Famous Digital Artists – Computer Generated Imagery Innovators

The realm of digital art offers tons of room to play with art and test the boundaries of concept and execution via digital mediums. You may be used to hearing about the many masters of traditional mediums in art history, but it is more important than ever to keep up with the world of digital art and recognize some of the world’s leading digital artists of the century. In this article, we will introduce you to the top 15 most famous digital artists of the Contemporary period, which will inspire you to whip out your iPad and begin creating!

What Is Digital Art?

Before we dive into some of the most famous digital artists of our present era, it is important to understand what digital art is. One may immediately be drawn to the word technology, which is one of the pillars of digital art itself. The term “digital art” was first referenced in the late 20th century in the context of a computer painting program, preceding the invention of the notorious “app”. Digital art has no one set medium and can take shape in multimedia formats. This means that digital art has the potential to be viewed and exhibited in multiple ways.

Human One by Beeple (2021) is a four-channel sculptural and video digital generative artwork designed to evolve over time; Beeple, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A definition of digital art states that it is any artwork produced using digital technology or exhibited via digital technology. In other words, digital art is not something you would reference in the 16th century along with the old masters of art. Digital art also includes hand-drawn images scanned onto a computer or executed via a digital device with a specific software program. Some of the most popular software programs available to digital artists include programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Artweaver, and Procreate among many other dynamic software programs.

As in traditional mediums such as drawing or painting, digital art can also take the shape of three-dimensional art via 3D virtual sculpture and virtual renderings of objects or drawings, which require the use of multiple technologies. Other forms of digital art include the use of video manipulation methods and most popularly, non-fungible token art housed on platforms and online galleries.

Digital art is one of the most interesting genres of art that lends itself to imaginative ways of making and viewing art that traditional mediums alone may not be able to achieve and vice versa. In other instances, one can view a combination of traditionally-produced artworks via innovative ways of viewing as seen in the immersive viewing exhibitions at the Vincent Van Gogh exhibitions held across major APAC, Americas, and European art institutions. In short, digital art offers a dynamic room for artists to get creative with technology while also presenting other ways of viewing and experiencing artwork.

The Metaverse Museum by László Ördögh Diabolus (Velazquez Bonetto); Mirabella, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Top 15 Most Famous Digital Artists

Now that you have a broad idea of what digital art is and its ability to influence the way we experience art, you can now enjoy this list of the top 15 most famous digital artists in the world whose works will have you fascinated with what can be achieved through digital mediums.

Hal Lasko (1915 – 2014)

Hal Lasko is a name you will want to remember! Lasko is considered to be one of the best digital artists of all time, best remembered for his title as the most iconic pixel painter. Lasko began painting on a computer using Microsoft Paint at the latter stages of his career since his vision began to worsen. Lasko created some of the most detailed digital painting artworks, pixel by pixel, which one might add is an incredibly visually laborious task!

Lasko’s paintings were touched up pixel by pixel and enabled him the freedom to explore his creativity through technology. The liberation of creativity through the pixel speaks volumes for the potential of other digital mediums and is definitely worth exploring!

GMUNK (Bradley Munkowitz) (1975 – Present)

Psychedelic digital artist, designer, and creative innovator GMUNK is one of the world’s pioneering digital artists. His work rests on the evocation of metaphysical and atmospheric visual sensations, which take their shape in the form of fascinating installations, short films, and motion-designed artwork.

GMUNK is currently an international sensation having collaborated with brands such as Nike, HBO, and Uber while exhibiting in many galleries around the world.

Among his many prestigious mentions, the multi-media artist was also awarded the Siggraph’s Best in Show and Cannes Grand Prix awards. The talented artist is also credited with championing early forms of augmented reality ideas through his design of holographic content for science fiction hits Oblivion and Tron: Legacy.

Alberto Seveso (1976 – Present)

Alberto Seveso is a freelance illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer whose works combine portraiture with high-speed photography. Seveso is based in the United Kingdom and is most famous for his series Disastro Ecologico, Medicina Rossa, and A Due Colori.

Seveso’s creativity in incorporating everyday objects and items such as feathers can also be seen in his Featherism series A, which evokes the weightless and airy nature of feathers falling mid-air.

Seveso uses his Wacom tablet combined with photography and various Adobe software programs to produce bold and evocative multimedia drawings and portraits. Some of his NFT artworks can also be found on Bēhance.

Butcher Billy (1978 – Present)

Brazilian digital artist and Pop Art illustrator, Butcher Billy, is one of the most famous digital artists of all time whose unique presentation of popular culture images brings Modern art lovers fresh visuals to feast their eyes on. Butcher Billy’s poster illustrations revive one’s appreciation of the retro aesthetic coupled with popular comic references.

Butcher Billy has created many eye-catching and unique designs and compositions for clients such as Marvel and Netflix’s Stranger Things among many other successful creative projects.

Sara Ludy (1980 – Present)

Sara Ludy is one of the best digital artists of the 21^st century whose works traverse the mediums of animation, audio-visual installation, and virtual reality. Ludy is an American-based interdisciplinary artist who also specializes in digital painting artwork.

Her work introduces the viewer to the relationships between simulation environments and nature while exploring themes of being and immateriality.

Her recent exhibition in 2022 Tumbleweeds presented digital art drawings or paintings using light points, which are connected with an intervention based in New Mexico. Ludy’s creativity with her digital media knows no bounds as she attached shards of glass to tumbleweeds and released them into nature. She documented the natural movements by making short videos, which created intriguing patterns and color trails. Ludy refers to these creations as her “star maps”, which evoke the nature of the New Mexican desert paralleled with the connection to the online environment.

Mike Winkelmann or Beeple (1981 – Present)

Famously known as Beeple, Mike Winkelmann is one of the most famous digital artists whose dystopian eye and use of popular culture in digital art and NFT artworks make him the best of the best. Beeple is considered to be a Modern digital illustrator who also explores different visual themes, including cyberpunk visuals coupled with animation, parody, and science fiction.

Winkelmann’s work sells up to $98 million and is currently one of the most sought-after NFT artists.

BOXXX-3W by Beeple (2017); Mike Winkelmann, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nik Ainley (1983 – Present)

Nik Ainley is a New York-based illustrator who has remained one of the leading digital artists since his career in the genre began over 10 years ago. Ainley has collaborated with many high-profile clients and retailers, including National Geographic and Nike. Ainley is inspired by his background in science and is driven towards continuous learning and improvement when it comes to adapting and learning new software.

Ainley produces two-dimensional and three-dimensional artwork that fuses the natural world with the man-made technological world. Some of his most interesting digital art drawings include Abiogenesis and many other artworks that incorporate text with sinuous line work and a sense of where the natural meets the digital.

Ainley has worked on creative projects with numerous clients, including Adobe, Nickelodeon, British Airways, Mercedes, MTV, Al Jazeera, Nike, and Logitech among many others.

Antoni Tudisco (1991 – Present)

Modern Surrealist digital artist Antoni Tudisco is one of the most famous digital artists whose collaborations with major companies, including Google and Versace have boosted the artist’s reputation.

Tudisco’s digital artwork features a bright color palette with polished textures that give his work a sense of elegance while adding the right pop of color to the project.

Based in Germany, Tudisco has also bagged several design awards. Tudisco’s NFT artwork evokes futurist aesthetics combined with edgy motifs and imaginative compositions that give one a glimpse into the artist’s mind and ability to drive home a concept into a visually provocative work of art.

Filip Hodas (1992 – Present)

Filip Hodas is a popular freelance 3D artist based in Prague and is credited with being among the best digital artists due to his remarkable hand at rendering three-dimensional artwork. Hodas is recognized for his digital painting artworks that reflect a dystopian world featuring well-known popular culture characters in a state of decay. A sense of appreciation for these famous characters reminds one of the future of common icons we once knew, which face a somewhat doomed fate of being forgotten over time.

Hodas’ works serve as premonitions of the future of icons, which propel the viewer ahead of the present moment. You can even delve into glimpses of Hodas’ creative process for each of his projects on Bēhance.

Jinhwa Jang (1993 – Present)

Seoul-based digital artist Jinhwa Jang is one of the best digital artists whose works show an experienced eye for neon and manga-inspired visuals coupled with contemporary scenes of everyday South Korean living as experienced through the artist’s personal account.

Her artwork echoes the nostalgia of the 60s and 70 retro art style and her ability to accentuate scenes from the every day into colorful “storyscapes” is unmatched.

Her attention to detail is also one to be admired and plunges one into the nightlife of Korea through a mix of first-person perspectives with cosmic-inspired visuals.

Alexis Franklin (1996 – Present)

Alexis Franklin is a famous digital artist and videographer who specializes in digital painting art. Franklin’s works combine the texture found in traditional painting with the digital brush to create eye-catching portraits that capture the essence of youth in the contemporary period.

Her painting style offers both a sense of Realism while capturing the moment and character of the individual through her brush strokes.

There is also a raw honesty in the moments and poses she chooses to capture that romanticizes her muses. Her work features celebrities and music idols that showcase her recognition and understanding of emotion, which covers moments of deep contemplation, confusion, confidence, and freedom.

MUTI  (Est. 2011)

Cape Town-based studio, MUTI, is one of the most well-known South African design and illustration studios in Africa. The studio was founded in 2011 and houses a group of talented digital artists whose unique visions and creative assets have engaged global clients such as the Washington Post, Fortnite, National Geographic, Forbes, and Nike.

The studio produces a diverse range of digital art drawings and artworks that feature inspiring approaches to sleek, clean, and vivid graphics and linear motifs. 

Kyle Lambert (Present)

Kyle Lambert is one of the best digital artists of the century whose works you may recognize from iconic posters associated with some of your favorite Netflix series, including Stranger Things, which won Lambert several awards.

Lambert is based in Los Angeles and is one of the most iconic illustrators in the entertainment industry.

Lambert collaborates with many famous brands, including Amazon Studios, Disney, Universal Studios, and Sony Pictures. His posters and illustrations are perhaps the most recognized and most viewed artworks with viewers who not only love digital art and illustration but also movies, popular culture, and Netflix-binging.

James Gilleard (Present)

Japan-based visual development artist James Gilleard is one of the best digital artists who has created many successful projects at Blue Sky Studios. Gillleard’s captivating pastel palettes and cityscapes are among his many well-balanced digital artworks that present scenes from the real world with just the right splash of color and eye for visual narratives and design.

His unique landscapes offer comfort through pastel illustrations loaded with a calming balance of negative space and geometric designs, which carry a magnetism of their own.

Finnian MacManus (Present)

Finnian MacManus is the founder of Terraform Studios, a concept artist, and a creative director who operates across the television, film, and AAA Games industries. MacManus is one of the best digital artists of the decade whose creative projects and art direction in the film industry have helped form the creative output of many iconic films and video games, including the Avatar sequels, Star Wars: Rogue One, The Lion King, and God of War. MacManus pursued his art and design education at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as well as the Burbank Brainstorm School in California.

MacManus stands behind the critique he receives for his work and encourages other artists to remain humble despite the skills they may have.

The future of digital art rests in the hands of these incredibly talented digital illustrators and painters, whose work speaks volumes and inspires many across the globe to try their hand at digital art! Not only is digital art a great place for experimentation with technology, but it is also an opportunity for collaboration on a larger scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Digital Art?

Generally, what we know as digital art is any artwork produced with digital tools that originated in the early 1980’s with early experimental art projects on computers. Pioneering figures include Frieder Nake, who created an algorithm to instruct a computer to draw multiple shapes and thus create art. The actual term “digital art” was coined by Harold Cohen who created AARON, a series of software programs that combine AI with computer generated imagery to create digital images and even physical artworks from 1972 onwards. A decade prior, animator John Whitney had pioneered motion graphics using surplus World War II computers. However it has been argued that American mathematician and artist Benjamin Francis Laposky created the first artworks using an analogue computer by utilizing an oscilloscope (an type of electronic testing device) to produce abstract imagery which he titled Oscillons in 1953.

What Are the Different Forms of Digital Art?

The different forms of digital art take shape via the use of different software programs on a digital device, and can span multiple formats such as video, 3D renderings of drawings or sculptures, digital illustrations and designs, virtual reality and motion graphics, and applications that provide a platform for digital artists to create digital paintings and artwork.

Who Is the Most Popular Digital Artist?

The most popular digital artist is presently Michael Joseph Winkelmann, who is recognized by his professional name, Beeple. Beeple is most famous for his ability to leverage a variety of mediums to produce digital artwork, which speaks to political and social issues while referencing popular culture figures.

What Is the Most Expensive Digital Artwork?

The most expensive digital artwork, according to recent statistics, is considered to be The Merge by Pak, which sold on Nifty Gateway for $91.8 million in 2021. Pak is an NFT artist who leveraged the expanse of the blockchain environment and the internet to create a globally collaborative collection of artworks, whose value relied on the final accumulative mass of NFT artwork.

Liam Davis( Editor-in-Chief, Writer and Art Historian )

Liam Davis is an experienced art historian with demonstrated experience in the industry. After graduating from the Academy of Art History with a bachelor’s degree, Liam worked for many years as a copywriter for various art magazines and online art galleries. He also worked as an art curator for an art gallery in Illinois before working now as editor-in-chief for artfilemagazine.com. Liam’s passion is, aside from sculptures from the Roman and Greek periods, cave paintings, and neolithic art.

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