@hapiel: 

Well, you could advocate "imagine where we'd be if we still refused to use AI"? Where do you draw the line? 

As for using shortcuts, I'd think it's safe to say it's harder to design your own palette and using a photo as reference and eye-balling it than color reducing and tracing over it, wouldn't you agree? 
 

@gawrone:

Thanks for providing a counter-argument which isn't grounded in an Ad-Hominem (your pixel art in your gallery is basic therefore you should shut the fuck up). You're right, I love Fool's work and it is a bit disappointing to learn it's traced over. On the other hand, it's something drawn by him, so that's good enough by my standard. It'd be even more of an accomplishment if it had been done from scratch, in my opinion. It's like running a marathon, it's good if you walk 1 km and run the rest but it's more of an accomplishment if you run the whole thing. A line has to be drawn eventually as to what constitutes pixel art and what doesn't. Since it's arbitrary, there's no settling it. I just don't think that the gallery content should be determinant as to who can or can't express their opinion on the concept. 

So I much better! I love your animations! 

Mathias:

I didn't realise a certain level of skill was required to have an opinion about pixel art. I also didn't realise that what is in the gallery is necessarily representative of the current level of an artist, it seems to imply that nothing else exists outside of the pixel joint gallery. Fortunately what you consider the required level to have the right for an opinion on the topic isn't something which matters to me.
 

It's a bit... baffling, as you put it or maybe backwards would be the right way to put it.

You really should remove the blue background, it takes less than a minute. The animation itself is superb. 

@gawrone:

If one of the top PJ artists would say "glad you like it, I used a bit of tracing in 3rd day of making it, on this area, and at the end i colour reduced a small part of an image here"

I would and would systematically disregard anything that artist would make in the future. Do the work goddammit, enough with this crass laziness to cut corners all the eff'in time. If you don't know how to do something, then you practice until you do, you don't trace or color reduce or anything of the sort. It's like there's no reason to work to improve at something anymore, if it's too hard then you just cheat your way to the end result for instant gratification. It cheapens the whole medium. If you want some AI to do the work for you, just switch to typing keywords and push the submit button.
 

I mean the general "you" here, not you, gawrone. I feel strongly about this as you can tell. Pixel Art is a wonderful art form and Pixel Joint is the last bastion. It's important to push back on any attempt to dilute it any further with any color reducing or tracing nonsense. 

"The context of that quote was "caring not about the process of creating art, but more about the end product's quality in case of demarcation problem between 'art' or 'not art',"

What I understood from Hapiel's quote is: 

"It doesn't matter which tool were used or how it was made, what matters is that the end result looks like Pixel Art."

Then tracing is fine? Applying filters to photographs is fine? 

This isn't a personal attack towards Hapiel, but rather the idea being (apparently) put forward here, which bothers me greatly. If the tool being used doesn't matter, then we should allow A.I. generated pixel art. That's my point. 

The process *does* matter greatly, it's a foundation of Pixel Art. Learning to do your own Anti-Aliasing for example while you could let the tools do it for you. It would be nice to promote skill, perseverance and hard work as opposed to whoever can use the most advanced tools. 

No more than ever we need a Jalonsoesque *firm* stance on human made pixel art. 

And asking for WIP to validate arts is fine and could even be mandatory. 
 

A.I. will replace a huge percentage of artists, it's probably already begun. In a sense, be careful what you wish for. People will eventually long for the day when people were purists about art. Photo bashing was the first step in an unavoidable outcome. Why do something yourself when tools can do it for you. 

Regarding, only non-artist caring where art comes from:

"And I think that's fine, I personally care about the end product anyway?"

Quoted from Hapiel. As long as the prevailing mentality is: the end justifies the means, what could go wrong? I'm being facetious but yeah, I think the quote in a nutshell provides a good insight that people in general could care less about the process. 
 

I personally don't work as an artist but I feel for you guys and there's no stopping it. Your tools are surpassing you. 

While I like the piece a lot, I feel like the empty space on top takes away from what's so great at the bottom. 

Those look great but could you make that with a transparent background?

Those comments awards are nice and a good idea! I like the little cups! Who made them?

Dear god, yes!

Fantastic as always. God of pixel art.

Seems kind of weird not to allow greenraven because there's a chance he might be "acting out". Sorry, it doesn't seem fair in my opinion to reject someone based on what he *might do* as opposed to what he *did*. He sounds a lot more mature and stable than he used to and if I were him, it'd be honestly be really hurt by that. I might've misunderstood what happened however. I'm not trying to carry on the drama here but just doesn't seem right to me and I'd be remiss to just idly stand by without saying a thing.

Good news about Reddit. I kind of feel like Sedge's heart hasn't been in Pixeljoint for a long, long time now. Is there no way to "transfer" the website to someone else?

That fire animation though! 

For example, to me, that's fantastic:
https://pixeljoint.com/files/icons/full/basemus.png

Really captures the spirit of pixel art and I doubt it was automated in some way. 

Anything which as to do with painting on top of a photograph is 'cheating' to me although I understand those standards are (somewhat) arbitrary.

I understand your point of view and I'm likely one of the few 'pixel nazi' still around who cares about the process but I can't help it, it matters to me. As far as I'm concerned, pixel art is about doing the most out of limitations, being able to make the most out of a limited palette and tools. If a picture is filtered and then the final result ends up an automatic process, there's no point for me, there's very little human interaction. To me, pixel art isn't about who's the most tech savvy and using tools to fool people into thinking you placed the pixels yourself. There are so many tools for digital artists now, it's hard to tell if people who use those tools have any skills or if they're just good at using Photoshop. 

To each their own I guess. I understand some people only care about the final result and look, I don't. I often feel that sting of disappointment when I learn that some artist I value ends up just being good at using tools which is also why I much prefer traditional art than digital art. 'Wow those clouds look great!' 'Oh, that's just a picture I googled and filtered' 'Ah, ok'. 

I'm honestly surprised that people would only care about the pixelated look and not how it was made considering the medium. 

Also, whether or not people now about automatic tools doesn't matter to me. That's like saying using drugs in an athletic event is fine since most people don't know about it. Thankfully, we do have people who know about it who can monitor what is legit and what isn't.

Lol, that little hat bop is cool!

The same level which led you to do an inverse image search .

I mean your avatar doesn't look photorealistic so it's a moot point, come on now, surely you see the difference here .

In the piece I linked, I doubt it's made from scratch, some sort of reference had to be used. It'd be interesting to see the source material vs final result to determine whether or not it's legit or not. 

Also, I don't personally only care about the end result, but that's different opinions. Showing up at a cycling event and winning first prize when riding a motorcycle is problematic to me, the method used matters or they'd allow drug use. 

Out of curiosity, how do you experts determine that this:

https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/149273.htm?sec=showcase

Wasn't traced on a photograph or filtered in some way? If it made it to the weekly showcase it's kosher but I'm wondering as at first glance, I was suspicious of that piece.

For instance, in the hall of fame:
https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/4328.htm

Isn't nearly as realistic which to me gives me the reassurance the piece is legit whereas the other one comes across to me as almost too perfect. There's also no comparison to previous pieces which were made to determine the level of skill of the creator.

It would be great if you make the background transparent. Harder to read with the white background.

Hall of Fame worthy. Well played.

I also thought this was a filtered photo. 

While I like the piece on a technical level, I don't think it really inspires a 'Game Over' to me.

Ok, nevermind, I just saw 'coma' and noticed the guy on the left.