It's that time of the year! Beware for the horrors of Pixelween and get ready for rewards!
This year, you will be crafting 4 mockups of your own horror video game over the course of four consecutive weekly challenges. Each challenge will be another scene of your video game, and all the mockups together shall be your Pixelween entry. Summon your inner demons!
Rules:
To be eligible for the Pixelween prizes, you must submit to at least 2 of the 4 weeklies. As long as at least two of your submissions are on time, you are allowed (but not required) to submit more up until October 24, the final deadline. Technically having a complete set is not required to win, but the fates favor a finished franchise as was the case with last two years.
The winning mockups will be chosen from all eligible entries by a jury of select PixelJoint members, perhaps with the help of some dark outsiders who for now remain in the shadows...
The weeklies also function as normal weeklies, with the usual prizes. Your success in the weeklies does not influence your chances in Pixelween judging.
Every week there will be a new theme and surprise set of colors you can use, and for every mockups the canvas size will be 160x90.
Prizes:
There are 3 Aseprite, 3 Dr. Kobushi's Labyrintine Laboratory, and 3 Lone Survivor keys, which will be divided among the top 9 entrants. The highest placing winners get to choose first, and if a winner does not need a software license it will be moved on to the 10th place, and so on.
The winning mockups shall be announced on the 31st of October.
All who participate shall earn the rare Pixelween trophy.
How to enter:
To participate, your works need to be submitted to the Pixel Joint challenges, details are in the challenge posts:
The first challenge is: SPLASH (September 26th - October 2rd)
The second challenge will run from October 3th - 9th
The third challenge will run from October 10th - 16th
The fourth challenge will run from October 17th - 23th
If you've missed out on one of the challenges you can still submit your entry to Pixel Joint, as long as at least 2 of the mockups are posted as part of a weekly challenge within the deadline. While it probably won't be necessary, poking Gecimen or Gawrone when you post your entry after its challenge deadline is a good idea.
Will you terrify the judges? Will you show them something hauntingly beautiful?
Should you feel frightened on your own, the community is here for you in the challenge forum threads and in the Pixelween channel on the PJ Discord. You're welcome to share your WIPs, so that we may conquer our fears together!
You can find the results of the 2020 Pixelween here.
You can find the results of the 2021 Pixelween here.
All weekly challenges until October 23th are part of Pixelween 2022, a contest with prizes.
You will be drawing a splash screen for your own horror video game. Pick a name for your game and draw its logotype along with a thematic illustration and/or a character selection/creation interface (this may hint the genre of your game but don't feel limited by your choice here in the coming weeks).
In upcoming challenges you will be drawing more mockups for this game.
Technical requirements for this week:
Canvas Size - exactly 160 (horizontal) x 90 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 16, use Vampire-16 palette by polyphrog:
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.
We're excited to hear who will be joining, let us know in the comments with an "I'm in"!
The WARdobe pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:
Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the WARdobe forum thread for more information.
The following pixel artists produced Pixel Joint's top rated pixel art for August 2022.
Many thanks go out to this month's top pixel artists, and all the members who took time to rate!
We are going to build our own pixel personal computers this time, but you are allowed to interpret the title of this challenge however it it possible.
You can draw a technical scheme or a realistic drawing of all the components you would like to have in your PC in all the right places. You can imagine how PC intestines would look like in near future, or entirely science fiction, using alien technology. You can create a fantastic computer using a steampunk, dieselpunk, clockpunk, stonepunk, atompunk, elfpunk... or whatever else punk there is. Or maybe go for Rube Goldberg machine kind of thing with dominoes, and hamster wheels? Or you love your current computer setup or are satisfied with it enouigh to call it your dream PC and you will just draw what you have on your desk right now? And finally, if some painterly, abstract or dreamy impression of a PC interior is your thing, go for it!
All you need is a 100x90px PC case (vertical or horizontal - you choose, it is your build) and max 64 colours, becasue dreams are supposed to be colourful. Animation is not necessary, but If you want to add some blinking LED lights, rotating gears or a cobweb weaving spider, you are allowed to.
This week we want you to make an animated furniture enemy.
Choose one item like a closet, chair, dresser, table, bookshelf, coat hanger or a desk (by the rule of cool we will accept also a large home appliance equipment like a fridge, washing mashine or a stove), and create a cool, "gamey" sprite design of it and animate it as an enemy in a game.
The animation needs to be something typical we can recognise like idle, walk, run, hit or fire a projectile, and it needs to have at least 8 frames. If it will be something like super fast hit, try adding few frames of a windup or/and a cooldown. If your walk, run or jump design demands to have less frames in a cycle, add another cycle with a variation.
The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.
This week we want you to make a mockup of a game sequel that never happened.
You can interpret it literally, and imagine a nonexistent sequel, or take a sequel that was made, but overlooked for a variety of reasons (atrocious 3D, or simply a terrible game).
If you are going for 1:1 continuation with same type/genre/style of the game, try to mimic the artstyle or other essential characteristics, but invent your own assets, or add some other form of orginality to it, so it will definitely look like a sequel, not an addon or mission pack for the same game.
But if you feel very corageous, go wild and turn a platformer into an FPS, an RTS into a board game or a farming simulator into a Soulslike.
The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.
