“The Pixel Painter” is a short documentary about Hal Lasko, a 97-year-old retired graphic designer who lost his ability to make art when he lost his sight. And then he got a new PC, and his grandson showed him Microsoft Paint.
For 15 years, Hal has been began making pixel art with MS Paint, using the program’s zoom function to compensate for his bad eyesight. "Now, Grandpa spends 10 hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings," says Ryan Lasko, one of his grandsons and one of the film's directors. "His work is a blend of pointillism and 8-Bit art."
I saw the film when it played at the Google New York offices during the Imagine Science Film Festival. There were other great things, like Jillian Mayer's "#PostModem" and "20Hz," by Semiconductor; Google also premiered its Google Quantum project there. But "The Pixel Painter" was the crowd favorite. Last night it won the festival's People's Choice Award.
"Everything was filmed last year in a weekend in July," Ryan told me. "We spent the following year editing on nights and weekends and whenever we had the time. The budget was pretty small, mostly because we funded it ourselves." Hal's prints are available here.