Reporter | Peng Xin
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According to the news released by the Japanese brand agency Team Dotman, Hiroshi Ono, an artist who once designed "Tank Wars" and "Little Bee" and was called the "God of Pixels" by players, died of illness on October 16 at the age of 64.
He is best known for his work for a series of pixel-drawn characters while working for the Japanese game company Namco. Ono joined the Japanese game company Namco in 1979 and moved to bandai Namco in 2006.
Hiroshi Ono has participated in many classic games of pixel drawing image and arcade basket design, such as "Teppanyaki", "Ecstasy Car", "Fight Air", "Little Bee" and "Tank Wars" and other more than 80 games, because of the creation of a series of pixel characters with distinctive and impressive characteristics, Ono Hiroshi is also known as the "Pixel God" or "Pixel Magician" by players.
In 2013, Ono left Bandai Namco and became a freelancer. In 2016, he founded the brand "Mr.ドットマン" (Mr. Dotman), the name is also one of his past titles. In addition to game design, he is also actively involved in other non-game media content such as film and animation, and collaborates with developers and artists to create, etc., and still bows to pixel art during his lifetime.
The so-called pixel painting, also known as dot matrix map, bitmap, etc., pixels are the smallest units that make up computer images, and the small squares seen after enlarging a picture as much as possible are pixels. Pixel games are games in which pixels are carved.
As a type of game graphics style, "pixel art" represents the main graphics form of video games in the 1970s and 1980s. Limited by the computing performance of the time, the maximum resolution of the game was also limited, the well-known Nintendo FC (Red and White Machine) had a resolution of 240x256, and the resolution of a single character on the screen was 8x8 or 8x16 pixels.
During his time at Namco, Ono's pixel drawing skills were recognized by his colleagues. Namco's game curator Shigeru Yokoyama recalled that when making the game "Little Bee", although he designed the concept prototype of the game, a large number of pixel drawing and design improvements in the game were participated in by Ono Hiroshi. "He's considered an authority on pixel drawing, and Little Bee was the first game he was involved in designing."
Despite creating a series of classic pixel characters, Hiroshi Ono has said that his work in Little Bee is his favorite in a series of games involving Namco.
In the long run, with the hot sales of a series of games in the early days of Namco, the image in games such as Teppanyaki, Ecstasy Car, Fighting Air, Little Bee and Tank Battle has gradually become popular, thanks in part to the achievements of Ono Hiroshi, with 3D games now dominating the mainstream, pixel painting as a type of screen style still occupies an important position in independent games.
Hiroshi Ono's contributions to pixel art were recognized, and upon learning of his death, Katsuhiro Harada, a famous producer at Bandai Namco and production director of the game 'Iron Fist' series, said on Twitter, "We pray for your soul," he said. "Thank you very much, Mr. Hiroshi Ono."
Yuzo Furu, the composer of the game "Iron Fist of Fury", also paid tribute to Ono's work, "I was impressed by his pixel art that not only strongly inspired our generation, but also stood the test of time. ”