Do you think using Spritecraft and/or GIMP is "cheating"?

[UnknownHedgehog]

I've seen this come up a few times before where people who use GIMP or Spritecraft to make pixel art are accused of "cheating" for using those programs, and I'm curious as to what the rest of the community thinks about it.

Also, the reason why I gave GIMP and Spritecraft their own options is because setting up everything for the image to be turned into a pixel art/sprite is different between the two.

And I don't want to start any flame wars or anything. Just a civil discussion if anything.

[arsenic_shark]

Sprite craft is rubbish, Ive used it on a picture of me and parts of my face became green. Using gimp made the picture alot better.

cheat/CHēt/
Verb:   
Act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, esp. in a game or examination: "she cheats at cards

It is not unfair as it is open for everyone to use; most choose not to use. Also what if I was to enlarge a picture so I can see every pixel clearly or is that unfair. This is basic what GIMP does, but it also can adapt the picture then you have to take time to recreate it.

If you had the sprite as a schematic then imported it that would be classed as cheating in my opinion. Doing anything by hand is not cheating.

[5OO]

I would only consider it cheating if they used GIMP or Spritecraft and then lied about it. But if they are honest I don't see a problem with it.

[Cyan of the Griffins]

Hell no.

[tiggy26668]

In the sense of "You making your own piece of artwork" it's cheating, because you're not creating the artwork, you're copying pixels out of a program and placing blocks until you've duplicated someone else's artwork into Minecraft.

In the sense of "Copying someones artwork into Minecraft as a sprite" it's not cheating, because that's what you're doing, and it'd be a pain in the ass to sit there with a picture and ruler/pencil to grid it out into pixels yourself.

so yea.... take your pick.

[Victor1261]

Here's my two cents. Turning a picture into a bunch of pixels that you are going to place block into, in my opinion, isn't cheating. If this was, then sitting somewhere, using a pencil and a ruler to grid something out would also be "cheating", but it's not, because that's how you make pixel arts. Of course, you can free hand the pixel arts, but these programs are used simply to assist you, they don't do all the work. The real work, in my opinion, comes down to taking the time to actually placing all the different blocks. This is highly time consuming, and requires much patience. 

[Chief149]

Yeah, not really cheating as long as there's no program or macro of some sort being used to automatically place the blocks to make up the sprite for you.

[Wyboth]

You had to post this. You had to.
I will say this one time, and one time only: using Spritecraft and GIMP is cheating, because they create a blueprint of blocks for you. All you do then is copy them into Minecraft. There's no challenge to it at all. When you make them legitimately, it is much harder because there are hundreds of shades in the picture and only a few blocks to choose from. If you don't believe me, then try it yourself. Make a large picture in Minecraft using only Paint, then tell me it doesn't take skill. That is all.

[Mr_Mr_Mr]

Cheating on sprites is when you use a program to make it for you such as MCEdit. Placing the blocks on your own isn't cheating because you're taking the time to place them. Wyboth is just hating.

Since blueprints are suddenly cheats now... Does that mean people cheat when they makes sky scrapers safe by using blue prints?

[UnknownHedgehog]

You had to post this. You had to.
I will say this one time, and one time only: using Spritecraft and GIMP is cheating, because they create a blueprint of blocks for you. All you do then is copy them into Minecraft. There's no challenge to it at all. When you make them legitimately, it is much harder because there are hundreds of shades in the picture and only a few blocks to choose from. If you don't believe me, then try it yourself. Make a large picture in Minecraft using only Paint, then tell me it doesn't take skill. That is all.

So because it's more difficult to use Paint, using an easier application, such as GIMP, is "cheating" (even though it doesn't really go with the definition of "Cheat")?

Does the difficulty of the task really matter as long as you get the same result? You have two pixel arts that look exactly alike. One person used Paint and spent hours examining each pixel and then placing the block. Another guy used GIMP and has a blueprint of the art and took a few hours patiently place each block. The GIMP guy's cheating just because he used an easier method even though the result is the same for both?

Imo, work smart, not hard.

I'm not saying using Paint is bad; in fact, if that's how one prefers it and likes the challenge of doing it like that, then more power to you. But because somebody did an easier method to it, doesn't mean it's cheating.

[Mr.Monkey]

I see a few misunderstandings here about GIMP and spritecraft.

First of all, using spritecraft for classic is worthless. It does not have the correct wool blocks and some other blocks aren't the same either. So there is no reason why anyone would use it, except if they're too lazy to figure out how to use gimp or do it by eye.

GIMP is in essence the same as paint, it just provides some tools. Just using GIMP to view the picture you're spriting isn't bad. I think what Wyboth calls cheating is using optimizers on the images, such as colour reduction and dithering. These can be seen as cheating, because they do take lots of work away and make the picture lots more detailed than you could ever do yourself. But, to be honest, we are the only ones that use water and leaves in our sprites, just because they are very hard to work with. I would challenge anyone to try make even 1 square of the snake in art, or the coat of Notch in art1, without cheating, and see how much detail you can get out of it. With my GIMP floor palette, there are 432 colours to choose from, each with their own combination of blocks. Your eyes can't even see the difference unless you put them right next to each other, but in the big picture, it does make a difference.

[Wyboth]

I see a few misunderstandings here about GIMP and spritecraft.

First of all, using spritecraft for classic is worthless. It does not have the correct wool blocks and some other blocks aren't the same either. So there is no reason why anyone would use it, except if they're too lazy to figure out how to use gimp or do it by eye.

GIMP is in essence the same as paint, it just provides some tools. Just using GIMP to view the picture you're spriting isn't bad. I think what Wyboth calls cheating is using optimizers on the images, such as colour reduction and dithering. These can be seen as cheating, because they do take lots of work away and make the picture lots more detailed than you could ever do yourself. But, to be honest, we are the only ones that use water and leaves in our sprites, just because they are very hard to work with. I would challenge anyone to try make even 1 square of the snake in art, or the coat of Notch in art1, without cheating, and see how much detail you can get out of it. With my GIMP floor palette, there are 432 colours to choose from, each with their own combination of blocks. Your eyes can't even see the difference unless you put them right next to each other, but in the big picture, it does make a difference.

I see your point about GIMP, and I do consider using optimizers to be cheating. If the rest of GIMP is the same as paint, then just use paint instead to avoid the whole cheating thing altogether. Your point about the water and leaves is irrelevant. Yes, I recognize the talent required to use them, but if the other 90% of the sprite was optimized, then I still consider it cheated.



I forgot to say earlier that cheating is just an opinion that varies from person to person, so we're not going to set any laws that 'cheating is this,' because it's just an opinion. Keep that in mind.

[iGenerator]

So three people think its "cheating" good for them it doesn't matter as long as it looks cool I do not care how it was made or if the person got assistance making it in anyway.

[arsenic_shark]

That fact is people dont get ranked for sprites so even if they do "cheat" they gain nothing.

[Wyboth]

That fact is people dont get ranked for sprites so even if they do "cheat" they gain nothing.

Mr. Monkey got raked for sprites, and I plan to so as well.