>>144996981There are very few pixel artists that actually draw everything, dot by dot. But no way in hell do they draw every single animation individually.
The so called "pixel art", as I already explained earlier, is the result of image quality loss over conversion. This was, to some extent, acceptable on hardware that couldn't handle rendering sharp images without losing speed, like home consoles. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in quality loss on a contemporary TV anyways.
To create this kind of art still requires effort, though. The original animation still has to be drawn somehow. It just can't be drawn itself.
I enjoy it myself for it's artistic merit, not because I can gloat to someone someday that "art" is possible in a videogame (which I'm not about to discuss), but because it looks absolutely beautiful.
Almost everyone else looks at it like eye-candy. Not saying that its wrong to think that way, but I think that they're giving it way more value than it actually deserves, when you consider that the methods to animate in this "pixel" form are pretty much the same you would use in animating a cartoon, minus the obligatory loss of quality to give it the so called "retro" feel.