These are great, Ben! These for a larger diorama scene or standalone?

I love the blue building.

Hell yeah! That little dude looks straight out of a Redwall or Mouse Guard book!

Hi Jan, thanks for the share!

I'm Ash, MtF character artist from northern Canada, mostly doing comic style stuff these days. All I want for Christmas is a couple followers so hmu if you like my lines 😜

Pls forgive for the reposts I'm still learning how to post pictures on this app 😭

Your work with coloured highlights and shadows is incredible. Love the top right glasses girl, wow.

Small Rodents with medieval weapons is one of my favourite subjects. Is that squirrel knight design based on something or an OC? Awesome work on all these pieces!

Yooo these vibes are absolutely rotten and I'm here for it. I love the creepy winter farmhouse.

Man your stuff always catches my eye when I see it. The colours and bold black lines are perrrrfect.

Love it!

Man all your characters have this beautiful sorta glow to them that really makes them come to life. Especially in the winter pieces!

Yooo! Pleased to be here, everyone is so nice.

9. Doesn't matter the medium, doesn't matter the quality, all that matters is that you make it. Because practice is everything. All this proved is 12 years of practice makes you better at Art, regardless of medium. It's a skill that I developed over time. And it's one that you can develop too.

8. But why do people _still_ make pixel art? Because sometimes you need the medium with the lowest possible barrier to entry. Or because working within restrictions is *fun*. Neither of those are things that AI will ever be able to achieve.

So go forth and make shitty art.

7. The connection between me at 16, picking pixels as my medium because I couldn't afford a tablet, and the pioneers of pixel art making 8 bit sprites for the very first GUIs is a straight fucking line.

6. At first, people made pixel art because it was necessary, rather than because they wanted to. And even now, that remains the case.

5. It can create approximations of the aesthetic, but cannot restrain itself to the level that actual artists do.

Because pixel art is more a medium than an artstyle. It is a series of rules, now self imposed, that restrict the artist's freedom rather than expanding it.

4. See, despite how easy it is to fake most artistic styles with AI, it cant make this shit. Why? The bots lack of 'knowing' renders it incapable of working within the rigid constraints necessary to produce pixel art.

3. Recently I've been digging through my old pieces, and began wondering if my artistic improvements in more basic fields (perspective, anatomy, lighting, etc) would apply to pixels.

This combined with the constant AI deluge returned it to the front of my mind and got me to start this project.

2. Much like the early pioneers of the medium, my choice was born of necessity rather than aesthetics. A mouse, keyboard, and freeware drawing software (GIMP my beloved) meant it was available to me. I've since stepped away from the medium but remained quite fond of it and think of it frequently.

1. "Purple Hills" or "Experiments in Monochrome 01" (Yes its not monochrome I was a dumb kid, sue me.) was the first piece of digital art I ever made. At age 16, I chose pixel art as I knew I wanted to work digitally but had no drawing tablet nor the means to acquire one.