Depixelizing Pixel Art

[Kri]

Was browsing around some news this morning and ran across this article. While I've always been a fan of Saphireena's work I have serious doubts that EA would ever invest the resources needed to make it happen. Although not ideal, this seems like it might be a quick and dirty way to make the current assets scalable while retaining the overall look and feel.

Not necessarily for or against this... just thought it was an interesting new idea to throw out there for discussion (even at the risk of re-igniting one of the endless graphics debates. ) Would like to hear from some of the artists out there on their take.

Depixelizing Pixel Art: Upscaling Retro 8-bit Games

 

[HD2300]

WOW WOW WOW !!! This is amazing.

 

[olduofan]

does this work on 4-bit tho ?

 

[LiquidSolidity]

It won't work because the graphics and EA are two-bit

 

[Raptor85]

Most of the results look horrible, they look "smoother" but don't look like the objects they are supposed to be. The example they use there, the dolphin for instance, personally it looks like something a 4 year old drew now, their routine made it lose all apparent definition around the mouth and tail areas, and rounded out the fins, instead of wearing goggles they now look like they're way too tight, sucked into his face, and pulled partway into his cheek (must hurt), and the entire dolphin looks like a lumpy mess...

And the worst part...the dolphin is probably the one that came out best, look at the others here, theirs is smoother but the old "pixilated" hq4x filter looks better on pretty much every image.
Depixelizing Pixel Art


You cant just do edge detection on pixel art...well done low res pixel art has no edges! (as a matter of fact, most of the best pixel art is basically optical illusions, there's a great page on it here)

So you want to be a pixel artist? - Photoshop tutorials and Pixelart tutorials, smiles and pixelart - Gas13.ru