Games Editor Joshua McCormack explores how contemporary artists derive their inspiration from the digital and gaming world of the noughties.
The early 2000s saw several groundbreaking developments and evolutions in graphics, both in video games and CGI animation. Arguably two of the most significant were the genesis of the console that would rise to dominate the modern gaming scene: the Xbox, and the shift in the animation industry from the 2D-Art style which studios like Disney and WarnerBros had made industry standard, to the 3D animatics which are now ubiquitous. With modern-day graphics having reached breathtaking heights, and the noughties dissolved into history, many artists, who grew up surrounded by and interacting with – what we now consider – those crude, blocky textures, have chosen to delve into this nascent period in their own lives.
Through a pastiche of early 2000s rendering of gaming franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sims, artist Sasha Yazov (@sashayazov) oscillates between poignant domestic and social scenes, and more light-hearted distortions of iconic franchises and games – the twisted filter of the obtuse graphics bringing a sense of absurdism to many tableaus. Misting the frame of each picture is a blurry effect which imbues the scenes with an unknowable, wondering quality – distant vistas are veiled behind shimmers of blockish graphics, background details can be lost in the mesmer. Combine this with 2000s graphics marked lack of ability to render facial expressions, emotions and thoughts, and Yazov's art offers the viewer many questions to ponder. Engaging people with a sense of mystery as to the composition, and Yazov's own intention with the characters that populate her work.
Combine this with 2000s graphics marked lack of ability to render facial expressions, emotions and thoughts, and Yazov's art offers the viewer many questions to ponder. Engaging people with a sense of mystery as to the composition, and Yazov's own intention with the characters that populate her work.
Kevin Judge (@Kevin Judge) blends the fantastical and the mundane, combining elements from video games – especially the Nintendo Mii; round, cherubish human parodies – and quotidien scenes; gathered round a crackling fire, sharing a drink in a restaurant, sketching in a notebook. Be it a human's skeleton, eyes bright with surprise, electrified as they paint, a crumpled star striking a football across a field, or a pair of Mii's clapping excitedly over the snowman they've built outside an office block, Judge infuses his work with mirth and play. Inviting the audience to explore their more zany, left-field side, urging people to reconnect with a childish sense of wonder and magic. This, I believe, is why Judge gives such prominence to the Nintendo Mii in his work; their cartoonishly expressive faces and bobbish form lend an air of cheer to any setting, even that of a drab office. We are encouraged to take this spirit with us.
Be it a human's skeleton, eyes bright with surprise, electrified as they paint, a crumpled star striking a football across a field, or a pair of Mii's clapping excitedly over the snowman they've built outside an office block, Judge infuses his work with mirth and play.
By contrast, Marilou Bal (@balmalibu) takes an almost horror-inspired approach with how she unflinchingly employs the 2000s graphic aesthetic to render portraits of people. Bal is committed to highlighting the eerie distortion of flesh stones that arises when an image is over zoomed-in/focused, and further weathers the picture by streaking them with a digital rot. Certain colours are exaggerated; light blushes bloom into pink splotches, glass filled with wine shifts from an opaque white to a turbid green-yellow liquid. This approach demonstrates, what appears to be, Bal's focus on how time can corrupt photographs, and indeed, can corrupt and distort memories of happy times and places.
This approach demonstrates, what appears to be, Bal's focus on how time can corrupt photographs, and indeed, can corrupt and distort memories of happy times and places.
The artist Benzimienny (@beziemennyart) showcases his passion for early 2000s Fantasy RPG (role-playing games) with his art. Featured on his Instagram page are monstrous serpents, fur-clad nobles, mages gathered beneath a sparking dome, pirates, battles, knights and duels, all rendered in their 2000s blockish, endearingly awkward style … but with a notable difference when compared with the other artists: his embracing of 3D textures. Benzimienny's work harkens back to that transitory period between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s when the wider visual effects and graphic industries were enduring the uncomfortable metamorphoses of moving from 2D, at which they had decades of experience in, to 3D rendering – the new frontier. Throughout his Instagram, Benzimienny gives detailed, layered and era-faithful representations of characters, archetypes drawn from properties like Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, and Skyrim.
Gao Hang (@gaohangart) shares some artistic sensibilities with Sasha Yazov (featured above) in terms of how he utilises the 2000's era avatar's featureless faces to bring a sense of mystery to his portraits, to seed questions in the mind of a viewer. He uses this crude style to portray people at their most raw, exploring what Gang terms in one of his exhibitions, 'digital primitivism. Humanity stripped of its artifice and returned to its natural, simplistic roots.
These artists' dextrous and imaginative use of graphics that we sniff at nowadays proves that no medium dies that can't be resurrected in a new form, that can't be returned with a more powerful voice then before.