To be honest, I've never had very much interest in creating pixel art before. Until the summer of 2021 when I discovered the beautiful work of AngrySnail aka Nikita Solo (links to his work below).
The header image of this blog post is the latest pixel artwork I created. It depicts a farmhouse in a village called Wamel, Holland, just behind the dike of the river Waal (Rhine), where I spent my summer vacation.
It took an incredible amount of time and patience to make it in all the details. But I have to say, it was quite an addictive process and a lot of fun!
But that's not how it started; read on for my whole pixel adventure...
One of the cool things you can do is to create animated pixel art, usually GIF's! This one I created from a vintage 7-UP advertising poster from the 1970s. It only has four frames and a small canvas, and I think it's already mind-blowing!
After the 7-UP animation, I thought it was time to get a little more serious. So I chose a theme, which I already knew very well and used many times before. It's a French Farmhouse "Le Phaux", which is very dear to me. I decided to create with a 192 x 256px canvas and a custom 32 color palette. It was already considerably more work than the 7-UP animation (114 x 150px), due to its size and level of detail.
I then decided to take an alternative approach: minimalism - fewer and still fewer pixels.
As it seems to me, minimal pixel art is a different segment. It focuses on creating art by using as few pixels as possible. Create a recognizable and perhaps even stronger image with as little detail as possible. And maybe even using a very limited color palette as well...
To experiment I started a series of very small pixel drawings inspired by Delft Blue tiles and authentic Dutch motifs. It was kinda hard to quit creating when I got started, so it has resulted in a full series "Made in Holland":
It's quite amazing how much you can express in a creation of only 32 x 32 pixels, and using only a very limited number of shades of blue!
Another fun experiment was making portraits in the style of the well-known Cryptopunks by Larvalabs. Only 32 x 32 pixels to capture someone's personality... I have to say, that's a challenge, but a lot of fun to do once you get the hang of it.
This work reminded me so much of designing 16-colors “sprites" on a Commodor-64 in the mid 80’s…
That's all for now folks. I hope I inspired you too! I will certainly be working with pixels more often, simply because it is a lot of fun to do. But also because you can make work with it, which has its own character and for which there is also a large group of enthusiasts. I'll mint some of them as NFT and see how it goes flying...
All these works were created with Pixaki app, links below!
I found Pixaki.app through following Nikita Solo aka @Angrysnail (Insta), who really inspired me with his wonderful pixel art. There's a free version of Pixaki if you want to try before you before you buy. I eventually bought the PRO-version, and I must say it was worth the inventment.
Links:
