Animator Simon Cottee (Rule) posted this short but engaging 11-minute documentary examining pixel art and chip music, a must watch video if you have an interest in either fields. In Pixel, Cottee looks at three different aspects of the visual style from the perspectives of Jason Rohrer (Passage, Sleep is Death), animator Joe Brumm (Dan the Man), and chiptune artist Alex "Dot_AY" Yabsley.

As our sister blog IndieGames.com notes, among other points, the film argues that developers are giving players a "warped" version of the past when playing to their sense of nostalgia with clear, blocky images, as the graphics most of us played on blurry televisions were less defined.

"Nostalgia seems to be the initial driving force for many of these artists, the same way that childhood experience plays a large part in any traditional artist's work," says Cottee. "But there seems to be something more to the pixel, an alluring rawness and freedom in its simplicity."