Lots of people eat duck, not just Asians. It's delicious.

Most younger Koreans don't eat dog; they've bought into the European perception that it's disgusting. People of the grand-parental generation still do, so there are still some restaurants that serve it, but you have to go out of your way to find them. I think most Koreans would be offended if you called them a "dog eater."

I don't know about China... they do still eat a lot of different things there, many of which would seem weird to a westerner. But I assumed your image was meant to be a younger Kim Jong-Il not just a generic Asian.

 Surely racial slurs are against the TOS...

Haha, no... no secret message in this one. The cryptopixel project is kind of on indefinite hold, due to lack of interest... even the "easy" ones (like the coffee puzzle) are too hard for most people, so it'd be a hard project to build a real community around.

 Yeah, it's two people on a bench. In the original photo, the seat and backrest take up approximately equal amount of space, but that's because the back is sloped a bit. But of course, since most people won't have seen the photo, it's not about what's really there, but about what looks right - I'll consider lowering it.

As for adding an extra colour, I agree that it would help make things clearer, but that's not what I'm shooting for... if anything, I feel like it has too much detail now - I think my next piece will be smaller.

Clever idea, but most of the humor is way too juvenile.

I did like the sperm going to Neptune, mind you.

 As others have said, it's nice work overall, but the mirror shows a misunderstanding of how specular reflection works. It's worth looking into, as it applies not only to mirrors, but objects sitting on metallic surfaces, reflections in water, etc. etc. Misapplying perspective when dealing with specular reflections is a common mistake.

I understand that... I haven't taken any of this personally at all. I'm just explaining why these policies make the site less useful to me, as a member of the community. Presumably, you're trying to make the site as useful as possible, and the current policies are in place because you believe that's the way the majority of the users like it. In order to make informed policy decisions, you need to hear people's opinions, so I'm just putting in my two cents in favor of a more lenient definition of "pixel art."

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to make special pieces just to adhere to these policies - since my work doesn't fit the site's policies, I just won't submit it, and remain mostly a lurker except for the crypto pieces. Again, that's not me taking it personally - it would be fun to do some fine art pixel pieces, I just don't have the time, seeing as I need to spend my artistic hours doing the things that pay the rent.

Fair enough. I understand your point, and I agree that fundamentals are important, especially for beginners. It's just annoying for me, because it's a nice community you've got here, and I'd like to contribute, but the policy excludes the vast majority of my work.

We also have differing philosophies on professionalism, it seems. I consider efficiency to be paramount - I'm certainly capable of giving attention to a piece at the pixel level, but I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend to a client that I draw a flat concrete texture pixel by pixel, when that time would be better spent working on the focal areas of the piece. Whatever the budget is, it equates to a certain amount of time, and time spent on one thing is time not spent on something else.

Anyway, it's certainly your right to implement whatever policies you want. It's just sad for me, because aside from my cryptopixel pieces (which, as I've said elsewhere, are not even close to my best work, artistically), I'm not going to be able to contribute much.

To be honest, it was long enough ago that I'm not entirely sure what techniques I used for everything. I definitely wouldn't have been using Photoshop brushes, as they lose sharpness. The bricks were definitely done pixel by pixel (though obviously there's a lot of copy/paste there... these are game graphics, after all).

The grey areas would not have been done 100% by hand, though. That would just be masochism/stupidity. For stuff like that, I generally generate 1-bit textures from photos, using Threshold, then layer several of them.

So, if those are the rules of this site, I imagine this image doesn't abide by them and should be taken down. In my opinion, that's a pretty silly policy, however. A lot of people on this site express an interest in making game art, and you have forums for help wanted/freelancers looking for work... why ban the sorts of techniques that are required in order to make art in the real world on a realistic budget?

 You're right, you didn't suggest that it wasn't pixel art. I'm just knee-jerking in reaction to your suggestion that he might have used a spray brush, as if that were a bad thing. I'm opposed to the idea that keeps coming up around this site that any use of a tool other than a one-pixel pencil disqualifies something as pixel art. The end result is all that matters - unless you're ripping off someone else's work, it doesn't matter how you arrived there.

Anyway, as a professional graphic designer/game artist (as in, I make my living at it), I can tell you that the quality of execution of this piece is up to professional standards. Maybe not AAA studio senior artist quality, but if Kaiseto can take artistic direction and work within the constraints of an actual game, based on this image, he could definitely make a living as a freelancer, or get at least a junior position at a AAA studio if he wanted to.

Now, if you don't like the content, composition, subject matter, etc., that's another story. I'd say I'm indifferent to it... neither great nor awful. I think flying jellyfish is kind of a neat idea, but you're free to disagree. That part of things is subjective, so no one's right or wrong there... but in terms of execution, I'd say this piece is very slick.

I think you guys misunderstand what this is. It's a mockup to show the tileset for a game, not a stand-alone piece of art. The sky is a placeholder, likewise there would eventually be a city skyline in the background to create some depth. Still, it's a 2D game, and functionality is paramount... things are flat by necessity, because it's a Worms-like 2D game; the illusion of depth would be distracting to the player when trying to aim shots. 

I also can't go too heavy on the shadows, because the environment is destructible at the pixel level, like Worms. If I created strong shadows in the tiles themselves, they'd look very wrong after the part of the tile that was casting the shadow got destroyed.

Also, in the actual games, buildings can overlap, and the front ones cast shadows (procedurally) on the ones behind. So that also adds depth that you don't have in this mockup.

But thank you for the comments.

 Dunno what all the negativity is about; this piece is great. People need to stop being so anal-retentive about what is and isn't "pixel art" - the fact of the matter is that this is professional-quality game art, regardless of how it was made.

Also, flying jellyfish = awesome. Since when do things in video games have to "make sense," in the sense of physical realism?

 Oh, by the way, with all of these puzzles, the first person to PM or email me the correct solution will receive permanent credit on the website as the first solver. Either your real name or a psuedonym, as you like. This puzzle, and "Bob's Room" (on the website) are still unsolved.

 @skamocore: The relatively low quality of the work is for two reasons - for one, yes, I'm somewhat limited in what I can do artistically because of the requirements of the puzzle. The other reason is just that I'm trying to produce lots of puzzles so that I can get a proper website going. I'm a professional artist, so my paying contracts have to take precedence... thus, I don't have lots of time to work on these, and most of the time spent goes into working out the details of the puzzle. 

If the concept ever catches on and cryptopixel.com becomes a money-making thing for me, then I can take the time to try to make nicer pictures to weave the puzzles into.

I'll post the others soon. I want to space them out a little; I'll probably put one up every few days.

 No... the name's longer than 5 letters... but the fact that you asked that means that you're thinking the right way, Dr. D.

Incidentally, Hatch has now solved the puzzle. It's not impossible, guys! :)

Hatch is right that the palette itself is relevant in some way. You don't necessarily need Photoshop, just something that can give you the color values (in both decimal and hex, since I don't want to tell you which one to use). The caption of the image ("Singin' the blues from day 'till night") is a clue.

 It makes me sad that this isn't a real game. Go make it!

 Nice drawing... she doesn't look particularly wrathful, though! 

 Great graphics, love the style. Gameplay is just alright, but above average for a Flash game. One comment, though... the Instructions and Language controls on the main menu are confusing. It looks like you're supposed to click the US flag to get English instructions, the French flag to get French instructions, etc. So I couldn't figure out why I was clicking the US flag and nothing was happening. Eventually I realized I had to actually click on the word "Instructions". Maybe make it look like a button and/or don't put it right next to the flags and/or put "Language:" next to the flags to make it clear that you're changing the language of the whole game... ?

 This is why the old masters had assistants to do the backgrounds for them. More fun to just do the interesting part then move on to the next project.

 Cool idea... the only thing I don't like is that the shading indicates a lot of texture and lumpiness, but the outline is perfectly smooth. They seem to contradict each other.

 There's something I don't like about the eyestalks, particularly the right one... but the body and mouth are excellent.

 It's actually a pretty cool idea for a super-hero, though I wouldn't have understood what was going on in the image without the explanation. It's a neat image regardless... has a certain Magritte-like surrealness to it.

 Getting there... the background is too much Sonic though. What about adding a ? block or mushroom or whatever?