Pixel morsel I call a fragment of a (usually very large) digital artwork published as a separate creation and designed to serve as a visual sample before the artwork itself is published. Such a fragment usually features a particularly striking part of the artwork - in other words, it’s a kind of a teaser. A pixel morsel fragment can be creatively cut out of the master image and in that way get small embellishments on its edge that weren't part of the original picture. I quite enjoy making pixel morsels and consider them an art form on their own.
I came up with this idea while trying to figure out how to attract attention to my works amidst the voluminous ArtStation image feed (or any other digital art-hosting platform, for that matter). To be efficient for the purpose, I thought, a pixel morsel should have an eye-catching, intriguing shape cast against a flat black or white background. If it’s a teaser of an upcoming release, it would include an image title and/or the planned date. It could be also made as a reminder to visit a previously published artwork that the viewer might have missed.
Originally, pixel morsels were devised to represent images of the HyperPixel standard which I define as a large creation of at least 8K pixels at each dimension. Such images, since they are given no particular visual indicator of their radical size when published as deviations, can be easily overlooked in the image feed, especially when they are of a non-horizontal orientation or have no distinct, eye-catching subject or pattern. Later on, I thought there is no reason why pixel morsels couldn’t be created for smaller images as well, including non AI-generated ones. (Although, to be fair, not every image will have fragments that would make sense as a pixel morsel, while the process of making one requires substantial Photoshop experience and can be laborious.)
But we shall see if these pretty creations can make any difference in grabbing the attention of the perpetually overwhelmed AS site visitor.
Below are some examples of pixel morsels I created for my upcoming HyperPixel images on AS:
The alien artefact (1% of the actual image)
The grand spectacle (1% of the actual image)
Meditation (3% of the actual image)
