OPINION
Sam White
What is pixel art? Well, it’s art made from pixels. Pretty simple. Except most digital images are made from pixels, so we should add that pixel art tends to mean retro 8-bit or 16-bit looking compositions.
Think ’80s and ’90s console graphics, repurposed simply to make works of art, rather than games.
It’s a niche diversion, for sure, but for some reason I find some of this genre very evocative, with a huge dose of nostalgia cooked in for good measure, and it’s easy to be drawn into its digital ambience.
Iemon
A pixel artist who, judging from the Twitter/X bio written in Japanese, and all the images of Japan, I’m guessing may be Japanese. Either way, if I ever feel nostalgic to go back and live in Tokyo again, I look at Iemon’s work and then… err… feel a bit more nostalgic.
Gordon Zuchhold
If you’re looking for glowingly-lit cyberpunk landscapes from a Megadrive game that never existed, then Gordon Zuchhold should be your go-to artist. His sci-fi sound-tracked and slickly constructed work speaks for itself, thankfully, so I don’t need to describe it.
Waneella
With a deservedly huge following, Waneella’s animated work has found an appreciative audience. Like Gordon Zuchhold, Waneella often depicts noir-ish urban environments, although in a more calmingly dulcet style, and feeling a little closer to the real world: specifically, somewhere in a dreamlike, point-and-click version of Japan.
Victorards
Are these very simple? Yes, these are very simple. But what could be more 90s than a pixelated version of Blockbuster Video in a thunderstorm? There’s a 7-Eleven too, and several views from moving vehicles. You either like it or you don’t, I guess.
Ryan Haight
What’s that you say, you want real-life views from the Pacific Northwest, rendered through atmospheric animations, but as though the world only existed on a floppy disk in an Atari ST? That’s great news, because in that case, Seattle-based artist Ryan Haight has you covered!
Suns Studio
Pixel art intersects neatly with NFTs, and even if you’re not looking to collect crypto art, you can find some standout pixel creations being released in tokenized formats. A prolifically creative enterprise with a loyal following is Suns Studio, which distributes artwork on the Solana blockchain.
CryptoPunks
And if we’re dipping a toe into the world of NFTs, then authentic blockchain diamonds CryptoPunks – which currently change hands from a minimum of 68-actual-thousand of your crumpled American dollars – have to get a mention.
On the whole, pixel art might never have the widest appeal, and neither is it an acquired taste – if you don’t like it from the get-go, then you’re unlikely ever to be won over, since the appeal doesn’t lie in any kind of concealed nuance.
That said though, there are dedicated creators and collectors, and maybe that’s because it just pulls on certain emotions: nostalgia for the past, at first, and then a realization that you can feel nostalgia for the present too, when it’s drawn a certain way.