About
Richard Grillotti is a multimedia artist working with over 20 years experience in the digital art world, a game developer & co-founder of Pixeljam.com, and a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, working towards an MFA in Digital Art and New Media.
Co-founder of Pixeljam Games, Richard has been designing, making and releasing independent game titles with his version of the minimal pixel art aesthetic for over 15 years, inspired by the classic video game art & limitations of the 70’s and 80’s which he grew up playing and never falling out of love with.
“The joy and challenge of working in this minimal pixel art style is that it is intrinsically more like solving puzzles than illustrating; finding just the right placement & color of each and every big blocky pixel, distilling each image, character and object down to the barest essentials needed to communicate effectively.”
“It’s fascinating how the human mind comprehends and completes each picture & object with so little actual information or detail to work with. As well, attempting to tell a complete “story” within 1-4 panels further echos the challenge and minimal nature of the art form, coalescing in this body of work that is simple, colorful & playful.”
Richard Grillotti
The “Low Res” body of work focuses on prints of Richard’s “Pixeljam Comics” series, a collection of short “stories” told in 1 to 4 frames in his signature minimal pixel art style. Accompanying this series is a selection of individual minimal pixel art pieces that he has created over the last 15 years
Richard is currently exploring and working in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality as a Graduate Student at UCSC’s Digital Art and New Media program. He is interested in the cutting edge & intelligent application of XR technology, while continuing to explore the limits of low-res simplicity. He stays grounded out of the virtual by making his “Postcard Remix” pieces, a non-digital art form mashing up stickers with postcards resulting in often bizarre scenarios. Each postcard is given or mailed freely to actual human beings.
Richard Grillotti
Artist, Co-founder, Independent Game Developer
Pixeljam Games: Pixeljam.com
Pixeljam Comics: pixeljamcomics.tumblr.com
Postcard Remixer: instagram.com/postcardremix, stickerfun.tumblr.com
MFA Student, UC Santa Cruz: danm.ucsc.edu