The art community is filled with people across the world with varying interests. So what happens when you create a project that brings them together?
“Wplace is a website that allows you to make pixel art over a canvas of the globe,” senior Jasper Pappan said. “It’s a collaborative effort across the internet to make artwork and support others.”
Even before Wplace, there were smaller projects to do this.
“I feel like Wplace exist from an idea that came from an online social experiment that came from Reddit, but that was from a limited time on a limited canvas space, so people were constantly fighting for their artwork to stay up but with Wplace you get the entire globe,” Pappan said.
So far the goal of trying to bring people together has been successful.
“I saw someone making a specific artwork above Wichita above the airport, and I asked them online if I could help them out and they said yes,” Pappan said. “So we started working on that together. And then once we finished that we both started working on our own separate things and eventually we’re gonna regroup and make a giant project somewhere in the area.”
Even non-artists can enjoy Wplace.
“I’m not super artistic so I think it’s more fun to look around to see what other people have done in certain places. Like something will be named something and all the art will be themed around that. Sometimes there’ll be names similar to a character and that character will be there a lot,” senior Bradyn Ebersole said.
Although for the artist there are limitations to what you can do within a day.
“You start out with a limited amount of pixels to place and they recharge every 30 seconds. As you place more, you are able to get a bigger pool of pixels to place at a time and to do more stuff on the website,” Pappan said.
Even with these limitations, there are problems within Wplace itself.
“There are some things that get erased pretty fast and there’s some people who grief (To intentionally destroy) and they write over some people’s stuff. There’s also some stuff that shouldn’t be on there that is on there,” Ebersole said.
And it’s not just the group of people who grief and destroy artworks that people have had a problem with.
“The people who made the website don’t have good support for it and they’re allowing for constant griefing and hate groups to roam free. And people who are making honest artwork and defending their artwork are getting banned for griefing even though they’re not the ones griefing. It’s a very mixed issue and the people who run and own the website aren’t the greatest,” Pappan said.
With these problems in mind, the community can still find enjoyment within Wplace.
“I still love the idea and concept and idea of it; it could still be handled way better from a monetization and from a moderation standpoint,” Pappan said.