Pixel Painter

Five years ago, Chris Olian (a.k.a. 8-bit Artist) wanted a painting of Megaman to hang on his wall. When his friend failed to deliver, he took up the challenge himself. Thus began a productive hobby that spawned two hundred artworks, and led to gallery exhbitions. Here he talks to infinitecontinues about his craft.

infinitecontinues: Hi Chris. Who are you and what do you do?

Chris Olian: My name is Chris, also known as 8-bit Artist. I used to paint squares, but right now I play a lot of PS3.

ic: Tell us how 8-Bit Artist came about? When did you first get ideas to make art of videogame characters from the past? What was it that inspired that initial push?

CO: 8-bit Artist came to about five years ago. I was working a crappy factory job in a small, horrible town with nothing to do. My birthday was coming around and my friend (who is an artist) asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I asked for her a Megaman painting that was still pixelated. To cut a long story short, she never did that painting due to being busy with other things, but I wanted the painting so bad, I decided to just try it out myself. Needless to say, the painting sucked pretty hard as I had zero painting experience prior to that. Megaman was crooked, sloppy-looking, the paint had dried blotchy etc… but I knew that the basis to pixel painting was not hard and each painting I did got better-looking and more like a screenshot.

The first. Chris’ Megaman painting.

ic: Take us through the process of how you create one of your artworks. Do you blow up the original sprites to determine how many squares you need to plot out and fill with paint, or is it a less scientific process than that?

CO: I guess you can say it’s a more scientific process. It’s a very mathematical way of painting, that’s for sure. I play a lot of NES/SNES roms on my computer. If I come across a scene I think is memorable, or just plain looks cool, I’ll screen-cap it. After that, I crop the scene to something that condenses the action but is still aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Then I see how many pixels wide and tall the scene is, and decide what size canvas I want and what size pixel I want to paint in. I started painting in 1/2 of an inch pixels, then went to 1/4th, then went to 1/6th. After that, it’s hard to keep the straight edges and screen shot quality I’d personally like. the most pixels I ever painted in one picture was 37,249.

After all the math is figured out, I’ll take a ruler and T-square and grid the entire canvas to match the gridded, cropped screenshot on my computer. After that, it’s basically just a semi-complicated paint-by-numbers system, only there is no number system on the canvas and you just have to match the same square on the canvas as on the screenshot on the computer screen.

I basically paint a picture twice each time. The first time, I’m filling all the squares with the proper color, laying on the paint pretty thickly to cover up the grid. The second coat is the coat where I take my time and make everything all “screen-shotty” with really straight, crisp edges. Tiny, flat-tip brushes are your friend.

Tanooki Mario vs. Lemmy Koopa.

ic: Wow, that sounds like quite an involved process. How long does a typical painting take using such painstaking methods?

CO: It depends on if it’s 8-bit or 16-bit, since the color palette is bigger. It also depends on how complex the scene and how small the pixels I am painting. Usually a pretty involved painting will take 40-50 hours, but on average I would say 20 hours or so a piece.

ic: A quick scan down your DeviantArt profile reveals all of the works you have sold. It looks like this was a profitable hobby for you? Any plans to get back into your art?

CO: You know, I sold my first painting ever to one friend for $10… and it was that blotchy, crappy-looking Megaman (which is still hanging in his apartment to this day). We joke that it was a great investment, because he could probably sell it for $11 as my first piece ever. After that, I started doing more and posting them on MySpace and looking for people that might enjoy my art. The first time someone emailed me and asked what I wanted (to charge) for a painting, I was like, “Really?! You want to pay me money for one of these?!” I think I ended up selling that one for like $25. It was really quite a shock, since I didn’t have any art training whatsoever. After that, it just started to grow and get more and more popular. It was almost surreal that people wanted my painted videogame scenes on their wall.

It was definitely profitable with over 150 paintings sold worldwide, but it’s not like I can buy a house or a fancy car with what I made. People and fellow artists told me I was selling my stuff too cheap, but I looked at it like, ‘This isn’t my job, I don’t need the money and I’d rather have them have my art then not at all’. So long as I felt I was compensated for my time and the materials, I was happy. I mean, it’s freaking videogame scenes; my ‘target audience’ aren’t rich or art collectors by any means.

To this day, I still get asked to paint stuff and if I’m going to start painting again. I can’t say for sure whether or not I’ll start painting scenes again. Within four years, I painted almost 200 paintings. That’s a painting a week for four years, almost. That’s a lot. I am, however, looking to start a project soon. After playing 3D Dot Game Heroes for the PS3, I feel inspired to make a cubed statue of the main character. Maybe this will mark the return, or maybe it will be a one-and-done type deal. I’m not sure, but I know people will respond to it pretty well. It will be in the same vein as my underworld Goomba and Paratroopa cubed sculptures.

3D Paratroopa.

ic: You also create Perler bead works, which seems to be a thriving medium amongst videogame artists. What can you tell us about working with those?

CO: Perler bead artists have become quite popular. I started doing those back in the day just to break up the monotony of painting little squares all the time. It also gave people interested in my work, but unable to afford an actual painting, the chance to buy something from me and hang it on their wall or fridge. It’s a good thing if you want to do something really quick, but other people, such as Levi Buffum (aka Dr. Octoroc) have really taken it to another level that I would have never done. It’s funny because he actually started doing Perler bead works after his brother gave him one of my Perler pieces for Christmas. Knowing that you inspired someone is pretty cool and I never thought I’d actually ever do that… at least with art.

Megaman 2 bosses created with Perler beads.

ic: Some of your pieces were exhibited in an art gallery in Washington DC a few years back. How did that opportunity come about? How much of a thrill was it to go from a blotchy Megaman painting to exhibiting in a gallery?

CO: That came about because an artist-friend of mine, Daniel Fleres, was invited to do a show there, and he asked me to include a few pieces in that show. That wasn’t my first gallery show though. Sadly, any time my art was at a gallery, I was never there for the show. It’s always a crazy thought though – that my stuff actually gets into galleries.

ic: Are you a big gamer? If so, what are you currently playing and enjoying? Any new games you want to capture in an 8-bit style?

CO: Yeah, A am a pretty big gamer right now. I have a PS3 and have become a slight Trophy whore! Taking a new game, such as God Of War or something, and converting it to an 8-bit scene is quite challenging. I doubt I’ll ever do that.

ic: Anything else you want to add?

Well, I just want to say thank you to infinitecontinues for giving me the chance to interview with you, even though I haven’t done any artwork in well over a year. I also want to thank everyone who has bought art off me in the last five years as it means a lot to me. My MySpace and DeviantArt are pretty dormant right now, but when I do that 3D Dot Game Heroes sculpture, it will go up on there.