I aim to share my love of pixel art and character design through well made stickers.
I have loved to draw ever since I was a small child. When I was young, I would spend hours drawing animals, creating creatures and losing myself to the worlds in my head. I would spend so much time drawing that I actually got in trouble a few times for doodling in class.
I vividly remember the first time I heard the word “Nintendo.” My sister and I were staying overnight at my cousins house, and they kept repeating this strange, foreign word. When I asked them to explain what this new word meant, they showed me their NES and my world changed forever. Super Mario Bros and Duckhunt, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. My imagination was captured in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Shortly thereafter, my dad brought home an NES of our very own. We would spend hours playing together. Ice Hockey, Donkey Kong Jr., Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game.
In 1990, when the Super Nintendo came on to the scene, and I got my first taste of what pixel art could really do, I was hooked. The expanded range of colors and graphical power of Nintendo’s new system brought the worlds of Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom to life in ways that had not been previously possible. Games like “The Secret of Mana” and “Chrono Trigger” introduced me to Japanese RPGs and “Street Fighter II” ignited in me a love of character design that persists to this day.
After that, I always wanted to create my own pixel art, but never had access to the technology to do so. That is, until, many years later, I discovered I could do just that using my iPad Pro. I had been experimenting with digital drawing for around a decade by that point, but once I figured out how to creat the kind of art I had been wanting to see, I never looked back.
I spent the next several years creating pixel sprites of my favorite characters from around pop culture, for no other reason than I enjoyed doing it. After a while, I tried to think of way I could make money from my art, and I realized that stickers was the way to go. Thus, Pixel Forge Press was born. It is an pleasure that I can create the kind of art I love so much and find that there are people out there who enjoy and appreciate it. Thank you for visiting my shop, and have fun looking around!
