You can easily convert selfies and other pictures into pixel art going back then to an HD image (but as a painting) very easily! Try it now at https://pixa.pics/.
Getting the image smaller and without too much colors (which can reduce by a factor of 20), or removing dirty isolated pixel and getting a better contrast, are available on click and execute all alone by magic in milliseconds and sometimes more, this technology works and can be improved.
But the merit is for computer science and improvement in term of user experience (UX), we use really up-to-date tactics in design to make the experience a more playful one, an enjoyable journey around pixel art can take off with anyone, but it needs a comfortable airship. You can see above that with the context menu shown you can perform a lot of actions...
You can see in the picture above that many types of images can become an incredible pixel art!
