The way of the Dodo

o, rounding up on the end of the business week after the Raku Job festa, I'm pleased to announce that for the first time in a while, I'm seeing a vague, flickering light at the end of the tunnel in the form of one (adult) game developer, and one game outsourcing firm. Both of them seemed fairly interested in my profile during the fair, and we shall certainly see if I can wow either of them with my portfolio.

It definitely brings back a spark of creativity when you know someone gives a damn about your work.

But I digress, let's step away from my personal life again for a while, and contemplate something that happened during said job fair that stuck with me. I was having a conversation with one of the developers who was at the fair during my alloted n number of minutes with him. I mentioned that I was a pixel artist, and he was intrigued - like some sort of endangered species, he mentioned to me that pixel artists are a rare breed, and not really called for much in the gaming industry anymore. "Pixel art is ending" says he.

I tried to make the argument that it's still in use commercially within DS and some PC titles - casual gaming comes to mind, but he says that even DS consumers are shying away from the Retro 2D graphic art, and everything's going 3D on the console now. So I ponder - is pixel art truly being relegated to the realm of niche art along with cubism and scratch art and their ilk? Obviously I have a lot of exposure to it, with my involvement in the indies/retro gaming scene, and communities like Pixelation and Pixeljoint, but it seems even in those realms that pixel art is really being considered just that - art. Much moreso than as a medium for interactive entertainment.

Granted, we do see plenty of very high quality animation coming out of pixel art, especially in the public forum of the places that I mentioned above, but what about the general gaming public? Obviously 3D is a big thing, and someone truly serious about being an artist in the mainstream gaming industry is probably going to want to spend some time familiarizing themselves with the tools of said trade, but what will happen to the great pixel artists as time goes on? The optimist in me says that one day, we'll see an influx of low resolution/2D art coming back, but that could just be the optimist in me saying I'm not obsolete.

Apparently, according to the gentleman I had said conversation with, even cellphone applications are quickly sliding in the direction of vector-based animation programs like Flash.

Regardless, Asobism (the aforementioned outsourcing company) was intrigued in the good way with my pixel art background. Hopefully this gives me a leg up over any competition I may see. I don't doubt that competition will be stiff, but I will persevere.

Viva le pixel.