Artist re-creates Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ video on vintage Mac

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This Is America recreation
Donald Glover looks even cooler in pixel form.
Photo: Wahyu Ichwandardi

Donald Glover’s video for “This Is America” is one of most talked-about music videos of the year, but one brilliant animator is adding an extra dose of old-school cool by painstakingly re-creating it on a vintage Mac and software from the ’80s.

New York City illustrator Wahyu Ichwandardi (aka @pinot) is animating the entire “This Is America” video pixel by pixel. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but he’s currently 375 frames deep — and it looks incredible.

Watch the first minute of the video:

A post shared by Pinot W. Ichwandardi (@pinot) on

Ichwandardi has been animating on Macintosh for over 30 years. Last year he re-created The Last Jedi using an Apple IIc with phenomenal results.

Wahyu Ichwandardi animates ‘This Is America’

Ichwandardi has been broadcasting his progress on the “This Is America” video on Twitter ever since starting the project at the beginning of June. He’s using MacPaint, MacroMind VideoWorks and a Macintosh SE to give his remake a retro, artsy look.

You can check out the full timeline of his progress on reanimating Childish Gambino’s video moves on this Twitter timeline. The amount of work he puts into each frame is absolutely astonishing.

Some Twitter followers have asked Ichwandardi why he spends so much energy making a pixelated version of the hottest music video of 2018, especially when there’s new software that can speed up the process. Ichwandardi says that flaws and mistakes from the old tech are an important element of the art.

“By combining new idea & old tech, will it lead into something better for the future? Not sure. But I believe, each pixel deserves our appreciation,” said Ichwandaradi. “It gives color, shape, rhythm and motion in our modern computer arts.”

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