Perfect Pixel - the art of the pixel - PART 2

In part 1 I explained my interest and use of pixel art currently, and showed a few of the top artists I've found. In this post I continue with those amazing artists.

Pixel Artists Cache 2

Jonathan Rawlings

Previously we saw how buried Jonathan Rawlings's (website) work was in the search results due to the massive (mostly unattributed) sharing of his work. I didn't talk much about him though.

His stuff is really great and exactly in my area of interest. Many of the landscapes he does are done using a restricted palette, a common feature of pixel art. This means only using a few colors and gives an even more retro feel. Compare these to what 8PXL typically does, using a wide palette range. Some go even more extreme and use shades of a single color, perhaps with another color (often it's complement / opposite).

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LennSan

I don't know much about LennSan (tumblr), they are pretty terse, even in their Reddit comments. But the art speaks for itself. They go for mid detail work with plenty of awesome looping animation. The style is of the Japanese modern era nostalgia type, as we saw with ToyoiYuuta

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merrigo

Merrigo (tumblr) is another artist that has been featured by Retronater Magazine, and though they great really really nerdy about colors it's a pretty good dive into their work.

The themes here are light and playful, plenty of pastel color schemes, clouds and cute homely scenes of comfort. I really love the warmth of their work.

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8bitnoob

8bitnoob's is fond of depicting lonely areas of adventure, and classic landscapes. There's a real feel of a scene from a game or movie, or a still of one for a poster.

Special note about the following image. It is one that appears all of the place in the pixel art wallpaper share blitz, but one that I found hard to track down too. It's probably their most well known piece in terms of resharing. It's a lovely little scene.

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Weilard Drake AKA weilard

Weilard Drake is the first artist on the list so far that I didn't come across when I was just looking for wallpapers. I came across them during the search and was super happy that I did. His themes seem to be solitude, rural decay / urban dangerous in a near future setting. Perhaps it's not surprising that if you go back on his tumblr you'll see Firefly and The Walking Dead fan art. Like most artists he's not exclusively a pixel artist and does a lot of digital paintings too, as well as photography, almost always though in the same themes.

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pixelMewr

pixelMewr specializes in scenes portraying the smallness of people, in my opinion. We mainly see young people who are engulfed by the city. So these images have a bitter sweet feeling of aloneness. Beginning to see a common thread here? I think a lot of artists evoke these types of feelings, perhaps the style particularly lends itself to it. You'll also find lots of simple effective animation throughout also.

I hope you can forgive me for the bad cropping here pixelMewr...

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levitann

levitann (tumblr) produces mainly symbolic laden portraits of ideally beautiful, slight and dandy young men and women. There's always a tie to natural symbols, and even wicca / witch tropes. She also dabbles in pixel art (if that's not rude to say 😅) and has produced a number of highly stylish and details works in that style.

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Pixel Jeff (PJ)

Pixel Jeff, who signs his work PJ (artstation) is an artist of the style typical of point and click adventures. These ran on the Scrumm engine with titles such as Escape from Monkey Island, Sam and Max Hit The Road, Day of the Tentacle and Broken Sword. It's a popular style, very visually appealing and often far more blocky than other styles.

PJ is very inspired by pop culture, in particular movies and TV shows. I do however prefer the original pieces.

This last piece "Moonrise" is to be found all over the pixel art wallpaper web. It's one of the less common of his works that is non-urban.

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Xienne

We return to the serenity of pixel art paintings with Xienee (DeviantArt). She has a wide variety of scenes but they are predominantly landscapes. Earlier work includes some portraits. Rare among most artists she only produces pixel artworks. I really love these.

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"Vini" Vinioitomil

Vinioitomil (tumblr) leans towards the vapourwave side of pixel art, the hot pinks and turquoise of 80s fame. While he does landscape scenes he has a broad range of subjects and likes the conceptual and abstract as well as the more literal and concrete.

The image in the bottom right of this screenshot is the one that drew me to his work, it can be found in the usual wallpaper haunts. It was a hard one search, made all the more exciting by the fact of his logo stamped on it, though not recognizable as any name.

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Julian AKA theartistjulian

Position on this list is not an indiction of rank in the pixel art work (as if I would be qualified to bestow such a thing!) and The Artist Julian (website) is testament to that. His work is really breathtaking, especially the second piece shown. He has a professional quality to his work and high artistry that gives even simple renditions something incredibly special. Look on and wonder.

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Horny-ulitas AKA Ruzha

Horny-ulitas (DeviantArt) is an artist with few publicly available artworks, but the ones that are are very inspiring. There is a the familiar feeling of simplicity and lightness that a lot of artist in the genre portray. Enjoy.

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tamajoshi

tamajoshi (tumblr) has a some really magical feeling works. He often uses large landscapes in unreal lighting, or with fantastic elements. There is a good body of work here but he does leave us wishing for more. Great vibes.

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smilling_apple

smilling_apple (tumblr) has a lot of focus on the cuter, kawii side of things, which at times I would even call emo. You can easily find their work on chill out hip-hop mixtapes and on wallpaper sites, I imagine their work really speaks to teenagers in particular. Still I think there is something here for all ages, their craft and ability is very strong.

^^^ See if you can if you can spot the tribute to another pixel artist in this one ;) ^^^

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Anastasiia Azartseva AKA Forheksed

Last in this post, but not least! is Anastasiia Azartseva AKA Forheksed (DeviantArt). Her style differs from pretty much everyone else on this post today, it's a lot more old school and the pixelation is finer, though still blocky enough for me. There is a lot of detail here.

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Part 2 completed

This wraps up my favorite picks of pixel artists who at least sometimes do landscapes. I hope you enjoyed at much as I did. Please go and check out whatever artists that catch your eye the most, seeing their sweet sweet animations is worth the trouble.