Amazing. Some of the best PA I've seen in a while.

Sublime.

Beautiful in so many ways. If I could do this, I'd never get anything else done. I love the use of straight lines on the nose and neck on the right. Took me a while to notice that. Very nice.

Thank you for staying active and pushing pixels, I just enjoy your art so damn much 

King Winter is one of my favorite characters. I love everything about this. Is the decapitated head in the corner a particular reference?

Edit: After some googling, I've now learned the connection between Bore and Borealis. Neat-o.

I just love your art so much. The pixeldither diversity was time well spent! May I ask what your references / inspirations were?

Didn't have time to participate (also got the flu) but glad to see these awesome submissions.

Picking only 3 votes was a nightmare. 

Gawrone granting every wish simultaneously is somewhat reminiscent of 1997's Wishmaster film, but I'll take it. 

Makes me want to do an homage to Pro Wrestling for the Sega Master System but the pixel art in that game is SO bad compared to how I remember it. I must have had a vivid imagination as a boy, because I remember those sprites in such splendid detail.

Congrats! Can't wait to start using it!

Instant favorite, just the kind of aesthetic and style I like! Thanks for posting it! 

Pixilart.com has mostly kid and teenage users, and yet many of its most popular uploads are just old school pixel art and could be uploaded to the PJ gallery without issue. As long as pixel art is about the aesthetics of pixels, some people will always just stick to pixels without NPA elements. Kids don't need adult supervision to figure out that possibility, or to see the beauty in it. Employers with bad taste is another matter. 

Wonderful.

@gawrone: PJ nerd doesn't care about jaggies, only more pixels. The pixels must flow. 

Good luck with the SS gift. And happy pixelling, Mathias! I will get back on the horse soon too, I hope. Or find a way to make a deep learning model that places pixel by pixel in MS Paint, trained only on Cure's tutorials.

In Masters of Pixel Art vol 3, Fleja already references the paradigm of Cure's rules as 'traditional pixel art'.

The future is now, and we're all a bunch of old fogies.

@SDB: Didn't know about that novel, Sacred and Terrible Air. Cool! And I feel the same way with reading, pixelling, drawing or writing. It's not nearly as enjoyable for short bursts as taking the time to finish a chapter or have a proper session.

@Theoden: I don't think there's anyone like Tolkien, unfortunately. But I'll have to echo gawrone and recommend Ursula Le Guin. And then reading Tao Te Ching and/or her essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which gives a better understanding of her unique approach to storytelling, and the lessons to be drawn from her books. For me, I think Arthur Conan Doyle's White Company has some of the things I like about Tolkien. Vivid storytelling, beautiful writing and that old British tone that is so hard to replicate. No orcs, but a nice adventure nonetheless.

There's a lot to like about this, and I just love this kind of vanilla fantasy when done well, but what really blows my mind is the pixel pushing on the horse's head from this angle. 

Glad to hear it! I won't have time to play it for a while (or time for pixelling, sadly) but it's definitely on my wishlist.

I've been thinking a lot about how I'm reading fewer novels than I used to and how I enjoy old school games less than I used to. Even new games like Disco Elysium are hard to get into. And I think it's just that too much modern internet and modern gaming has ruined my concentration + immersion, to the point where I can't enjoy games like Fallout 2 anymore. Roadwarden seems like a possible rehabilitation game for that. And then maybe I can try Disco Elysium again. When I have time to play games again.

@gawrone: Glad to hear it! Frankly, I think it's weird that more RPG games don't use this concept. Being the warden of a small area makes more sense when doing all sorts of quests and mini-games, instead of the typical "Imma save the world and rescue my daughter, but first I'll train a unicorn, learn to fish and decorate my mansion" game idea.

@SeDiceBisonte: Yeah, go get that sale! Unless the developer earns less money during a Steam sale. In which case: how dare you. 

@specialmin64: 1v1 me in Lost Dutchman Mine (1989), bro.    

Have any of you played Roadwarden? A pixel art game with overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam (777). I like the concept a lot.

Great event! Well done by all participants and mods. Can't have been easy to judge either! 

@eishiya: I think you mean @Mathias. But I agree PJ forum is a good place to post it, for now. 

@Mathias: I'm definitely not as concerned as I used to be either. AI pixel art is going to be a kick in the nuts for PJ, I think, but we're not there yet. If someone else wants to post a piece that required fairly little skill and relies mostly on tracing, color reduction, dall-e 2, etc, I'm not losing sleep over it. PJ already has a number of those, in my opinion, and I think several of them got trophies. I'm just not into it. Commercially, I can see how the product is more important than the process. But as a hobby, it's all about the journey, and those tools (to me) are like being carried in a litter when you're going hiking. And then taking selfies at your destination. Not cheating so much as missing the point, as far as I can tell.

Absolutely wonderful. I am so impressed by this!