Edushi’s 3-D Pixel-Art Maps of Chinese Cities Put Google Maps to Shame

I’ve always been a fan of the pixel-art illustration style, whether it’s the latest eBoy poster or illustrations by Quick Honey featured in our own pages. But this, I’m afraid, takes the ultimate pixel-art cake: a ginormous, ultra-high-resolution pixel-art map of Hong Kong that’s zoomable, brosweable and searchable just like a Google Map.

The Hong Kong map is making the rounds on several websites today, but It’s just one of several such maps put together for over forty Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and many more) by Edushi (E-city), based in Hangzhou. Some of them are more 3-D than others, but all are rendered in the same basic Sim-City-like style, which I’m finding far superior to Google’s 3-D building silhouettes made with their tool, SketchUp.

Some of Edushi’s maps are even animated, like this one for Guangzhou. See the little cars and buses going by, and the firewors over the stadium?

Guangzhou Pixel Art Map

Great, great work. Google, are you seeing this? Pixel art NYC please! Now if there was only a way I could print the entire thing out.

[Edushi via Form Fifty Five, Netdiver]