I was born in 1985 and grew up with the NES along with all of the relevant consoles after that. Like most people I didn't think about graphics a ton until games entered the realm of 3D. That was a long time ago now, and there's nothing novel about 3D graphics in this day and age. Once a step forward ceases to be novel, people tend to look upon its' predecessor with a less skeptical eye. Combine that with the rise of independent developers, and you have situation ripe for a 2D visual style comeback in gaming. This happened awhile back, and I personally have nothing against 2D games, but I never felt myself excited by the announcement of a new 2D game. I was never one to hate on anything not "realistic".

I loved the animation and style of Wind Waker when it was first released. But when it came to 2D pixel style games, I never could muster much of an appreciation for those kind of graphics, even when stylized well. They're just too similar to the tons of 2D games I played growing up. With that said though, I did think Dead Cells looked pretty nice when I first played that. I guess that is owed to the animation (something that has improved a lot when compared to 2D games of the past).

Now that I'm getting older I'm trying to pursue skills which I either always wanted to give a shot or decided a long time ago I would never bother with. The peak of that impossibility tower lies art. I've always thought it would be cool to be able to draw well, but I couldn't put together a convincing stick figure if pressed to do so. I gave up on it a long time ago. Recently I began messing with Game Maker software for fun and subsequently realized I need to produce my own art to mess with. I took a deep dive on Youtube and other sources for pixel art and bought Aseprite. A shocker to no one, I suck at drawing with a mouse and pixels as much as I do with a pencil and paper. Nevertheless, I'm deciding to persist with it.

An unexpected side-effect of this is I found myself following other pixel artists on Twitter for inspiration and browsing pixel art on Reddit. Initially it was just to get ideas for how to draw. Since I had an idea about the basic concepts of making pixel art, I wanted to get more ideas about how other people implement elements such as shading or other effects into their art. I quickly realized that I was genuinely appreciating all this new art in a way that I never did before when looking at pixel graphics. If you showed me a screenshot of a well made pixel art type game a year ago I wouldn't of thought anything of it, but now I feel excited and intrigued about all the detail that I never thought about before.

This realization provides more incentive for me to pursue my interests before I get (even) older. Not only do you get the satisfaction of slowly learning a new skill and the fruits of that labor, but as a bonus, it grows you as a person. I started this process just a couple weeks ago, so I'm still terrible at making pixel art myself. I did spend a little time though putting together a little bomb for this blog post. I wanted to make the fuse burning away as a symbol of the forward progression and changes of this site lately. It's sad to lose those guys and see such a drastic change, but at the same time I remain optimistic for the future.