelevant stuff for a pixel art article. The most promising found was "Pixel art for game developers" by Daniel Silber, which I have now ordered.

The Scaling section had zero references and I personally think that a technical explanation of how nearest-neighbor interpolation algorithm works is pretty irrelevant to the average person trying to understand pixel art. If you strongly disagree with this, by all means revert what I've done (edit war!!!). I just figured that the scaling section was pretty specific and lacked any references, so I removed it.

Fortunately, everything I've deleted is still preserved in earlier versions of the article, so if I've thrown the baby out with the bath water in some instances, it's easily fixed.

I also removed the warning from the top of the page. At this point, I feel like the article is sufficiently decent that we don't need a huge red warning. It's not as disorganized as it was 6 months ago. Agree / disagree? Interlinkedcels (talk) 17:19, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

@Interlinkedcels Agreed with everything, fantastic work! It's amazing how much you've done, and you should definitely be proud of it. It's a much smoother read than it was months ago.

Cheers! ReffPixels (talk) 15:32, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

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