Addictively nostalgic and creative art: pixels!

If you're geeky like me, you might have played many video games growing up in the 80's and 90's. If you did, then you're certainly familiar with pixels, or pixelated graphics. This is basically digital art edited at the pixel-level. Pixel art gets far more technical and involved than I really care to explain here. Sierra is a great example, and was renowned for their "state of the art" pixel graphics, such as King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest etc. I could even go a step farther back and delve into the early days of BBSing (using dial up modems to call message boards) and compare ANSI graphic pictures to the precursor of refined pixel images. Basically, these were even more rudimentary pictures made using different colored blocks of ANSI (and ASCII) characters using a simple DOS graphic editor. It took great skill or an artistic eye to be adept at this, despite its simplicity.

Anyhow, recently while bored and surfing the interwebz, I came across some "pixel city" pictures and was immediately fascinated by them. These are basically city pixel images created on an isometric grid. They instantly gave me that warm, fuzzy nostalgic feeling that I love. What makes the pixel city art so interesting is that it's always so busy and there's so much going on, and reminds me of old DOS games of yore. It may seem to many as "simple" and even "primitive" compared to today's high-def and realistic images you can create with digital photography or art programs, but I find it pretty cool nonetheless.

Either way, I'll provide some links to some pics for you to enjoy and decide on your own. I'll even throw in a huge bonus and leave a link for Garbage Pail Kids. That's right! If you're over the age of 24, who can forget those lovable, nasty cards your mom would scoff at but would still buy for you as a kid? I know I had them plastered all over my room (however I first learned of them from my older brothers who were perpetually cooler than me growing up). Ahhh, being an 80's kid was ridiculously awesome, but I think I could turn that into a whole other blog post. Take some time and enjoy some art, you'll make more wrinkles in your brain!

Feel free to comment or leave your own links.

My Picasa Pixel Art album:

Pixel Art

Pixel City Homepage (animated- really cool)
Garbage Pail Kids
More Garbage Pail Kids