Style combination · Pairs well

Isometric Pixel Art × Superflat

Both crowd a flat, saturated field with cute consumer figures and irony; add superflat's rounded characters to the pixel city for a denser pop dialogue.

From the research on Isometric Pixel Art

Mix them and make something Isometric Pixel Art Superflat

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Isometric Pixel Art, their arrangement from Isometric Pixel Art, the finish from Superflat. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Isometric Pixel Art Superflat

Type from Isometric Pixel Art: Bitmap & pixel
Colour from Superflat: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Isometric Pixel Art: Rectilinear
Stylised figuration
Composition from Isometric Pixel Art: All-over field
Horror vacui
Surface from Superflat: Gloss & highlights
Flat

Isometric Pixel Art avoids gloss & highlights: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Isometric Pixel Art

Yay!

Pixelify Sans, standing in for Hand-pixelled lettering drawn into the scene: shop signs, billboards and brand logos sheared onto the 2:1 planes of the buildings, as in eBoy's Pixoramas

Text · Superflat

The flat, saturated, cartoon-crowded look that Takashi Murakami named in his exhibition and manifesto Superflat (Tokyo, 2000; US tour 2001). It draws a line from Edo painting and prints to postwar anime and manga, and flattens high and low, art and merchandise into one plane. Smiling flowers, many-eyed characters and anime figures come in unshaded polychrome, smooth and glossy, cute and grotesque at once, sold as handbags and album covers as well as paintings. This entry follows the drawn core of Murakami and his Kaikai Kiki circle; the shows also held photography, video and sculpture.

Zen Maru Gothic; Superflat used Letters drawn into the character and Many-coloured repeated monogram

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Superflat, with a counter-accent from Isometric Pixel Art. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Isometric Pixel Art Superflat

#fbfaf5 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#ffd900 accent · 18%
#ffc933 accent · 14%
#00a0e9 accent · 10%
#e8413c accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #ffc933;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #e8413c;
  --font-display: "Pixelify Sans", monospace;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Superflat: Some canonical works use explicit otaku sexual imagery, such as Murakami's My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), and associated artists engage with lolicon art: Mr. describes himself as a lolicon and Henmaru Machino parodies it; never sexualise childlike figures. The mushroom-cloud skulls of Murakami's Time Bokan works and the title Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb, refer to the atomic bombings, and critics such as Dong-Yeon Koh argue that this victim narrative obscures Japanese aggression in China and Korea; do not use mushroom clouds or skulls as cute decoration. Handle borrowed Buddhist iconography and phrases, such as Kannon, with respect, and draw original characters and flowers: Mr. DOB, the smiling flowers and the Louis Vuitton monogram are owned designs.

The two styles

A densely packed, isometric cartoon city contains colorful block-shaped buildings, crowds of tiny people, elevated trains, roads, canals, bridges, and boats. A large red billboard reads “PIXEL CITY,” while pixel-like animals decorate buildings and a giant yellow duck floats in a canal.

1998–present · Central Europe, Northern Europe, Global / networked Isometric Pixel Art Pictures built by hand from single pixels in a 2:1 dimetric 'isometric' projection, made as posters, prints, covers and web graphics rather than as game screens. Its signature is eBoy's Pixorama: a dense, toy-like city of modular buildings, cars, billboards, brand logos and tiny figures packed edge to edge in flat, saturated colour. Habbo Hotel's furnished pixel rooms, though a game world themselves, set off a wide amateur practice of isometric pixel rooms and dioramas made as pictures.

A densely packed, brightly coloured cartoon poster reads “HAPPYVERSE” above a smiling blue-haired character with extra eyes on their forehead, hair and outstretched palms. Smiling flowers, winged rabbits, floating creatures, stars and planets surround the character, with a smiling Earth at the bottom.

1993–present · East Asia, Global / networked Superflat The flat, saturated, cartoon-crowded look that Takashi Murakami named in his exhibition and manifesto Superflat (Tokyo, 2000; US tour 2001). It draws a line from Edo painting and prints to postwar anime and manga, and flattens high and low, art and merchandise into one plane. Smiling flowers, many-eyed characters and anime figures come in unshaded polychrome, smooth and glossy, cute and grotesque at once, sold as handbags and album covers as well as paintings. This entry follows the drawn core of Murakami and his Kaikai Kiki circle; the shows also held photography, video and sculpture.