Don't be such a drama queen. I was neither the mod who accepted nor revised this, so I don't quite know the full reasoning behind either. However, your persecution complex and complete unwillingness to take critique on board really are pretty sad. Not one of its critics had anything to say on its validity as art, just whether or not it conforms to Pixel Joint's guidelines for what pixel art is.

Seriously what the hell is this:

I don't come to pixeljoint much, simply because things like this seem to happen all the time. This piece is pixel art, and it saddens me that this fact would be called into question. :/

It is controlled, reigned in, and it really doesn't matter if there was any actual /drawing/ going on. Not to be snarky, but: God forbid if someone actually used a pressure sensitive tablet to simplify the process! And he might not have even done that, nobody can know except for the artist himself.

Regardless, not a single pixel is out of place, and complete control over the end result on a pixel level has been exercised. What more could you want? There is even some AA on the folds of the robe, but that shouldn't even be grounds for an appeal in the first place.

I don't know anyone involved, and I don't presume to get caught up in the personal attacks you're making against the artist (maybe they're true! I have no idea), but as a fellow practitioner of the medium I just have this to say to the people who continue to make these poor decisions: stuff like this is why I have a subconsciously low regard for this site. Cut it with the purist crap. :/

Maybe I can sort of understand not wanting semi-transparent elements in the gallery (sort of.), but this should be perfectly acceptable on your terms.

I second "this is pixel art". There are places I see that need to be cleaned up more, but it's still dad-gum pixel art. In the end, it was done with a brush that has no anti-aliasing and a lot of pixel placement was done by hand, which only makes any mistakes a human error and not a tool error.

I read the comments on the piece, and I don't get the Oekaki comments. AFAIK Oekaki is a program just like MS Paint or Graphics Gale, and not a style.

Anyway... AA is really easy. It's not as advanced as you might think it is, I argue that dithering is much more difficult to truly master since there's much more that can go wrong with it and there are a variety of textures that one can use.

It just looked unfinished.. I don't know what the big deal is.. like people said there are plenty of artistic communities that embrace this sort of thing (clean oekaki?).
Tablets are banned.. mmkay? (just kidding about the last part)
 I just thought when seeing it.. this is cool and well drawn; reminds me of something 'The mad Arab' would have encountered.. but it's jagged and looks like a tablet drawing unrefined at the pixel level... So I didn't even rate it.

It was me that sent this back and it was me that originally added the piece.

The piece is pixelart-ish but really does lack the control pixel nerds wish to see in any piece of any size.
Imo, this is what's commonly referred to as Oekaki (a loose term as used in PJ), its just very clean and polished to the point of almost being pixelart, about as borderline as it can be. Again, I was cool adding this originally even though I did have reservations.

"and hopefully inspire other artists to explore new styles and ideas, and prove that not all art has to conform to a linear, standardized view. "

This is great and everyone wants to see this happen. However, pixelart techniques define the art form so all pushing the envelopes have to remain within the bounds or its something else :/
I always use the analogy that the MonaLisa would be rejected by the MoMA not because it sucks, is bad, ugly or whatever...it would be rejected because its not 'modern'. It fails to fit within the artform style. All styles have parameters...it just is!

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To fully answer your question:
We will often add pieces with a 'benefit of the doubt' kinda tag attached. When originally accepted it was me that added it and while I then saw that it was not 100% cool, at the time you were new here and I assumed you'd get the hang of things and learn new pixel related things as your skill and talent are obvious.
Even if it did get good reviews from some there were also many reports sent in and IT HAS been hanging for a while. Enough negative reports (technique based) have been sent in that sadly, in this case we had to revise our decision. Last week one in particular was so well written and defined we simply could blind ourselves no more.

It would be awesome and consider yourself challenged to take pixel art to the extreme and blow us away. Technique and purity are the canvas restrictions you will have to follow. In any work you ever do even when you fancy that you are 100% free to push any boundary if you don't realize that there is, and will always, always be a limit of some kind or some things that will have a limit (canvas size is the obvious) then you'll only ever be mediocre at best and improvement will be slow and painful...

...stake an area and attack :)



Edited by jalonso - 03 May 2012 at 12:03pm

so

• a piece of yours
• a piece where the minimalism is a choice made for aesthetics rather than laziness (made more exaggerated by actually colouring outside the lines)
• a piece where the same sort of oekaki discussion is going on
• a piece from 2006

Your responses on the piece (indeed to any critique) are just awful. People like st0ven saying that it would be more suited to vector isn't a personal attack. If all you care about is *fame* you'd probably be better off at dA.

Okay, moving past this. I came back to Pixeljoint with all my bias from when I left and realize how immature I reacted. My attitude was uncalled for and I will not degrade members in that way again. Hopefully we can all just forget this and move on.