Finally, there is an online gif animator from the cool cats at www.iaza.com.
This brand new online tool with all the needed features is available.
Just make your frames and upload, set timing and thats it.

• Colours: 32 max
• Canvas Size: 256 x 256 max
  
• Transparency: No
• Animation: Allowed

Colors: exactly 32! No more, no less
Canvas size: 160x120 minimum, 320x240 maximum, horizontal or vertical
Transparency: not allowed
Animation: allowed

• Colors: No restrictions, but don't be silly.
  
• Canvas Size: 200 x 200 max.
• Transparency: allowed (www.iaza.com or giffy.com is your friend, children)
• Animation: If you're a glutton for pain, then sure, It's allowed.
• Can be a single character, or character in a scene, as long as the plant creature is the focus of attention.
• There must be a banner,sign, or caption anywhere in the piece that indicates the feeling the plant is emoting.
• Fruits and vegetables can't be used by themselves as the centerpiece. However the plant or tree from which they derive from can.
• Plants must be an actual plant of this planet,  with species in the description (any real life plant or shrubbery is fair game.). NO fictional crap.

You are challenged to create a sprite based on one of the characters found on the court cards in a standard deck of playing cards.
You may base your sprite on any of these cards:

Jack of Hearts-Diamonds-Spades-Clubs
Queen of Hearts-Diamonds-Spades-Clubs
King of Hearts-Diamonds-Spades-Clubs

Information and images of court cards

Edit: Depict just the character that is on the card and not an image of a playing card itself.

Canvas Size - Maximum 70 (width) x 100 (height).
Colours - Maximum 12.
Transparency - Required.
Animation - Optional.

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

surt challenges you to pixel a scene that could be captioned with the word "Egads!" using only the default EGA 16 colour palette.

A caption containing "Egads!" in the image is encouraged, but optional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egads

Subject matter and execution is up to you and your imagination.

Canvas Size - Max 320 (width) x 200 (height).
Colors: Max 16. Use only colors from the default EGA palette:

Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

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

Jay is Games is sponsoring another game competition. First Prize is US$1,000.

Design a game that incorporates a given theme (see link). It doesn't have to be complex nor large in scope. You may use any browser-based technology platform you are comfortable with (Flash, Unity, Shockwave, Javascript, etc.).

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/08/game_design_competition_6.php

The deadline for entries is
Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 11:59PM (GMT-5:00).

So, start the brainstorming, pixelling and coding ...!

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

Yet another way to bring pixelart to life.

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

LINK

Nitrome has a new platform game out and it looks and plays as well as all the Nitrome games always do. The pixels by Markus Heinel are all cute and very well made. This one contains twenty levels that only get tougher and tougher. All you must do is escape the caves before they crumble. Fun!

Play it here!

Manomio.com whose mantra is "In Retro We Trust" has finally released their Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Feauturing realistic joystick and keyboard. Manomio currently has 8 of the original games, free with app.

If you've wanted a tablet to pixel with, now is the time to add this cheap (US$70) tablet to your list.

Skipmore.com is a great collection of retro/old school/8bit pixel based games. All games are short, sweet and loads of fun. Perfect! The site is in Japanese but there is no language barrier and most games use English in-game. Start from the homepage (skipmore button) to choose games. The rest of the navigation is mostly galleries of screenshots, development blog, etc.

These are 3 very useful bookmarks for all PJ members. The first two were written by Hatch. The third was created by 1ucas. All 3 are must haves.
PJ Challenge Checker- PJ Spec Checker - GIF Animation Viewer

Pixeljoint is looking to update the Weekly Challenge Icons. We'd love to see your suggestion.

See the Forum Thread for details.
 

Tilt your iPhone to explore eBoy’s mind-boggling art and find the right angle to solve the puzzle. Over 100 levels in this game. Lots of them have a 3D effect, others are layered compositions or sliced madness. The challenge is to find the hints that lead to the solution.

The game sells for under US$2 and is not the most amazing game or a good one it seems but it is Pixelart :)

See it here and play the online demo.

IcoFX is an image editor primarily designed for icon creation, extraction and editing. It supports png, gif and bmp file formats. One of the best features for pixel pushing is the hue shifting, trans BG options and the ability to zoom in up to 10,000% (for comparison, Photoshop can only zoom to a maximum of 3200%). Unfortunately though, it only has a maximum canvas size of 256 x 256.

The program is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7; to download and/or read further about the program click here.

Originally sent in as a link by avo, but it's worth sharing on the front page too :)

For this year's Burning Man the folks who run the More Carrot Theme Camp have created Illuminatrix, an LED matrix art installation and want your animation contribution. The site has an online editor to create or even re-create one of your existing pixelart animation. Deadline is Aug 26, 2010.

Even if you don't attend Burning Man, after the festival, videos will be posted of the art installation.

Check it out!

Pixeljoint is holding a contest which is open to everyone and is quite simple. Submit your ultimate 16 color unique + original color palette.

Why enter? What's the point?
Well we have these 'spiffy' and rare trophies that Jinn created and will look lovely in your profile. Look how beautiful they are :)


*only 1 honorable mention will be given for this contest but its the best looking one so trying to get that one is a mini-goal on its own ;)

See the forum thread to post your entry and read the rules HERE

Contest closes next Friday, September 10, 2010. (CLOSED!)

E: Thanks Everyone :)

Announcing the winners of the 16 color palette contest.
First Place -  DawnBringer
Second Place - Manupix
Third Place - Noet
Honorable Mention - Zenobia

Congratulations to all who contributed a palette. Excellent and deserving good palettes by all.

A new isometric collaboration has begun in the forum. The overall theme for this project is underground. Gem mines, archaeological digs, dinosaur bones, underground caves, lava flows, caverns, etc. Novice or pro, all are encouraged to contribute a tile.

Read all the details and the project rules HERE

This project features DawnBringer's award winning 16 color palette.

Apparently tinypic.com has been shut down for International users without any warning. Many here use tinypic on the forum and your gallery page descriptions. Be aware that you may see the image, depending on your location, but not everyone will. It is best not to use this popular service from now on.

Beyond ImageShack and Photobucket if you know good and easy image upload hosts that you use and recommend (especially those with no membership required), please leave a link as a comment.

This (Windows Only) screen fireplace was sent in by Romson as a link by but with this being the Holiday season it seemed a news post would be better for it.

See details and download HERE and start roasting marshmallows and making smores.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Developers Website HERE

Since joining Pixeljoint in early 2007 Stickman has built himself a great pixelart gallery with some of the most entertaining and outstanding animations to be found in the entire gallery.

Stickman began experimenting with animation in Secondary School using an ION camera (1 frame per second) and by the time he finished College, (BTEC-General Art and Design) he solely focused in animation and film-making using amiga dpaint, scratch film, cardboard cut outs, stop motion and various styles of 2D images using cine cameras.

For poor folk, cheapskates and anyone stuck with Paint.

mtPaint is a FREE multi-platform graphics editor which features layers and outputs gif and png8 formats. Site Description:
"mtPaint is a painting program which Mark Tyler developed from scratch so he could easily create pixel art and manipulate digital photos."

It uses the GTK toolkit (version 1 or 2) and runs on PC's via the GNU/Linux or Windows OS.

Jinn (João Victor Gonçalves Costa) is a 21 year old computer graphics student from São Paulo, Brazil who joined Pixeljoint in August 2008. He is a book editor by day and a pixel artist in his free time; he began drawing on paper from early childhood, eventually migrating to digital drawing and pixel pushing.

TUGS is a spriting/pixel art tournament originally run by Pixeltendo under the direction of BaB and Tyvon. TSR has revived TUGS, under the direction of Christoballs and invites all PJ members to join this year's tournament.

PJs own raynoa has created and animated his first pixelart, game inspired Ocktoberfest themed video for the Cubies.

With some additional pixel assets by Mykola.

See and enjoy the video HERE  then see the extra feature 'Making-Of' HERE

Some real life pixel installations, exhibitions and videos for your viewing pleasure.

This weekend marks the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and in the US things will/should be gloomy all around especially for the NYC members. The Japanese and Norwegian members have also had heavy hearts of late.

Here are some miscellaneous diversions to take your mind of things.

The following pixel artists produced Pixel Joint's top rated pixel art for September 2011. Many thanks go out to this month's top pixel artists and all the members who took time to rate.

Hoppity by Mrmo Tarius

A Delicious Sandwich by Delicious

Portrait by Sooba

energy crisis by tomic

DEV WEAPONS - Code Dept. by Mathias

Spark of Life by surt

WC - A Breath in the Forest of Life by slym

Chavo del Ocho by Jinn

You must gather your party before venturing forth by Mrmo Tarius

Guernica3D by jalonso

A very special award to a piece that would have placed on the Top10 for September but due to our mixup was denied. We apologize:

energy crisis by tomic

The following pixel artists produced Pixel Joint's top rated pixel art for October 2011. Many thanks go out to this month's top pixel artists and all the members who took time to rate.

The Lost Vikings III - Vikings in arms by Jinn

Gate keepers by Fool

Incomplete RPG party by cocefi

Rinpoche by cure

Jobs in Pixels by Jinn

Kirin ~@~ by ivancat

Mockup - Welcome Home by Bisque

Final Boss Propagande by Victor Rojo

forbidden forrest by schrumpfkopf

practice by marple

A compilation of games, videos and other pixel related things recently submitted by PJ members.

PJs latest isometric collaborative project is finally complete. The original theme was just 'underground' but developed a videogame sub-theme along the way...find them all!

98 tiles, 53 participants, assembled between Sept 11, 2010 and October 31, 2011. 

The final image can be seen HERE

Thanks to everyone who participated in this collab and provided so much help to others in this 32 page thread. Especially Gecimen for his 'above and beyond' vigilance and DawnBringer for the super palette that inspired so many beyond this collab.

Announcing the winners of the 20 Color Palette Comp.
First Place - Dennis
Second Place - tanuki
Third Place - Super17
Honorable Mention* - a3um + [thUg]

PJs latest isometric collaboration has begun in the forum. The overall theme for this project will be underwater and features Dennis' award winning 20 color palette.

Read all the details and the project rules HERE

Win eBoy prizes!

A neat holiday video!

The following pixel artists produced Pixel Joint's top rated pixel art for December 2011. Many thanks go out to this month's top pixel artists and all the members who took time to rate.

Sanguo Mockup by llshadow

Three Heads Are Better Than Two by Delicious

Mausoleum Melody by TheInquisitor

silence by Dex

Creep this ! by Riva

Sneaky Cat by Super17

Borstl's Battle - Mockup by Cyangmou

Numb3r5 by Jinn

Ye Olde Tree [EDIT 3] by ThePixelKnight

Vampires vs Werewolves Mock-ups by Badassbill

Liberated Pixel Cup is a two-part competition: make a bunch of awesome free culture licensed artwork, and then program a bunch of free software games that use it. Liberated Pixel Cup brings together some powerful allies: Creative Commons, OpenGameArt, the Free Software Foundation, and you.

Liberated Pixel Cup is a two-part competition: make a bunch of awesome free culture licensed artwork, and then program a bunch of free software games that use it. Liberated Pixel Cup brings together some powerful allies: Creative Commons, OpenGameArt, the Free Software Foundation, and you.

The newest episode of Off Book: "The Evolution of 8-Bit Art". Off Book is a web series from PBS that explores cutting edge art, the artists that make it and the people that share it online.

If you are getting 500 errors in the gallery please post your specs HERE

List anything at all that will help us determine the problem.

i.e., Browser, version, platform, details, etc.

THERE IS LIKE THIS COOL GAME. I HTINK ITS JAPENESE AND IT HAS NEAT PIXILS

LINK.

See PJer raynoa's fun Russian pop-artist video made in 2 days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgvqVV3D2E

Announcing the winners of the 13 Color Palette Comp.
First Place - Erstus
Second Place - Night
Third Place - DawnBringer
Honorable Mentions - FlyGuy + [thUg] + a3um

PJs next isometric collaboration has begun in the forum.
The theme for this isometric collaboration is horror. Exteriors and Interiors rooms, halls, catacombs, labyrinths, sewers, tombs, sacrificial altars and anything that fits within the horror theme is OK. As for characters, vampires, mummies, zombies, ghosts, murderers, spiders, even aliens and OTT fantasy are OK as long as its scary!

Featuring Erstus' award winning 13 color palette.


Read all the details and the project rules HERE

PJer Stickman (pixelart) in collaboration with FUNBAG-GAMES (programmer) has just released a project under his Funbag games label.

I'm sure everyone has been expecting this interview to happen... He is Marat Khazarzhan, but we know him by the name a3um.

It's this time of the year again.

PJer raynoa's new music video for radio station TV spot in Belgium.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOhWOn7Lxds

Announcing PJs Image Spec Tool created by Blueberry_pie

For this forum highlight we'd like to showcase the dedication and commitment displayed by AshCrimson while working on his Tower Shields (and possibly other types as well).

Before

After

See final art page HERE