The world of digital art and NFT art is a rapidly growing, and often times extremely variable market. Young artists with little exposure are now able to rapidly grow their art fan base and sell artworks on an NFT Art marketplace just upon entering the art scene due to NFT licensing. In this review, we will be discussing several famous digital artists who have built a reputation for themselves from the ground up. Continue reading to learn about famous digital artists and their works.
The first category of popular digital artists we will be covering is established and well-known artists who have been in the digital art space long enough to grow in popularity and broaden their portfolios.
Michael Winklemann, known as Beeple, is one of the hottest Digital Artists in this day and age according to Vexels Blog, with his work featuring funny, disturbing, shocking, and oftentimes dystopic depictions of the future. He rose to prominence in 2021 after having sold an NFT for a whopping $69M, which has opened up many other doors for collaborations.
GMUNK is a digital artist whose work revolves around sci-fi themes along with psychedelic visual palettes. His work takes many different forms, such as short films, music videos, commercials, digital art exhibitions, installations, and a variety of other platforms and media. He has worked with top brands like Nike, Uber, HBO, and many more. His work is truly one-of-a-kind, go check it out!
Pi-Slices is a GIF artist all about creating surreal seamless loops in 3D. His work caught the attention of many news media and publications like The Guardian, Washington Post, and CBC Arts, and he has worked with brands like Nike and Nissan. You can see his work on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.
Ofir Shoham is a freelance animator who’s focused on adding frame-by-frame neon glow to videos featuring people dancing, playing sports, or other activities. Featured and reposted on many popular accounts, his work is only expected to keep growing in the future.
Minna’s an artist, writer and comic creator from Sweden who specializes in storytelling through cool comics inspired by Finnish mythology. Her illustrations play with light and color in a way that takes you deep into the different universes that she creates for her characters’ stories.
James is an illustrator and animator at Blue Sky Studios, who creates tranquile pastel worlds throughout his illustrations, using vintage-inspired color palettes. His LA style skies and landscapes are beautiful in the sense that they remind us of a dreamy state we’d all love to be transported to.
Next, we travel to a world of new and emerging artists who have shown great promise, and we expect to see great new projects from in the future. While they may not be the most famous digital artists yet, keep an eye on these promising artists because they just might be on their way to digital art fame. We pulled these next 4 artists from the 2022 Emerging Digital Artists Award competition. The five recipients’ works were selected from over 100 submissions by emerging artists across the country, in recognition of their critical and creative approach to digital media. The shortlist was determined by a jury panel made up of artists, programmers, and practitioners from the digital arts community—Jeremy Bailey, Niki Little, and Alvin Luong—in collaboration with Karina Iskandarsjah from Trinity Square Video and Shannon Linde from EQ Bank.
Kasra Goodarznezhad uses artificial intelligence in his maps and memory projects to trace routes from his previous life in Iran. Goodarznezhad studied graphic design in Tehran before moving to Toronto. He enrolled at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and graduated with awards from their integrated media program. Since embarking on a career as an artist and curator, he has worked in photography, video, digital arts, lighting design, and installation, and founded two Ontario-based QTBIPOC collectives.
Matt Nish-Lapidus holds a degree in new media art and has a rich background as a practicing musician and designer. His work has included everything from the digital library catalog in use by the New York Public Library, enterprise software for hospitals, video games, and large-scale public installations. He spent the first few years of his career assisting international new media artists, later moving into the design and technology industry.
Taylor McArthur (Nakota of Pheasant Rump Nakota First Nation, Saskatchewan) is a digital artist working with 3D animation, video game design, and video. Her practice is informed by Indigenous Futurisms and seeks to situate her Indigenous culture within both the modern and a potential future vision.
Wei Li is an emerging artist whose experience of being an immigrant to Canada provides her with crucial inspiration in her practice. Having grown up in China and trained as a contemporary artist in the West, her dual cultural background challenges her to integrate different cultural perspectives and creates tensions through the contradictions inherent in forming a new hybrid identity.
The final group of artists we will be discussing will be the most famous digital artists and their works. These popular digital artists are the most well-known for their works and exhibitions.
Erik Johansson is a Swedish-born artist based in Prague who creates surreal images by combining photographic elements and other materials into surreal scenes. He combines images to create what looks like a real photograph but creates logical inconsistencies to impart an effect of surrealism.
Sara Ludy works across an array of digital art media to examine notions of space and immateriality. In the form of video, digital painting, works of augmented reality and virtual reality, and other new media, Ludy’s art visualizes memories, the unconscious, and other subjects that otherwise lack physical presence.
Sean Charmatz is featured as an artist and speaker at this year’s Pictoplasma Berlin. He has worked in the animation industry since 2005 and has most notably served as a writer and director on ‘Spongebob Squarepants,’ in addition to designing, storyboarding, and developing shows for Disney and Dreamworks.
