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I mentioned this briefly in a previous AW without really thinking about it much, but now I wanna talk about it more!

Let's seriously start trying to make more hexagonal pixel art. I want to try doing this with the other grids that the platform has to offer too, but let's start out with this! You might have noticed that I've been interested in using other grids for a while, but now I want to be serious about it!!

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There are two big things to keep in mind when using hexagonal pixels:

With square grids, if a pixel is diagonal to another one, they are only connected by their corners, which allows methods like dithering, and helps us communicate the shapes of the elements in the artwork a lot more easily.

With hexagon grids, however, if a pixel is diagonal to another one, they still have a whole side connecting them, so the methods we use with square grids won't work.

Also, we will have to deal with not being able to make shapes very well as easily. Most of us know how to make a good curve in a square grid, and straight lines are obviously not a problem at all, but now we are dealing with new grids and no tools. We will have to adapt to this. Importantly, straight lines are very clean in 3 directions, but in all other directions it will be a lot more messy (due to what I described in the first paragraph of this section and also because of the orientation of the hexagons). Looking at the lineup of grids in the "choose a grid" page, if you choose the one on the left, this problem will be with horizontal lines, and if you choose the one on the right, this problem will be with vertical lines.

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Here are some more minor things that I learned making the actual AW (I made this section to help demonstrate just how different the hexagonal grid is):

-You can make a pretty good circle just by making a hexagon and then shaving off the corners a tiny bit. This doesn't really work in smaller sizes though, and it obviously gets more complicated the larger you get!

-Cubes are a lot harder to make, which will be an interesting problem to adapt to.

-Another problem I wasn't expecting to have, also, is writing text! We basically have to make a new font to make any legible words.

-Just as I thought, making smooth shading is a lot harder. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, but dealing with it is a lot different from how it is in a square grid.

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By the way, we need to coin some new terms! Since "pixel" means "picture element", we can't just abandon the term entirely. We can use the word "pixel" for ANY pixel, regardless of shape, but we still need a distinct term for "square pixel" and "hexagonal pixel". Remember that there are also 2 orientations of hexagonal pixels, so we should account for that too. I am aware that the term "hexel" already exists, but then we would need to follow that naming scheme for other numbers, so the specialized term for a square pixel would be "quaxel" or "quadrixel" or maybe even "squixel" and all of those suck so let's just figure something better out please I beg.

Please give propositions in the comments!!

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HAPPY PIXELLING!!! I really hope this idea gets some traction!!!

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#hexagons