Aliasing pixel_art → pixel_(artwork)
Link to alias

Reason:

Surprisingly they both have a good bit of things tagged on them.

An implication to digital_media_(artwork) might not be a bad idea as well.

Might also implicate aliasing to it

Xch3l said:
Might also implicate aliasing to it

Aliasing isn't always pixel art though. A lot of times it is just a consequence the program/image format you use.

For example I wouldn't call either of these pixel art, but they definitely show aliasing.

post #60100 post #45940

There are also some things that are pixel art but don't actually show aliasing (though there are probably only a few on this site).

post #150216

Derp, I meant the other way around... pixel_(artwork) implies aliasing

parasprite said:
There are also some things that are pixel art but don't actually show aliasing (though there are probably only a few on this site).

post #150216

This kinda makes it a bit difficult, but you can still tell the number of colors and that there are no smoothed out regions (anti-aliasing)

Xch3l said:
Derp, I meant the other way around... pixel_(artwork) implies aliasing

This kinda makes it a bit difficult, but you can still tell the number of colors and that there are no smoothed out regions (anti-aliasing)

That is definitely a better direction to go. I can why this would be true for 99.9% of posts, but I don't spend that much time around pixel art so I'm not sure.

Should all of those even be tagged as pixel art?

Proper pixel art is done manually, pixel by pixel. But posts such as...
post #17676 post #16213 post #393413
...are just low-resolution images that lack anti-aliasing (mostly oekaki).

Genjar said:
Should all of those even be tagged as pixel art?

Proper pixel art is done manually, pixel by pixel. But posts such as...
post #17676 post #16213 post #393413
...are just low-resolution images that lack anti-aliasing (mostly oekaki).

The others may have an argument one way or the other, but the first one definitely no.

Genjar said:
Should all of those even be tagged as pixel art?

Proper pixel art is done manually, pixel by pixel. But posts such as...
post #17676 post #16213 post #393413
...are just low-resolution images that lack anti-aliasing (mostly oekaki).

The first two, no. Those are aliased images. The third one is both pixel_(artwork) and aliased.

Ugh. While the wiki for aliasing is technically correct, any moderately skilled pixel artist can tell you it refers to 'stair-stepping' -- where something that is supposed to be one shape visibly splits into two chunks. uneven blobs as are found in the second thumb above also tend to accentuate aliasing.

By this definition, the book image indeed contains no aliasing; it contains no shapes which can stair-step, except for the single pair of 'arms', which is antialiased. The easy way to tell is: If you had a vector version of the image, would it be clearer, especially when zoomed in? If not, it probably isn't significantly aliased.

I wouldn't generally object to implying aliasing, as a pixel artist -- we try to minimize it but obviously time is limited. Even stuff like this , which is rendered with the absolute maximum of colors manageable (65-odd on that brown bubble IIRC), is still visibly aliased in spots. Partially due to technical limits (no alpha channel), partly cause when you go too far it becomes a smeary mess ;)

On the other hand, you really have to think about what the goal of the aliasing tag is. Do people want to avoid pixel_art / pixel_(artwork) on the basis that it is aliased? If yes, imply it, otherwise don't.

Looking at the current body of stuff tagged aliased, it seems it is overwhelmingly oekaki. There is the occasional tagging of it on an image like post #171940 , which is technically correct but IMO pointless (the original image is high res enough that I find it difficult to imagine people who are avoiding aliased stuff will actually want to avoid that image).

Checking up on stuff tagged pixel_art, most of it is, IMO, not pixel art but oekaki. post #517100 is a clear example of this problem. post #542051 OTOH, while the technique and detail could be improved, is definitely pixel art. There isn't really a hard limit on size or anything, but the larger the dimensions are, the less likely it's pixel art.
Then there's things like post #108166, which are pixel precise but don't seem to contain any technique (you won't see anything interesting if you zoom in, unlike pixel art ).

That got away from me a bit. Anyway, TLDR:

• wiki needs a rewrite
• +1 on the alias, and the implication of digital_media_(artwork) -- it seems an obvious step to take.
• implication of aliased is reasonable IFF people actually want to avoid pixel art because it is aliased, as opposed to because it is pixel art.
• pixel_art / pixel_(artwork) is unreliably tagged, most items are either oekaki or contain no pixel level techniques.
• maybe there is a third, unnamed category here, that is more precise than oekaki, but without the techniques and tight structure that distinguishes pixel art. s-purple's work displays this category pretty much exclusively.

savageorange said:

• wiki needs a rewrite (aliasing)

I actually already knew what aliasing was and I read that and said "what?" out loud. That's probably the least helpful wikipedia copy-paste I've seen so far. The wiki really needs to focus on what is significantly noticeable without zooming in. The purpose is more of a pseudo-"low quality" tag with an objective definition so I don't think pixel art really fits the description well.

Put on my todo list.

• pixel_art / pixel_(artwork) is unreliably tagged, most items are either oekaki or contain no pixel level techniques.

Yeah, I think sorting by anything over 500x500px would be an easy way to weed most of those out. I don't know of another tag other than oekaki though, which has it's own issues.

Keep in mind that colloquially "Pixel art" means the same thing as "8 bit art", "old video games", "deliberate big blocky pixels", and sometimes "really limited color palette", so what is tagged is definitely not going to rely on the actual technique as much as we would like.

It definitely needs a cleanup though. I've got a lot to do over the next couple days unfortunately so I won't be able to get to it right away. If anyone wants to tackle it, go for it.

parasprite said:
I actually already knew what aliasing was and I read that and said "what?" out loud. That's probably the least helpful wikipedia copy-paste I've seen so far. The wiki really needs to focus on what is significantly noticeable without zooming in. The purpose is more of a pseudo-"low quality" tag with an objective definition so I don't think pixel art really fits the description well.

+1

Yeah, I think sorting by anything over 500x500px would be an easy way to weed most of those out. I don't know of another tag other than oekaki though, which has it's own issues.

I propose a few below, but nothing I'm very satisfied with.

Keep in mind that colloquially "Pixel art" means the same thing as "8 bit art", "old video games", "deliberate big blocky pixels", and sometimes "really limited color palette", so what is tagged is definitely not going to rely on the actual technique as much as we would like.

Yeah, for E621's purposes I don't really object that much to tagging eg post #108166 as pixel_art. Although it definitely doesn't have 'deliberate big blocky pixels'.

It is that set of images which have an inconsistent level of pixel-precision, exemplified by s-purple's work, that shouldn't be tagged pixel_art imo: the overall impression is, at least to me, of oekaki with most of the scribbliness polished out, and not of pixel art at all. It's like hard edged color inking, basically. pixel-lite or "oekakillustration" (*cackles fiendishly*).
It's a style that I favor myself, so I hope that we can arrive at some definite conclusion about it.

A way I just thought of to address filtering for size is, on the pixel_(artwork) wiki page, specify that you should usually be able to distinguish individual pixels in the image, and if you cannot distinguish them, upscale it by exactly 2x or 3x with nearest-neighbour filtering. If the result doesn't fit fully on your screen at 100% zoom, the image may not be pixel art but oekaki.
The only obvious exception to this rule is compilation images like post #592956.

I've begun a wiki page for pixel_(artwork), since I noticed neither pixel_art nor pixel_(artwork) had one. It currently includes a basic description and some examples and counter-examples, at various levels of quality, to help people figure out what is and isn't accurate to tag as pixel_(artwork).

It currently references oekaki, which I guess you want to soon alias away to oekaki_(artwork).

A moderately important point : Do we want to propose that normally, pixel art should be uploaded scaled by an integer factor, minimum 2x, and the non-scaled version can then be flagged for merging?
I was only able to properly view some of the examples on the pixel_(artwork) wiki due to having Image Zoom addon installed; requiring this kind of thing to view pixel art as intended seems awkward and unreasonable, I would be surprised if even 1% of viewers are using such an addon.

Excellent work with the cleanup.
I like pixel art, but that tag has been pretty useless lately; had too much generic digital art mixed in.

Though I'd still prefer pixel_art as the main tag. It's the actual term for the style, and pixel_(artwork) makes it sound like it's for all pixelated art. Easy to mix up with aliasing. ...and brackets are a pain to type. :/

Genjar said:
Excellent work with the cleanup.
I like pixel art, but that tag has been pretty useless lately; had too much generic digital art mixed in.

Though I'd still prefer pixel_art as the main tag. It's the actual term for the style, and pixel_(artwork) makes it sound like it's for all pixelated art. Easy to mix up with aliasing. ...and brackets are a pain to type. :/

Yeah, pixel_(artwork) sounds weird.. but OTOH, so does pixel_art_(artwork). Personally I'm firmly behind the idea of _(artwork) tags in general, for consistency's sake.

Is there some reason that you would insist on typing pixel_(artwork), though? If the alias is accepted, you can still continue using pixel_art and get the canonical result, AFAICS.

(maybe we should also have some aliases that allow other _(artwork) tags to be easily inputted. digital_drawing, digital_media ? (these don't currently exist AFAICS))

savageorange said:
Is there some reason that you would insist on typing pixel_(artwork), though? If the alias is accepted, you can still continue using pixel_art and get the canonical result, AFAICS.

Tags that have been aliased away show up black in the tag history, same color as removed tags. It just looks a lot messier, and makes it harder to spot tags that have been removed manually. So I try to avoid using those whenever possible.

savageorange said:

Yeah, for E621's purposes I don't really object that much to tagging eg post #108166 as pixel_art. Although it definitely doesn't have 'deliberate big blocky pixels'.

It is that set of images which have an inconsistent level of pixel-precision, exemplified by s-purple's work, that shouldn't be tagged pixel_art imo: the overall impression is, at least to me, of oekaki with most of the scribbliness polished out, and not of pixel art at all. It's like hard edged color inking, basically. pixel-lite or "oekakillustration" (*cackles fiendishly*).
It's a style that I favor myself, so I hope that we can arrive at some definite conclusion about it.

Pseudo-pixel art is probably fine. We don't know the technical details of how something was drawn most of the time anyways and being loose with the margins will make sorting less tedious to people who are not as knowledgable with the subject.

That being said, I don't know if there's a specific name for art like s-purple's that is both not pixel art and sufficiently different from oekaki.

A way I just thought of to address filtering for size is, on the pixel_(artwork) wiki page, specify that you should usually be able to distinguish individual pixels in the image, and if you cannot distinguish them, upscale it by exactly 2x or 3x with nearest-neighbour filtering. If the result doesn't fit fully on your screen at 100% zoom, the image may not be pixel art but oekaki.
The only obvious exception to this rule is compilation images like post #592956.

Looks like a promising way to spot posts to retag, even if it is a bit technical for a working definition.

I've begun a wiki page for pixel_(artwork), since I noticed neither pixel_art nor pixel_(artwork) had one. It currently includes a basic description and some examples and counter-examples, at various levels of quality, to help people figure out what is and isn't accurate to tag as pixel_(artwork).

It has a lot of good points in there and it's well written but it seems a bit bulky to me. We may might want to consider a bit of trimming for readability. I don't know exactly which bits will be included, but this is what I've come up with based on what you wrote. How does it look to you?

It currently references oekaki, which I guess you want to soon alias away to oekaki_(artwork).

That may work. The only issue is that even on the internet oekaki doesn't really have a standard definition since it really just means sketching (even though the meaning came to be associated with a particular style of digital drawing).

A moderately important point : Do we want to propose that normally, pixel art should be uploaded scaled by an integer factor, minimum 2x, and the non-scaled version can then be flagged for merging?
I was only able to properly view some of the examples on the pixel_(artwork) wiki due to having Image Zoom addon installed; requiring this kind of thing to view pixel art as intended seems awkward and unreasonable, I would be surprised if even 1% of viewers are using such an addon.

Definitely not. For the most part we aren't here to police uploads (leave that to Janitor+). We have art coming from all around, most of which isn't even uploaded by the original artists. Consider that a lot of people will end up scaling the picture with whatever program they happen to have laying around (which will often convert formats, add compression, optimizations, glitches, program-specific quirks, etc.).

The admins would be doing the quality control here, and would need to enforce rules about how to upscale and how not to upscale, which I doubt they are willing to add to their plate, particularly considering pixel art is a very small part of the site.

Genjar said:
Tags that have been aliased away show up black in the tag history, same color as removed tags. It just looks a lot messier, and makes it harder to spot tags that have been removed manually. So I try to avoid using those whenever possible.

It would be really nice to have a different way to display it, that's for sure. It is kind of a jumble to figure out sometimes, even when everything goes right. :/

Edit: Neat, I got noticed by the captcha demon. That probably means I've been sitting down for too long.

parasprite said:
Pseudo-pixel art is probably fine. We don't know the technical details of how something was drawn most of the time anyways and being loose with the margins will make sorting less tedious to people who are not as knowledgable with the subject.

Obviously TWYS forbids that, and that's reasonable. That's why I pointed out specific traits in the examples that showed an absence of pixel-level attention.

That being said, I don't know if there's a specific name for art like s-purple's that is both not pixel art and sufficiently different from oekaki.

Yeah, I just want to make sure that if there is, that we get around to using it.

pixel_(artwork)

post #389220 post #545868

Digital art drawn with attention to every individual pixel, often limited in color count with a blocky appearance and low resolution.

As a rule of thumb, if it's larger than 500x500 (without scaling) and you cannot distinguish each pixel clearly, chances are it's not pixel art.

• Not to be confused with oekaki, which refers to a particular type of drawing that often has aliasing and sketchy lines, usually due to technical limitations of the software used to make it.

See also:

• aliasing
• digital_media_(artwork)
• digital_painting_(artwork)
• low_res - Having a resolution lower than 500x500.
• oekaki - A type of drawing sometimes confused with pixel art.

With most of these wikis I like to assume I am writing for someone who has both no knowledge of the subject (excepting really basic wikis, e.g. the chair wiki) and an attention span of less than 10 seconds. In other words "How can I get the most important points across without confusing or boring someone in around 2-3 sentences max". Not a requirement or anything, it's just how I look at it.

Looks good to me. I'd personally prefer to have at least one counter-example ('you might think this post [thumb] was pixel art, but it's actually ..'), but I appreciate the need to be brief.

Definitely not. For the most part we aren't here to police uploads (leave that to Janitor+). We have art coming from all around, most of which isn't even uploaded by the original artists. Consider that a lot of people will end up scaling the picture with whatever program they happen to have laying around (which will often convert formats, add compression, optimizations, glitches, program-specific quirks, etc.).

Fair enough. That's perfectly possible to be done reliably by the site but as you point out, it's pretty niche.

Perhaps a more reasonable measure would to show an option to cycle through 100/200/300% zoom when (image_w * image_h) < ((screen_w / 3) * (screen_h / 3)). That would have a broader application than just pixel art, hopefully -- I saw a flipnote / oekaki-ish animation when I was looking through pixel_art that I think a lot of people might prefer to zoom.

It would be really nice to have a different way to display it, that's for sure. It is kind of a jumble to figure out sometimes, even when everything goes right. :/

Yeah, maybe we need a distinction between convenience tags, like pixel_art, and just plain incorrect ones, like foxgirl.

There's also the pixel, pixels, pixelated and pixellated tags.
All are a mix of pixel_art, aliasing, mosaic_censorship, compression_artifacts, abstract_background, etc. I don't think those can be aliased anywhere, and some might have to be invalidated.

I did some basic cleanup, but there's still a lot to do.

Genjar said:
There's also the pixel, pixels, pixelated and pixellated tags.
All are a mix of pixel_art, aliasing, mosaic_censorship, compression_artifacts, abstract_background, etc. I don't think those can be aliased anywhere, and some might have to be invalidated.

I did some basic cleanup, but there's still a lot to do.

What about mosaic non-censorship, like this post ? IMO 'pixelated' is the correct tag for that transition. This and this probably warrant pixelated_background. This one seems to warrant both mosaic_censorship and pixelated_background

This post has an artefact type that is not in the above list: upscaling artefacts. It appears to be Lanczos upscaling, therefore it includes both excessive blurring and excessive sharpening. Dunno what tag to use for that, except maybe you_make_pixels_cry.

There is also this , which is sort of .. neither pixel_art nor CG. Some areas have pixel attention, others are really just airbrushblobbed. It's pixelish and CGish but not oekakish. I guess there is the concept of 'hybrid digital'.. but that's pretty vague, so much different stuff goes into digital art that it's not unreasonable to say that most digital art might qualify as 'hybrid'.

This appears to legitimately warrant both pixelated and pixel_art. That will probably apply for any image that mixes resolutions for pixel art like that.

Excellent. Thanks for sorting it out.

savageorange said:
What about mosaic non-censorship, like this post ? IMO 'pixelated' is the correct tag for that transition.

Yep, good point. I can see using the pixelated tag for those. And pixellated could be aliased to that..

This post has an artefact type that is not in the above list: upscaling artefacts. It appears to be Lanczos upscaling, therefore it includes both excessive blurring and excessive sharpening. Dunno what tag to use for that, except maybe you_make_pixels_cry.

Heh. Yeah, that seems to be an upscaled screenshot of one of the DS Spyro games. And, um, someone seems to added a lens glare. (Here's the normal size). Not worth creating a new tag just for that. Compression_artifacts isn't exactly the correct tag for it, but I'm thinking that maybe we should use that one anyway. Because anyone who's blacklisted it probably won't want to see that post either.

Alright, this one was a bit of a mess (and I apologize for mixing things in with pixel_art) but I've made the following changes:

• Mixed in some things like pixel sunglasses and 8-bit characters in with pixel_art, mostly to clear the tags out. Even though we are being pretty loose with the definition of pixel art, adding those in is still pretty questionable.
• Alias: pixel_art -> pixel_(artwork) (OP approved)
• Alias: pixellation -> pixelated (approved)
• Alias: pixelation -> pixelated (approved)
• Alias: pixelated -> pixelated (approved)
• Alias: pixellated -> pixelated (approved)
• Alias: pixel -> pixels_(disambiguation) (pending)
• Alias: pixels -> pixels_(disambiguation) (pending)
• Implication: pixel_(artwork) -> digital_media_(artwork) (approved)
• Implication: pixel_animation -> pixel_(artwork) (approved)
• Implication: pixel_animation -> animated (approved)
• Implication: pixel_censor -> pixellated (pending) - I made this tag as a working group during sorting, but I'm not sure if this fits better under mosaic_censorship.
• Implication: pixel_censor -> censored (pending)
• Implication: 8-bit -> pixel_art (pending) - Not all of this is true pixel art, but it fits well under the tag for the most part. It's kind of a loose tag though and might not be worth the bother.

Tag tree:

• pixel_art - Used loosely for things drawn to look like pixel art. This currently includes true pixel art, psuedo-pixel art, and sprites
• pixel_animation - A tag used for those (usually tiny) pixel animations
• pixel_sunglasses - Probably common enough to use as a tag (probably).
• pixel_censor - I made this tag as a working group during sorting, but I'm not sure if this fits better under mosaic_censorship.
• pixelation - Deliberate distortion of all or parts of an image. Often takes the form of large solid colored pixels.
• pixel_censor (pending implication) - Censorship by pixelation
• 8-bit - Something that loosely fits the definition of pixel_art, but usually includes old or old-style games (among other things).
• compression_artifacts - The distortion created when an image is compressed (resizing may have a similar effect).