We love a nice piece of pixel art here at Creative Bloq, and what better place to find it than in Minecraft? Everyone's favourite blocky sandbox game turns 15 this year, and it's marking the occasion with the addition of 15 new pixel paintings.
Available for you to use to decorate your home or castle soon, the pieces might look a little familiar. That's because they're from the same artist who created most of the existing art in the game. Fans think they look just as good.
The new pieces are shrunk and pixelated versions of original art created by Kristoffer Zetterstrand, the artist who created well-known in-game Minecraft artworks like Skull on Fire and Pigscene. While his previous work for the game was based on existing pieces, this time he created new work specifically for Minecraft.
He said in an interview on the Minecraft website that his time he had more time to think about the motifs. "It also gave me a chance to look at the old ones and make new ones that complimented them," he added. "I wanted the new ones to be both familiar and make more use of the possibilities of somewhat larger canvases. And I wanted some of them at least to be a bit prettier.”
In March, Zetterstrand revealed on X than he got involved in Minecraft back in 2010 when the Swedish programmer Markus Alexej Persson, also known as "Notch", asked him to make pixel art for his "little weird indie hobby game". Zetterstrand shrunk down pictures of some of his oil paintings and "played around with them a bit" to create the Minecraft art we know.
Back in 2010, Markus ( aka Notch ) asked me if I could do some pixel paintings for his little weird indie hobby game "Minecraft". So I shrunk down some pics of my oilpaintings and played around with them a bit. Then I sent him this file. kz.png #minecraft #pixelart #oilpainting pic.twitter.com/zX5X5bgmuiMarch 8, 2024
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Some fans have commented that while the 15 pieces of art are all new, they still feel somehow familiar and comforting, which is perhaps the magic of pixel art (also see our piece on teletext art). Zetterstrand says that fans had told him the paintings "in their weirdness, hint at something mysterious – a bigger world, something beyond."
“It’s quite interesting, because a basic idea in games is that you don’t want to break the immersion," he added. "Curiously, [the paintings] don’t seem to do that, at least not in a negative way. I think that’s a testament to the creative possibilities and atmosphere in Minecraft as a game. It’s all about imagining, so paintings that leave a lot to the imagination seem to fit right in.”
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
