Pixel art

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From a hardware point of view, both of these images are made of pixels as they are electronic images. But in the image on the left, the individual squares that make up the character are so large that they can be easily distinguished by the naked eye. The image on the left is therefore considered pixel art.

Pixel art^{[note 1]} is a form of digital art drawn with graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block.^[2] It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers, arcade machines and video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as LED displays and graphing calculators, which have a limited number of pixels and colors available.^[3] The art form is still employed to this day by pixel artists and game studios, even though the technological limitations have since been surpassed.^[3][4]

Most works of pixel art are also restrictive both in file size and the number of colors used in their color palette for reasons such as software limitations, to achieve a certain aesthetic, or to reduce the perceived noise. Older forms of pixel art tend to employ smaller palettes, with some video games being made using just two colors (1-bit color depth). Because of these self-imposed limitations, pixel art presents strong similarities with many traditional restrictive art forms such as mosaics, cross-stitch, and fuse beads.^[2]

There is no precise classification for pixel art, but an artwork is usually considered as such if deliberate thought was put into each individual pixel of the image. Standard digital artworks or low-resolution photographs are also composed of pixels, but they would only be considered pixel art if the individual pixels were placed with artistic intent, even if the pixels are clearly visible or prominent.

The phrases "dot art" and "pixel pushing" are sometimes used as synonyms for pixel art, particularly by Japanese artists. The term spriting sometimes refers to the activity of making pixel art elements for video games specifically. The concept most likely originated from the word sprite, which is used in computer graphics to describe a two-dimensional bitmap that can be used as a building block in the construction of larger scenes.

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