Blake Reynolds, the artist over at Dinofarm Games, has written a long post about why the studio’s games will no longer use pixel art. It’s an interesting read, and perhaps the most fascinating part is his breakdown of Street Fighter’s animations.

Focusing on Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV, Reynolds explains why the animation in SFIII is better than SFIV’s.

“Chun-li’s body in SFIII works like a whip cracking. When every frame is a new drawing, it allows for things like flowing drapery, muscles flexing and unflexing, the natural sort of warp the body takes when it moves in extreme ways, etc. The effect is nothing short of magical,” Reynolds writes.

“While I’ve seen far worse than Chun-li in SFIV, the animation is just kind of dead and sloppily done. There is no urgency, and many of her limbs and facial movements seem bizarre and out of place,” he continues.

“Because of this, SFIV Chun-li looks like she’s posing for a photo shoot, whereas SFIII Chun-li looks full of adrenaline and intensity… almost as though she were in a fight!”

Reynolds breaks down the animation in both of these Street Fighter games in this way to illustrate one of his points in the article: that to explain why a game’s art may be better than another one to an average player takes a lot of effort. He reasons that most players would instantly perceive Street Fighter IV’s art as being better merely because it’s in 1080p and runs at 60 frames per second, whereas Street Fighter III is what most people would refer to as “pixelated”.

This was one of the criticisms levied at Dinofarm’s latest game Auro.

His point is that not enough people appreciate pixel art these days, no matter its quality, and that’s why he’s abandoning it for Dinofarm’s previous games – instead, he’ll use HD art as that’s better understood and admired by today’s players. You can read the whole article here.