[sinuhe69]

I'm not versed in pixel art, so my naive question is, isn't it easier to draw using vector graphics and then convert to pixel art when needed? Because I think it is not easy to manipulate pixels, but vector objects are much easier to manipulate. Also, vector graphics retain the high resolution, so it's much easier to create for many different resolutions. Even if the automatic conversion to pixels wasn't perfect, wouldn't polishing them after conversion be a lot less work?

[gary_0]

If the art is low-res enough that the "pixelness" is noticeable, you're throwing away so much detail from the vector drawing there's no point in making vector drawings in the first place. Complex or highly animated pixel art might involve a non-pixel sketch beforehand, but there's no point in cleaning that up into vectors just to re-draw it a third time as pixel art. (And if you just shrink down high-res art into pixels, it looks really bad.)

Some higher-res or smoothly animated styles do use 2D or 3D renderings that get cleaned up into pixel sprites; if you're old enough to remember the Donkey Kong Country games for the SNES, that's one example. I think 2017's Sonic Mania also used 3D assets in its pixel art pipeline. But most professional-quality pixel art isn't built from higher-res art because there's usually no benefit, especially if it's a low-res "retro" style.

[CitrusFruits]

Pixel art relies on specific pixels being colored or defined in ways that a vectorized representation would never render to. In other words, it often looks bad, especially at lower resolutions (which is the whole esthetic of pixel art). This article has some good examples of vector icons not holding up well compared to their "hand crafted" pixel counterparts https://www.pushing-pixels.org/2011/11/04/about-those-vector...

[Archelaos]

> so it's much easier to create for many different resolutions. Even if the automatic conversion to pixels wasn't perfect, wouldn't polishing them after conversion be a lot less work?

Different resolution demand different solutions. For example, if an artist uses a very low resolution such as 16x16 pixels for a character sprite, he will often favour an excessively large head because only then will he have enough pixels for his facial expressions. Likewise it does not make sense to use too many different colours in such a resolution. In contrast, if the arist wants to use more "realistic" sprites, she or he would probably choose a higher resolution with a larger colour palette from the start. So basically one is designing for a specific pixel-resolution and instead of adjusting the pixel-resolution to a screen-resolution one just scales the pixels themselves into little boxes when showing them on higher screen-resolutions.

[tombert]

I'm not in game development, and I'm a pretty mediocre-at-best artist, but I personally have found it considerably easier to draw pixel art simply because you limit yourself to like a 16x16 grid for a sprite. There's a lot less room to screw stuff up, and you get a lot of implied detail while also being pretty easy to be very precise.

If you took a vector drawing and rasterized it to 16x16, I think that might kind of look like crap, because it'd be hard to know ahead of time how the rasterizing will work. How will it handle diagonal lines? How will it figure out which pixels to shade and which ones not to? I'm not saying you couldn't make a vector renderer that handles these things in a way that you'd like, but I am saying that you'd most likely not be terribly happy with the default results.

[__loam]

In addition to what everyone else has said, pixel art relies a lot of techniques like AA, dithering, outlines, specific ways of drawing curves, limited palettes, and implied detail that make it difficult to just convert from a vector piece. Two examples where conversions were used are Final Fantasy Tactics and the Advance War series, but as others have stated, you do have to go in and clean up the lines. There's also a nice feeling that's present in hand pixeled art that's hard to achieve from just conversion.

[flobosg]

From personal experience, rasterizing vector art for a pixel art aesthetic usually leaves a lot to be desired, especially when you look at angled lines and curved shapes. That being said, there are rasterizing projects with a focus on pixel art, for instance Superpixelator: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2486042.2486044

[layer8]

Converting vector graphics to actually good-looking pixel art requires a lot of manual work (and talent and experience). You would do that work in an editor like this one.