by Toussaint Egan

Last month, Russian indie developer Konfa Games announced Hull Rupture, their latest title where players assume the role of a despotic artificial intelligence powering a modular, weaponized spacecraft through the void of space.

While the game’s announcement may have flown under the radar of most, it piqued my interest due to its gorgeous and intricate pixel art animation. It was only after digging a little further that I realized that Konfa had tapped none other than Waneella, arguably one of the most prolific pixel artists working today, to work on the game.

I have been following Waneella’s work for several years now, having come across their exquisite cyberpunk-inspired animations via Twitter, plus their Patreon and YouTube channel, where they post their animated clips accompanied by cool lo-fi electronic tracks composed under their musical pseudonym “e.sanchillo.” Over time, their work has garnered more and more followers and notoriety, to the point of even being commissioned by none other than Valve to create store front backgrounds for Steam’s quarterly season sales in 2023. 

With all that in mind, Waneella’s contribution to Hull Rupture is the well-earned culmination of over a decade’s worth of work, which is what finally inspired me to dust off my copy of Decade, Waneella’s  first long-form art book dedicated to collecting all of their art produced between 2013 and 2023. Designed by Paris-based designers Mytil Ducomet and Léa Chapon (aka Atelier Muesli), the book is a gorgeous artifact in and of itself, featuring a bold holographic foil accented hard cover and high quality paper stock pages housed in its own custom mailer container.

Boasting a forward written by none other than Ikumi Nakamura, the Japanese video game designer best known for her work on 2014’s The Evil Within and founding the independent studio UNSEEN, Decade offers the most exhaustive look into Waneella’s history as an artist. Born in Moscow in 1993, Waneella (whose real name is Valeriya Sanchilo) initially attended the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography as a fine artist when, after playing and being inspired by 2011’s Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP during a break from school, they chose switch their pursuit instead to becoming a pixel artist. The writing itself is beautiful and enlightening, offering insight into the upbringing and philosophy of an artist whose enigmatic online persona otherwise rebuffs such intimate disclosure.

That’s all well and good, but the real draw of Decade are the chapters dedicated to Waneella’s art, rendered on glossy paper stock that perfectly replicated the bright hues and distinctive intricacies of their animation. Waneella is a consummate multi-hyphenate when it comes to their art, working across the medium of illustration, animation, and music to create a body of work that feels at once beholden to nostalgic appeal of early video game pixel art while unquestionably contemporary in terms of their style, subject matter, and execution. Her animations center around the liminal spaces of urban environments, exotic locales far removed from her homeland of Moscow, with sprawling futuristic cities and quiet empty shopping marts dotted with twinkling lights, swaying branches, and the humming fluorescence of neon.

The final chapters of Decade are dedicated to analyzing Waneella’s methodology as an artist, walking through the creation of several of her animations step-by-step while explaining her thought process and philosophy with regard to composition, perspective, and lighting. In so many ways, Decade feels like the epitome of everything I personally look for in an artbook: offering not just a compendium of the artist’s work, but a consummate exploration of their philosophy, passions, and ambitions as an artist, all while offering a wealth of knowledge in service of edifying and emboldening any would-be reader who might try their hand at the craft as well. As far as artbooks go, it’s a masterpiece, well worth reading even for those yet unfamiliar with Waneella’s work.