Pixel Art Experiment Strips Iconic Characters Down to Their Bare Essentials

[Logan Westbrook]

Pixel Art Experiment Strips Iconic Characters Down to Their Bare Essentials

Can you still recognize a character when it's cut down to just 16 colored squares? That's what one internet artist seems to be trying to find out.

Usually when we refer to something as being pixilated, it's either been blurred out or isn't as sharp as we'd like. For artist David Stoll, however, it means something quite different, as he takes his subjects and shrinks them down to just a handful of pixels.

Stoll takes iconic characters from videogames, movies and television - like Star Wars' Chewbacca, as seen to the right - and draws them using no more than 16 pixels in a 4x4 grid. Once that's done, he makes them sixty times bigger so that people can actually see what they are. Stoll doesn't say what the experiment is intended to prove, but it seems reasonable to assume that it's something along the lines of seeing how much you can strip away from a character and still have something recognizable.

So far, Stoll has pixilated 24 characters, one cathedral and a Tetris block. Some are more successful than others, especially those that have distinctive color combinations like Bart Simpson or Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. You can see Stoll's full gallery here [http://4x4pixels.blogspot.com/].

Source: Game Culture [http://www.gameculture.com/2010/11/29/can-you-tell-what-videogame-character]





Permalink

 

[Omegatronacles]

I'm not sure how this is supposed to be an experiment of recognition, since he tells you what they are above each picture.

Once you know what they are you can sort of see them in the images, but I would have preferred to be allowed to guess rather than having their names shoved in my face.

 

[Fasckira]

I got a few of them, mainly because of the colours though.

 

[maddog015]

Yeah, I'm having a hard time telling what is what. Only after knowing what it is am I able to see and understand it. Maybe it's just me.

 

[Secret world leader (shhh)]

I got chewie in a second, but I wouldn't have gotten the others without being told who they were, The hello kitty one looks more like kratos than the kratos one does. Still a cool idea though.

 

[dragonburner]

Not tolling, but these are too abstract to get the point of these, which is telling what they are...

 

[CINN4M0N]

Even after being told what some of them are, I can't make it out in the picture. It's surprising though how unmistakeable a few of them are. Like Sonic or Link.

 

[Swaki]

sixty sounds so fake, i cant take anything serious when its related to sixty, but i must admit that its complete lack of credibility mixed with the correct timing can make it fun.

oh and about the pixel art, it has been done so many times before and sometimes it can make for some interesting and/or fun art, but in this case i wouldn't be able to recognize half of them if he didnt tell me what they where of, and heck you could call a brick Bart Simpsons and i would still say "ahh, yeah, now i see it" but others are so far fetched i cant see it, like mario and iron man, they look more like a rorschach test than their original designs.

 

[Dogstile]

I got chewie in a second, but I wouldn't have gotten the others without being told who they were, The hello kitty one looks more like kratos than the kratos one does. Still a cool idea though.

I thought that too!

Also, for anyone who wants to guess, start from the bottom and go up. Its what I did

 

[Captain Bobbossa]

some of them you could mabye recognise without the name but most of them, no. especially chewbaca

 

[Owlslayer]

Well, that's pretty nice, i guess.
I almost recognized chewbacca, i was so damn close...But some of them are just plain wtf.
Still, this is better than the stuff I've been lately learning in art history class... Seriously, i cannot comprehend how people can call something art.

 

[Folio]

I thought it was a Goomba or something. But now you mention Chewbacca I can see the resemblance! It's abstract art and design in pixels!

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I think perhaps he just went one step too far, maybe loosening it up to 5x4 to add some height may help. At 4x4, it's hard to tell which are even meant to be humanoid in shape.

I can see what he was doing with Neo for instance, but I doubt 1% of people would go 'Neo!' by just looking at that picture.

 

[messy]

Telling us what it is before is a bit foolish.

I suppose the point is that when you look at something you have a bias to what it is. For some they would just be a random bunch of squares but other's previous knowledge effects it. I think that's known as "top down processing" and hints that different people get different things from the same image.

 

[Buchichu]

"artist" is a relative term.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

This is stupid, without the names, most of these are impossible.

If this is art, what ISN'T?

 

[_Cake_]

I could get Chewbacca, Pikachu, Princess Peach, Kirby, Link(but only cause of the colors), and Pac-Man but everyone got that one.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I actually thought Chewie before I read it. I would have gotten Bart, Sonic, and Cartman. How the hell is that Neo though? and Lara Croft has a giant growth coming out of her back which I originally thought was supposed to be that chest pixel. And Peach looks like a dildo

 

[(=Nemesis=)]

No, sorry... but my suspicions that I could have done the same thing but more accurately were confirmed as soon as I got down to Kirby. Am I supposed to equate that massive light blue block with Kirby's eyes? Because that's the only possibility I can think of, and it just looks like a brick with a bright blue centre.

And I could prove it too. Unfortunately I can't attach my image but I can describe the sixteen pixels.

1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12


1: F5CCCC
2: 7F9AD0
3: 7F9AD0
4: F5CCCC
5: F86C6C
6: 375696
7: 375696
8: F86C6C
9: F5CCCC
10: F5CCCC
11: 9A1818
12: F5CCCC
13: C00202
14: F5CCCC
15: F5CCCC
16: C00202


Piece of cake. Still not very good at all but better than his.


EDIT: Blast, I forgot the last row! Fixed.