Animation Art From Pencil To Pixel

[Torcuato Agravante]

Scribblemaniac already mentioned how you can work in Pencil2D to consider these artistic limitations. Anti-aliasing can be turned off in the mentioned tools (Pen tool). In the next version the grid size has been lowered to allow 1x1 pixel size visualization as well.

Vectors are almost never used for pixel art or pixel animations. I mean it even has pixel in the name! Even if you have the option to turn antialiasing off for vector strokes (which most applications do not), then it is still very difficult to have the fine control over each pixel that is needed. What you posted is not what I would consider pixel art at all, it is merely aliased. You could definitely draw what you posted with the pen and bucket tools on a bitmap layer.

The game was made in 1993, the technology that was available in that year was limited when compared to now. Sure, it was advanced when compared to say, 1983, when primitive methods of making hand-drawn animation on a computer was around. But back in 1983, the drawings were still done on paper as it was normal back then, then the drawings were scanned into the computer and colored in. One of the first TV shows to use this primitive process was the last two seasons of The Jetsons, which was broadcasted in 1985. Hanna-Barbera was pretty cutting-edge back then when it came to television.

The cutscenes from CD-I Link on the other hand have a much higher resolution hence larger screen size than the Link sprites in the game itself, resulting in much greater detail of the characters, backgrounds and props, like this:

But I just want to experiment with making animation like this because I think it would be in some ways easier than usual animation process done by most professional studios and even ametuer filmmakers. I will definitely give Pixelorama a shot. It looks good to me.

When talking about pixel art there are many schools of thought and ideas, but most artists consider pixel-art to be what I described before, which is an intentional raster drawing with limited colors, and purposefully placed pixels on the screen from scratch.

Each person that creates artwork will have their opinions forged by experience or acquired knowledge, but at the end of the day what matters is that these kinds of discussions where opinions and facts are mixed together are not to be taken personally.

Related to the confusion from our comments, I for example have a miscommunication problem in real life. I tend to provide too many ideas at the same time, assuming people can understand them, and without proper context or speech regulation people tend to misunderstand me pretty quickly and I have to re-explain myself or clear up confusion after confusion, so perhaps your comment on vector after we were taking about raster was misunderstood like that.

I am not offended either. I also only claimed that I did not consider them pixel art. You can call it whatever you want but I have not changed my mind. Just because an image is composed of pixels (as in all bitmap images), or that the pixels are visible (as in aliased lines), does not make it pixel art in my opinion. Wikipedia has a pretty good definition for pixel art:

Although the definition of the medium is not concrete, the majority of pixel artists agree that an image can be categorized as pixel art when the artist is manipulating the image with deliberate control over the placement of each individual pixel. When purposefully editing in this way, changing the position of a few pixels can have a drastic effect on the image.

I am attempting to make a pixel animation in Blender (not voxel). I have attempted to use the square brush, but for some strange reason, it spaces out the squares. I don't intend to use the Grease Pencil effect Pixelate, for I want to have direct control over everything. I think that the square brush with spacing and no rotation would work fine, but I've encountered this problem:
If anyone knows how to fix this problem, or has a better solution for making pixel art, I would really appreciate it!

Producer Tom Bancroft, who worked as a Disney animator for many years, talks about the making of his new documentary, which looks at the Disney renaissance of the 1990s and the changes wrought by the rise of CG.

From the late 1980s through the late 1990s, Walt Disney Animation Studios was at the forefront of a boom in 2D animated features that rivalled its golden and silver eras of the 1930-40s and 1950s-60s, respectively. Landmark films produced during this time included The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Mulan, and Tarzan. This flowering of traditional animation was soon eclipsed by the advent of CG, more specially, 3DCG, leading not only to a major change in the aesthetics of theatrical animated features, but also to a major upheaval in the careers and lives of the 2D artists who had helped bring those seminal films to the screen.

Among those who were directly affected by the paradigm shift was Tom Bancroft, the producer of a new documentary, Pencils vs Pixels producer, who worked as an animator at Disney for 12 years. For the past seven years or so, Bancroft, co-director Phil Earnest, and producer/co-director/writer Bay Dariz have been working on the film that explores the Disney renaissance and its upending by the computer animation revolution that followed. The film, which premiered at Annecy this past June, is both a celebration of the unique magic of 2D hand-drawn animation, and a sometimes dark look at the professional and personal fallout that attended the rise of CG. Narrated by Ming-Na Wen, who voiced the lead character in Mulan, Pencils Vs Pixels features many of the legendary artists who brought these now-classic films to life, including Pete Docter, John Musker, Floyd Norman, Jorge R. Gutirrez, Glen Keane, Tina Price, and Lorna Cook, among others.

Tom Bancroft: I'm a 2D animator from back in the day. I started at Disney in 1989, and I was there for about 12 years. It was sort of the second golden age of Disney feature animation. About 75% of the film concentrates on feature animation, but we also included some interviews with artists who worked on series, because the 90s was also a huge time for TV animation. One of our interviews is with Bruce Smith, who was a feature animator, but also created The Proud Family for Disney television. And we spoke with Alex Hirsch, the creator of Gravity Falls. We had a wonderful interview with him because he's a pretty colorful guy.

TB: Honestly, I don't know any other answer than to say that we made it for ourselves, but also with the knowledge that there were a lot of people that wanted to hear this story. I have over a hundred thousand followers on TikTok, and it's not because I do great dancing or I'm a good-looking guy. It's because I post about 2D animation from the 90s. I show things. I flip my old scenes. And, the hand-drawn art of it, and being able to see it move... it's magic to people.

And, I love that. I mean, that still gets me excited. And everybody we interviewed, that's where their hearts are too. All these older men and women just wanted to talk about what it was like to be a part of that moment, where the whole world thought it was magic and embraced it.

TB: I knew that we were going to get into [unpleasant] subjects, and I get it if they are like, "We don't like to talk about that darker time in our history where we had to lay off a lot of people and completely turn in a new direction with how we make our films." It's not the story they want to tell. Even though we tried to stay very positive with this documentary, there are dark moments. We talk about, "How was it to see all your friends get laid off? How was it to try and reinvent yourself in 2003 or 2005?"

AWN: Were there folks that didn't want to speak to you because they didn't have anything good to say? Or folks that you interviewed and then decided not to include because of what they said?

TB: Well, there's hopes and then there's reality. Obviously I would love the Academy to see it. I'd love for it to have a chance at an Oscar nomination. But I don't know if it's that kind of documentary. Walt Disney Family Museum is very interested in screening it, so I might pursue that. But of course we want to get it on a streamer, and we have a distributor that's pursuing that.

TB: Our partners over at Hideout Pictures have a whole legal team for that. We have the right to use certain images and certain clips in a certain format. You don't even have to seek permission if you use it just right. Documentaries have a lot more leeway that way. We tried to stay within the fair use guidelines. With some things, reformatting was the key to being able to use them a little better or a little more easily. Fortunately, there were only a few clips that we lost and had to replace.

Directors Bay Dariz and Phil Earnest have assembled generations of animators, film analysts, and admirers to tell the story of how animation has evolved from pencils to pixels. Narrator Ming-Na Wen, the incomparable voice of Mulan, brings a sense of wonder and love to every line she speaks. After a brief introduction, complete with soothing art creation imagery, the audience is plunged into the world of pencil drawings and meets the MVPs of the industry. Artists and historians such as Glen Keane, James Baxter, Pete Docter, Leonard Maltin, John Musker, Tony Bancroft, Jorge R. Gutirrez, Tina Price, Lorna Cook, Alex Hirsch, Sergio Pablos, Mark Henn, and more give an inside look at what it felt like as 2D animation went from the spotlight to the background and what the future may hold.

Growing up during the Disney Renaissance, animation has always held a special place in my heart. I used to scribble on any piece of paper I could find, dreaming of one day being an animator. Obviously that didn't pan out for me, but my admiration for the people who bring characters and stories to life has never wavered. It's clear that Dariz and Earnest also have deep respect for this medium as they lovingly traverse the ups and downs of its history. Whether you are an aspiring artist, longtime animator, or just a fan, Pencils Vs Pixels is a fascinating, eye-opening, and passionate look into the world of animation.

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