The Great Pixel Outbreak
Somewhere between Advent candles and Christmas cookies, a strange phenomenon hit our household: pixel fever. The kids wished for pixel art from pixeln.ch for Christmas — not plush toys, not consoles, but gloriously rigid grids of colored squares. At that moment, it became clear: this was no phase. This was discrete geometry taking over family life. 🙂
A Longstanding Love for Fractals
Fractals have fascinated me since childhood. My first Mandelbrot set slowly appeared on a Commodore 64, calculated with equal parts patience and wonder.
Later, during my studies, I had the rare opportunity to attend a lecture by Benoît Mandelbrot himself at ETH Zurich. Since then, every computer I’ve owned has, sooner or later, computed Mandelbrot sets again — especially the Amiga, where more colors made everything even more magical.
Turning Images into Instructions
I built a small app that generates step-by-step pixel instructions for turning images into physical pixel art. Early versions of the pixel-image creator had one important limitation: there was no adapted palette yet that matched the available physical pixel colors. This meant manual color mapping — carefully aligning image RGB values with what actually exists in the real world, one color decision at a time.
Pixeling Infinity (and Loving Every Minute)
The fractal itself was generated on my phone with MandelBrowser — honestly, it’s the best Mandelbrot app I’ve ever seen on mobile. After that, my pixel-image creator turned it into a step-by-step pixel guide.
The actual pixeling turned out to be surprisingly challenging: many disconnected areas, very subtle color differences, and frequent moments of “wait… was this pixel really that shade?” Orientation wasn’t always easy — but it was deeply satisfying.
The result? A beautiful pixelated Mandelbrot fractal — and many hours of pure flow and fun.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who wants to immortalize a personal, meaningful image as pixel art. Time flies, creativity flows, and in the end, you get something uniquely yours — square by square!