Zetterstrand recently took to Twitter to reflect on his contributions to Minecraft, sharing the png that started it all.
"Back in 2010, Marcus (aka Notch) asked me to do some pixel paintings for his rather bizarre indie hobby game Minecraft," Zetterstrand explained in a tweet.
"So I scaled down a picture of my oil painting and played around with it a bit. kz.png."
When asked if he thought about how many times his painting had been viewed in Minecraft over the past decade, Zetterstrand simply replied, "It's amazing and fun."
I have probably stared at Zetterstrand's creepy little pixel art drawings in Minecraft more than any other work of art in the real world. Whether it's a mud hut or a medieval stone castle, I still tirelessly rehang and tear down canvases in an attempt to get them to fit my grand interior design concepts. Eventually, I resort to burning skulls to fill the holes in the walls.
Zetterstrand's Minecraft paintings include a skeleton sitting in what looks like a fortune cookie and a variant of Caspar David Friedrich's famous "Wanderer on the Misty Sea," all oddly fascinating and seemingly reminiscent of Minecraft It is not an image. But it is this mismatched style that makes the paintings so memorable and oddly amusing: who wouldn't want to display a glorious landscape of two black belts fighting over a blocky fireplace?
But trying to decipher these tiny pixel arts often results in squinting and hunching over the screen and a terrible headache. Fortunately, Zetterstrand has provided fans with tons of great comparisons that allow them to see oil paintings and the pixel art that has developed from them.
It is wonderful to be able to appreciate these familiar paintings in a new way. However, while many of my questions have been answered, I can't help but wonder if the non-square human skulls in these paintings hint at the existence of a secret sect of life-like humans living in a deep cave somewhere in an unexplored part of the world.
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