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Into the Pixel showcases art from video games

Amidst the sounds and lights and action from the floor of E for All Expo are two oases of peace and quiet showing beautiful artwork inspired by and taken from some of your favorite games.

Into the Pixel 07 is an exhibition of the art of the video game. It features 16 works of video game art selected by a panel of jurors from a field of submissions made by artists around the world. It's an opportunity to showcase the fine artistic talents of the creative geniuses that bring you the worlds and characters that make the video games you play seem so fantastic.

Included in this year's selection is "City 17," a work by Jeremy Bennett that features the futuristic, dystopian urban landscape of Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Valve Corp.'s Team Fortress 2 was also depicted by Jeff Ballinger, with his work "Farm."

MMORPG's took the stage with "Defeated Dragon" by Daniel Dociu, an image from Guidw Wars, along with Björn Börkur Eiríksson's "Slave Mines," showing an image from EVE Online.

Not everything was serious or somber -- humor takes center stage with Florent Sacre's "Rabbids," from Rayman's Raving Rabbids, along with Piñata Cascade from Ryan Stevenson, inspired by Viva Piñata.

Concept art from Lair, a lab scene from the forthcoming game Fable 2, images from Blacksite: Area 51 and Red Steel, emotionally resonating images from Dawn of War and others populate the Into the Pixel gallery.

The art even takes the turn into the almost psychedelic with the rich colors and swirling images of Shigechy's "Illustrated Scroll," from Konami's game Dewy's Adventure. The grisly "Persian Emissaries" conveys the brutality of 300: March to Glory, while "The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn what Fear Was" shows a nightmarish yet strangely compelling image inspired by American McGee's Grimm.

The futuristic "Speed Architecture: AG Systems - NanoGraff Squares" depicts the clean, streamlined, almost antiseptic style of Wipeout Pulse and "View Over the Pixel Ocean" shows the cybernetic landscape of Introversion Software's Darwinia.

More information about this year's winners are available on the Into the Pixel Web site, including high-res images you can download.