It’s a “small, square single-colored display elements that comprise an image” coined to describe the photographic elements of a television image, from pix + first syllable of element.
A pixel is the smallest unit of a digital image or graphic that can be displayed and represented on a digital display device.
It is the basic logical unit in digital graphics. Pixels are combined to form a complete image, video, text, or any visible thing on a computer display.
Pixel is picture element (pix = picture, el = element)
Voxel is volume element
Texel is texture element
The majority of pixel artists agree that an image can only be categorized as pixel art when the pixels play an important individual role in the composition of the artwork, which usually requires deliberate control over the placement of each individual pixel. When purposefully editing in this way, changing the position of a few pixels can have a drastic effect on the image.
A common characteristic in pixel art is the low overall colour count in the image. Pixel art as a medium mimics a lot of traits found in older video game graphics, rendered by machines which were capable of only outputting a limited number of colours at once.
Some traditional art forms, like counted-thread embroidery (including cross- stitch) and some kinds of mosaic and beadwork, are very similar to pixel art and could be considered as non-digital counterparts or predecessors.
These art forms construct pictures out of small colored units similar to the pixels of modern digital computing.
Some of the earliest examples of pixel art could be found in analog electronic advertising displays, such as the ones from New York City during the early 20th century, with simple monochromatic light bulb matrix displays extant circa 1937.
Pixel art as it is known today largely originates from classic video games, particularly classic arcade games such as Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980), and 8-bit consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (1983) and Sega Master System (1985).
The term pixel art was first published by Adele Goldberg and Robert Flegal of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1982. The practice, however, goes back at least 11 years be- fore that, for example in Richard Shoup’s SuperPaint system in 1972, also at Xerox PARC.
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