WMPA - Wondrous Modern Pixel Art

Another Pixel Art collection, this one focuses on fun, wondrous scenes and experiences. Not necessarily good or bad, just wondrous. Starting off, Firesparkler is an active, fascinating work at an angle that makes it stand out in an unconventional way. The background and foreground of the work really aren't very different in their color schemes, but the foreground stands out by its much more solid and full texture. Moreover, the pixels of the foreground seem to be shadowed against another layer directly underneath, creating a unique effect. Climbing to the Paradise Elevator uses a similar motif but is zoomed much further out, and takes fewer libterties with the colors. Here, the array of shadowed pixels is used as a framing device for a path that leads all the way through them, towards a tall, thin pillar. An entrypoint at the bottom leads into this array. Details of a Fresh Scar is sharp and evoative, using a severely restrained color palette and an uncompromising composition to get its point across. The fact that the scar is presented here vertically, rather than horizontally, makes it more effective. In contrast, Flowerpatch is sloppy and bright, the background resembling a pixelated interpretation of a Jackson Pollock work, and the foreground being hardly more than blobs of color which stand out against the background only for their width and bulk. And yet, the work's composition is simply elegant, in that way that simplicity often brings out elegance. Not all works need to be complicated and thought-provoking. But my personal favorite work this week is Cultivating Magical Plants, a work similar in compositional style to the others in the collection but which executes that style more competently than any of them, primarily due to using the contrast in both color and texture. The background is dark and precise, whereas the border of the central area - the flowers of these supposed magical plants - is big, blunt, and loose. Inside the circle they form, a green fades into black quickly, alluding to an area further in that cannot yet be seen. Please enjoy!