The same lack of substance or contribution should also apply not just for mods but comments too
People constantly here did these 'well I wish, I want' in regards to 3D models all the time, so I see no reason why people push back on such a discourse when it comes to 2D art.
And I've heard my own fair share of 'you should rather work on X than Y' and 'i'd rather your work be this instead' here.
An artist here, one well versed in pixel AND other forms of art.
And it is true, the upscale art usually looks like overly smooth pudding most of the time, and personally to me, I prefer to keep it vanilla in such cases.
However! one also has to consider that there are people out there that want to do such kinds of mods but have no technical knowledge on how to do it by hand and do it well on top of it.
As a decent share of folk here is into coding, not art, or neither of both, they scurry off to algorithms and upscaling programs as it's a lot more accessible for them than
struggle through the thousands upon thousands of images in an egregious effort of labour. Keep in mind that programs are wonderful to do the bulk of the heavy lifting, even if you're an artist, with the artist touch coming last where needed.
So this is something to understand that such mods have existed, do exist and will continue to exist and nevertheless are useful to make more sophisticated end results.
Luckily some mods, including the one that sparked this conversation is accepting of multi-people contributions so an artist can offer their own contributions and improvements! (like my stars(some of which are delicately drawn pixel stars) and moon contributions for vanilla enhanced)
But back on the artistry of things of the topic! Because talking art stuff and art quality stuff is rare to come by!
There are two images linked, but I think the most glaring issue is that the enhanced image doesn't look like an improvement, it looks like the original image, (as the resolution is the same), but slightly blurred out. It loses its crispness, its sharpness.
I think the better argument would be, is the effort of painstakingly going through hundreds upon hundreds of image archives, painstakingly editing them for the end result not even being that noticeable... is the end result proportionate to the effort put in? ...should this effort even be proportionate?
Introducing more colours to pixel art doesn't necessarily improve pixel art, for the onlookers, believe it or not, a limited palette can be quite appealing to look at. (Cue the popularity of pixel indie games...and Minecraft LOL!)
However, if the range of colours is expanded, wouldn't the logical conclusion be to move onto larger images? So there is more space for all those colours without having to resort to blurryness?
The textures of the houses themselves per se, were IMO almost
flawless. On the other hand, the ground pixels being 3 times larger than the wall pixels is a bit... eugh. But that's beside the point. (Daggerfall is simply riddled with mixels)
The blurryness also makes the pixels less noticeable, which then leads to why not just go for a full, complete drawn rendition of said sprites?
Can somebody really appreciate something being pixel art, if you can't see the individual pixels aside from highlights, where is the 'cut off' border between acceptably 'pixelated' and acceptably not pixelated? What's then up with the brain itself interpreting the pixels as tangible 'smooth' images in your mind? Does that not account for anything?
What is then the difference between sprites with pixelated edged but insides so smooth you can't discern pixels, to 3D models with completely smooth outlines yet pixelated textures?
And with the blacksmith, there isn't actually more depth or realism to it, it's just the original but slightly blurred.
It actually loses depth as it killed the bright highlights that make certain parts of the art pop out.
Size doesn't matter in pixel art, it's the deliberate manipulation of an image on a pixel level. Least I pull out my 19000px across pixel art to prove the opposite in an extreme scale
.
(the usage of rotoscoping 3D models as a template to build pixel art from is irrelevant)