Dex's challenge idea comes from the History Channel's popular TV Show, Life After People. The idea is to pixel a famous location as it would look years after humans have left the earth. You need to make sure this area is a historic or known location.

You can pick any number of years or days from this list. Pixel how your chosen location would be affected by Mother Nature. Some ideas are: A shrub-infested Lincoln Memorial, the collapse of Stonehenge, or the San Fransisco bridge after being abandoned for years. Be creative!

Canvas size - Max 320 (width) x 240 (height).
Colors - Max 32.
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

Yet another way to bring pixelart to life.

This one is cheap, cool and easily created, even from your own art.

LINK

Combine at least 2 of these sayings and pixel a literal interpretation of it:

1.  Let the Cat out of the bag
2.  Laugh all the way to the bank
3.  Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth
4.  People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
5.  When Hell freezes over

Some examples:

Let the cat out of the bank. (options 1+2)
When broth freezes over. (options 5+3)
People in hell shouldn't throw bags. (options 4+5+1)


Canvas Size - Max 170 (width) x 110 (height).
Colours - Max 25.
Transparency - Optional.
Animation - Optional.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

Hello there PJ community!

My name is Thomas and I'm a brand spankin new edition to this splendid site. As you may well have guessed, I'm a big fan of the ole' pixel art! My video game system of choice would have to be the NES and as such I'm a big fan of the really simple sprites and images. In this vein I have created, with the aid of my brother Daniel, a website that combines 2 of my loves in life! The art of Haiku and the art of the pixel.

The site is called Lo-Ku

Go! Underground (地底へドンドン！) is a short 2D platformer from Japanese game developer Dot Zo Games. The game puts you in the shoes of an archeologist searching for ancient artefacts in an underground cave complex. Only a few treasure chests are exposed from the start; the rest can be found by solving puzzles or performing certain actions. Thankfully, the treasure info screen (accessed with the A key by default) provides you with hints on how to find everything.
The signs you can read in-game explain the game's mechanics by means of icons, so you don't even have to know Japanese to understand what to do. Controls can be viewed and changed under the settings menu at the top of the window.

The game has charming pixel art graphics and nice music, and shouldn't take more than an hour to complete. To download, go here and click the yellow button. Please note that Windows is required, as well as a minimum display resolution of 1280x720.

This is a very interesting article written by Aaron Smuts.
In this article Aaron argues that by any major definition of art many modern video games should be considered art. Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, Aaron offers reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art. Overall, the argument is that while many video games probably should not be considered art, there are good reasons to think that some video games should be classified as art, and that the debates concerning the artistic status of chess and sports offer some insights into the status of video games.

Read the whole thing here

http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=299

The following pixel artists produced Pixel Joint's top rated pixel art for August 2009. Many thanks go out to this month's top pixel artists and all the members who took time to rate.

Swagga by big brother

dude, get yourself a ferry ticket! by tomic

Thus Have I Heard (MSX palette attempt) by Skurwy87

Explorer Mockups by Dex

Battle Car vol.2 "Burning Sunset" by 4tochkin

Victory and Defeat by TheInquisitor

The Deep by Opacus

Deeper and deeper within the ocean... by Ergg

The Final Battle by Kaiseto

Butterfly by Ergg

All you have to do this week is create a full body image of yourself...but the twist is that has to be done as if you were the opposite sex! ie. Mirre making Mr. Mirre or Jalonso drawing Grandma Jalonso...it can be funny, beautiful, gruesome, or however you see yourself as the opposite sex! It is preferred that you provide a reference image for this challenge, but you do not have to.

Canvas Size - Max 250 x 250.
Colors - Max 32.
Transparency - Optional.
Animation - Optional.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

Hello everyone!
Today I've uploaded the second beta of my new game called Assalor. It is a real-time strategy that is pixeled and programmed by me. I am looking for suggestions, comments and bug-finds :)

You can download the second beta here: http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7925 or here http://cid-e981b54003672382.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Openbaar/Assalor.zip

or simply watch a match played by me on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdUApG9Oldk

Have fun playing and please tell me what to improve. Thanks!

Depict a conflict between two characters.

For example: A tennis match between rivals or a brother and sister having an argument etc...

Canvas Size - Max 140 (width) x 80 (height).
Colours - Max 32. Must include pure red (#ff0000).
Transparency - Optional.
Animation - No.

If you don't read Japanese it's a bit tricky to navigate, but it's well worth stumbling around to play with the fun pixel art sets.

Check it!

Canabalt is a fun little Flash game made by AdamAtomic using his flixel library. In the game, you control a running man as he makes his 'daring escape', presumably from the futuristic robots that can be seen destroying the city in the background. All you have to do is press the X or C key at the right times to jump over obstacles and to leap to the next rooftop, which gets pretty challenging after a while. The audio and visuals are quite good and do a great job at creating a sense of urgency. Give it a try.