#artistsontwitter
Retronator Community Feature
I have an easy job as a pixel art journalist when the community does half of the work for me. Such help came from Twitter last week when hashtag #artistsontwitter started trending in our scene—I could just grab my popcorn and let the artworks roll by.
Except … these images, they were so tiny. We can’t really appreciate pixel art with our beloved squares squished like that. Therefore this article emerged, a feature of artists on Twitter, at least those riding the #.
I usually title and credit every image individually. This time I’ll show you a set of images and include the author’s source tweet right after. That way I’ll keep my sanity and you can get your mind blown first (or not) and then send some love to the artist with a like or a follow.
Let’s do a test one:
Ah, wasn’t that much better? Welcome to Retronator Magazine, the publication where I do the hard work for you and you just sit back and enjoy. Like really, take a breather. Scroll slowly, enjoy the works. There’s no grand prize for reaching the end quickly (TWSS).
Pixel artists
#artistsontwitter swept over the wider Twitter community. I did my surgical review by searching for pixel art among the tweets. This gave me a range of artists, from those focused on pixel art to others that mix pixels with non-pixel works.
First we’ll look at artists who tweeted just their pixels. That doesn’t mean they don’t do any other kind of drawings and paintings and inktobers and juicy stuffs—it just means they chose to put only their pixels forward this time.
Illustration
Where better to begin than with the artist that was the subject of my first ever artist feature in the magazine.
There’s no lack of newcomers that stir our imagination with their wonderful illustrations either.
Fine art
From classical, perfectionistic, clean waters of illustration, we move onto the expressive, experimental frontier of pixel art. You wouldn’t be too surprised to find these next works in a fine art gallery. OK, maybe a little. It would be one cool gallery though.
Note that my categorizations are just a puny attempt to organize this huge volume of works. The labels are neither objective, nor encompassing.
With that in mind, how about some impressionistic brushwork from—so they tell me—Bob Ross of pixel art?
And what if we push impressionism a tiny nudge towards surrealism?
Let’s get rid of impressionism and just leave the surreal stuff.
And then go abstract!
We go from abstract patterns to abstract figures …
… until we reach full-on cubism!
Game art
Moving on from fine art pixels that serve their own purpose, let’s look at applied works used to make video games—or at least they make you feel like they should be.
Our journey starts with artists that will be your new best buddies if you like point-and-click adventures.
When we enter side-scroller territory, things get very crowded very quick. Half of pixel artists (and their moms) seem to devote some part of their lives to this projection.
By now you’ve also had a glance at another common game camera projection: 3/4 top-down view.
Let’s close the game art section with tiny little images we sometimes call sprites, but they can be their own cute thing as well.
Characters
The last couple of artists already bordered on our next subcategory: full-blown characters.
You can imagine seeing these in fighting games, right? They call also exist on their own.
Honorable mentions
We’re about halfway through the article. Before we move onto artists that also showcased non-pixel works, there are many of whom I couldn’t afford to feature their whole tweet, lest we not be done until the cows come home.
Honorable mentions hold the rest of the wonderful or promising artists that I’ll feature with just one example each. Give your favorites a follow by finding the authors in the descriptions. Especially if you’re a beginner, making a connection with others at the start of their journey is a good recipe for building a circle of artists that will support you on your climb up the learning curve.
All-around artists
Retronator Magazine will always welcome related artwork outside of pixel art. Involvement with other mediums always sees a return on investment as artists expand their technique, styles, and ideas. The second half of this article hosts works of pixel and non-pixel nature that complement each other.
Digital painting
Like the first half, we’ll start this section with an artist that had its place in this magazine before. In fact, the feature Rulers of pixels, masters of concept art featured not one, but a duo of Russian artists with diversity to spare.
Painting is a popular activity to balance the precise and often tedious nature of pixeling. It’s very close in process, so it’s no wonder you’ll see most varied artists practice this form of art without jaggies.
There are two main approaches to making artworks. So far in this section we’ve mostly seen non-pixel works that got created alike traditional paintings, with shapes being sculpted from broad strokes and refined into details. The second approach follows the process of comics, starting with clean lineart, and then going to colors and shading.
Storybook illustration
For a lack of a better term, we’ve reached artists whose non-pixel works could easily find their way into storybooks.
Character Art
Look at all those lovely people! We’re now talking about artists that have a special tendency to draw and design characters.
Vector
Sometimes it’s nice to appreciate clean, geometric precision of vector drawings. These next artists definitely do.
3D
Finally, when we push vectors into 3D, we get low-poly and voxel artworks. Some amazing and legendary pixel artists have done the jump into third dimension.
Besides voxels, I also always appreciate some sweet low-poly models, especially these days as artists started using pixel art textures on them.
And for this last one, 3D goes real life for maximum jaw drop.
I can’t even.
Friends of pixel art
We’re at the end of our coverage of pixel artists on Twitter. Pat yourself on the back, you made it through! I hope your mouse wheel or trackpad isn’t too worn out.
Before we part ways, I want to give a shoutout to a handful of artists that didn’t include pixel art in their tweets, but are nonetheless important members of the pixel scene.
Felippe did some great concept art for the pixel art games of now defunct Spaceboy Games.
ENDESGA is an experienced pixel artist working on NYKRA. You’ll find his popular 16- and 32-color palettes in newer pixel art software.
Finally, we have Dom2D, the game designer of the pixel-perfect Flinthook from Tribute Games. A third of the pixel art scene I follow, also follows Dom2D. We’ve basically adopted him as our own.
No words can sufficiently describe the feels.
That’s it, that’s all! I really hope I haven’t left anyone out of the picture and if I did, I deeply apologize. Scrounging the hashtag with such a huge volume of tweets is prone to mistakes. If my count was correct, 91 artists were featured, and that’s not even including the 47 honorable mentions. Still, there are plenty more excellent artists on Twitter that didn’t participate in the hashtag. The pixel art scene is huge and this was but a blip on its radar.
Thanks for reading! If you want to support my coverage of pixel art, as well as development of my adventure game for learning pixel art, you can do so on Patreon. Thank you and may the pixels be with you!
—Retro
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