kartooner

Pixel Art has since become a wildly pop­u­lar Inter­net graph­ics phe­nom­e­non. Sev­eral sites have adopted Pixel-driven art to off­set real­is­tic graph­ics and sub­par “trendy” grid databases.

Pixel Art is none other than cre­at­ing dig­i­tal por­traits of peo­ple, places, things and objects with mim­i­nal tools. Mainly, the 1 pixel by 1 pixel for­mat com­bined with a 256-color (or more if pre­ferred) palette. Pixel Artists from all over the globe have cre­ated amaz­ing works of art that are dis­played on sites around the Inter­net. How­ever, the birth of this art­form was orig­i­nally and more com­monly used for early com­puter games (notably the Kings Quest series by Robert Williams).

Soft­ware artists used this pix­el­ing tech­nique to por­tray exotic islands, fan­tasy realms and sci­ence fic­tion set­tings. This tech­nique, since replaced by 3-dimensional graph­ics is still promi­nent in some iso­met­ric and cultural/city build­ing games.

Yet, with the adop­tion of the Inter­net as a pop-culture ref­er­ence tool — Pixel Art has a place to stay. Whether it be in a web designer’s inter­face or to sim­ply dress the entire site in an inter­est­ing mask of pixel good­ness — Pixel Art takes patience and that makes you appre­ci­ate the artists even more so.

Here’s some great sites painted in Pixel Art:

Pro­tokid is a chat-powered realm that is entirely show­cased in Pix­el­ness. Reg­is­ter your avatar and get typing!

City Cre­ator is a Pixel-driven site that allows you to cre­ate tiny urban cul­tures. Sim­ply choose your graphic (house, street, tree, etc.) — place it on the grid area and build your­self an envi­ron­ment for Tiny Midget peo­ple. Yes, that’s redun­dant. I know.

So You Wanna Be a Pixel Artist is for those of you who are inter­ested in doing this for a liv­ing or just dab­bling in it for fun. It’s a step-by-step guide with help­ful hints and links to bet­ter hone your pixelness!

Dude Stu­dios, while not exactly Pixel art, still deserves a spot in this link­age for the work this guy has put into this series. Basi­cally he’s re-done the Star Wars Tril­ogy in cutesy car­toon style, but the real gem is the visual style and the mere 2–5 min­utes (per episode) his car­toons cover as opposed to the 2+ hours the real movies took to tell the same story.

Meomi is “ded­i­cated to the cre­ation of com­pelling visual expe­ri­ences and nar­ra­tives. We do work for mul­ti­ple medi­ums and strongly believe in design that delights, entices, and inspires” — accord­ing to the site’s cre­ator. I espe­cially like the Meomilizer, essen­tially a char­ac­ter cre­ation area. Really neat features.