I'm such a fan of pixel art, it always hits the perfect sweet spot of nostalgia. I grew up in game worlds, so to see these styles translated into our modern age is always a thrill. Recently I've really been drawn to the work of @JiskeyJasket. Let's talk!

First off, can you introduce yourself to our community? Your name, where you are based and the mediums you work in?

I’m Jasky, or G. I live in New Jersey, in the New York Metropolitan area, and these days I enjoy making pixel art and animated pixel art more than anything else. I’ve dabbled in everything from oils to traditional sculpture, but this is the medium I seem to get the best result from.

Amazing. I love the work you make, it reminds me of getting lost in games I used to play growing up, you build such rich worlds with these tools and I love to see the different ideas you create. What are some of your own early influences that guided you in developing your own style?

My first forays into pixel art was from editing ripped Sonic Advance sprites as a teenager, but I’d say stylistically I owe everything to comic books and Heavy Metal.

How do you begin to approach the process of creating these pieces? Do you have an idea in your head and then work towards realizing that vision, or do you play around in programs and let ideas evolve as you go?

Occasionally, like today, I have a goal I want to work towards and I build my piece around that very traditionally. You know, thumbnails, color keys, rough sketch, the rest of the work. But I think more often than not, every time I see an interesting picture, I save it. Sometimes I go on these intense binges of just obsessively saving material for hours. Everything that could possibly spark an idea, I just take it.

And I put it in one of my reference apps on my iPad, in the correct board, and then when I don’t have any ideas, I just look through these inspiration/reference boards until something clicks. I like to invite the inspiration to strike me more than work on a very specific idea.

Well said, its so cool how creativity works, we all kind of absorb and remix our inputs into our outputs, which makes everything so unique.

There are a lot of pros and cons to the experience of being an artist on the internet. What has your experience been so far being an artist who shares their work on social media?

I’ve become part of the pixel art community in the past year, and I’ve never really felt a connection to any art community in the past. It makes waking up to social media a really pleasant experience, being friends with so many other talented artists, because I can dwindle away free time taking in incredible work and getting to directly communicate that I see and appreciate those efforts to the people making the art.

I’ve been posting art online since I was quite young, and have never experienced the positive reception I have like in this past year. So I guess it really is never too late to get started, you never know when people might take notice of what you do, and when you might find ‘your people.'

That's incredible. I'm grateful to have found so much community for art online as well. Who are some of the artists that inspire you from the pixel art community?

I like people that break the rules. In the pixel art community, there’s a lot of people who enjoy the rigidity of the ‘rules of pixel art’. Which is fine, it’s all just preferences. But I like people who get dirty, seek shortcuts, experiment. I wish I had the space to include everyone I admire, but I’ll say I adore @roboticgeo for his incredible ambiance and focus on the beauty (and sadness) of rural Louisiana, @Nucleose for his stunning animated restrictive palette vignettes complete with narrative and beautiful composition, @ioruko for her ability to seamlessly switch between styles and subjects and deliver a beautiful finished piece, and @goawayimcrabby for being such a skilled designer and illustrator and creating hyper appealing game graphics in her own unique style.

Was creativity encouraged in your life or did you have to push against people telling you to do something more traditional? And what advice might you have for people earlier on their creative journey?

I was encouraged to make art, but not necessarily the envelope-pushing edgy subjects I had an interest in depicting. But art should be a little rebellious, if people aren’t pushing back against you, then I think you need to push a little harder. And my advice is to get really good at creating something, until you can really feel like you can do that one thing well no question, and always return to that thing if you’re feeling lost.

If it’s drawing dragons, do that. If it’s painting mountains, do that. Always have something you know how to do cold so you can remind yourself you DO know what you’re doing, and for everything else, you’ll figure it out soon enough.

Wonderful work and words, thank you so much for taking the time to share your world with us today. To the reader, you can find that world at @JiskeyJasket on Twitter. See you next time!