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Unpopular opinion: AI upscaling ruins the soul of pixel art more than it helps
I was at a retro game convention last weekend and saw someone showing off an AI upscaled sprite sheet that looked smooth but totally lost the original artist's intention, so which side are you on when it comes to preserving old digital art versus modernizing it?
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alicecooper20d ago
Used to love clean sprites but you're totally right, that soul gets erased.
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grayh6020d ago
I mean, I tried using one of those AI upscalers on a sprite of Mega Man once and it gave him like... five fingers on each hand? Dude looked like he was melting. It was honestly hilarious and sad at the same time. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather have blocky pixels that actually look like the artist drew them than some weird smooth mess that doesn't know where a nose is supposed to go. I get wanting things to look clean on a modern screen, but swapping out intentional pixel placement for generated guesswork feels like replacing a painting with a photocopy of a photocopy. Idk, I'm just some guy who can barely draw a stick figure, so maybe pixel artists feel different about it.
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