Do you have a perfect idea for a weekly challenge? Something that is well defined/restricted, but still open to creativity? We would love to use it!

This forum thread is for submitting an idea, or commenting with suggested improvements on others. There is no guarantee on if/when/how we might use it, to keep the upcoming challenges exciting and fair for everyone. But if "your" challenge takes place, you are of course welcome to take part too!

I'm sure many of you have also noticed that the weekly challenges are not as popular as they were a few years ago. Although they remain to be a cornerstone of the PJ community, many other platforms have popped up with pixel art challenges, and among those we would like to remain interesting and relevant to future participants.

Let us know if you have suggestions on how the weekly challenge can be improved! What kind of challenges are your favorite, what would you like to see more of?

Thank you!

As for contest winners choosing a theme:

I think we can try to make a challenge dedicated to the old artist who was born in the same week and his popular creation
As an example, Tove Janson (9 August, in the coming week) and Moomin troll

• Preview image of raw ingredients; detail image of the cooked meal.
• Preview image of flower buds in a vase; detail image of them in bloom.
  
• Preview image of a chrysalis or insect larva; detail image of the insect or creature that emerges.
  

I like palette challenges too.
I think this would be an interesting one:

Create a character split directly in the middle, full body, portrait or somewhere in-between; having two distinctive personalities. For example one good and one bad,  one sane and one insane, one male one female etc. as long as they are distinctly different.  [must use assigned palette, transparency and animation would be ok]. The rules concerning what two types of distinction would be very loose and I could help assigning a palette to use for the challenge.

There would be an assigned palette for each half. Or like in the 'splitting 10's' challenge, there could be a palette which shares some colours but keeps most separated.

Something I made for the splitting 10's challenge that is similar in essence:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/71078.htm

Splitting 10's challenge:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixels/challenge_item.asp?id=1303

Splitting 11's challenge:
http://pixeljoint.com/pixels/challenge_item.asp?id=1516

I completely agree with there being set palettes that we have to use. It can be decently challenging, which is why it's called "Weekly Challenge". But here are some of my other ideas:

1. A game mock-up. Like a sidescroller, RPG, puzzle game, etc. probably with some gameplay if it were to be animated.
2. Storefront (See: Brandon James Greer Storefronts)
3. Items. At least 25 in total. None can be any larger than 32x32
4. Glitching could be an interesting theme to build off of.
5. Hub world. Another game-type concept, but it could be very interesting to see different types of hub world.
6. Cards. You don't see pixel art in tabletop games, at least not nearly as much as you do in video games, so I think it could be interesting to design some cards. The ratio would have to be the same as existing cards such as Bicycle, Pokemon, Magic, etc. I'm not sure of the ratios, but let's just say 4x3. I'm thinking of having there be a minimum of 10 cards which are all thematically similar plus a backside for all of the cards.
7. The Elements, being Air, Water, Earth, Fire, and possibly Ether, each having a set number of colors or even a given palette
8. Mechanical: you'd choose 1 of several palettes: Gold, Rusted Iron, Silver, Rusted Copper, Uranium, and you'd make something mechanical with it.
9. Light: you'd do something related to lighting, from neon to light flowing through a window, the catch is that you can only use three to four colors, no more no less.
10. Contrast: you split your art in half, and both halves use different palettes. It doesn't matter how it's split, just that it's as close to half as possible.

I'm willing to bet multiple of these are duplicates of other challenges done in the past, but I'm pretty new, so I wouldn't know.

Could be fun, Stickman! Any suggested theme?

I concur on the palette challenges, though I've only participated in three weekly challenges in my 13 years of being a PixelJoint member. :P

How about pixelling someone creating any form of art (e.g. Michelangelo sculpting David or Fool waving his magic wand at his computer screen)?

I also kind of agree with PC PIXEL up there. Weekly challenges have always been for the duration of one week with a new one each week, but they could have a multi-week deadline and still be called "weekly" because a new one starts each week and one ends each week. :P

Might be fun to do a sort of shape challenge kind of like Jinn's latest post! (ie. have a specific pixel shape/silhouette that everyone has to adhere to)

Ooof, sorry about that mistake. Man its too bad I missed out on it, love the current entries though!

Another idea, it might be cool to do a portrait challenge based off some of the portraits from the humanae series. (Would be a great learning experience!) Possibly with a limited color palette like 6-8?

How about something like:


Create a video game mockup for a film released in the year 1985.
IMDB list of films released in 1985

Your submission may be based on particular scenes from the film, or, following in the footsteps of genuine movie tie in games from that era, simply take inspiration without strict adherence to the plot.

Canvas size: Max 512x448 per depicted 'screen', but submissions may contain multiple screens.
Colors: Max 32 colors. Colors are restricted to 15bit color space, i.e. each R G and B value in a color must be an integer multiple of 8. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_color#15-bit_high_color
Transparency: No
Animation: Optional

What about having to do something with your least favourite color(s) as a prominent element?

Parody: The Game (title is tentative)

Parody an existing video game. This can be anything, such as an easy logic game featuring a ridiculously hard boss or a game for older audiences starring an adorable bunny on a quest to learn the alphabet.

Canvas size: Unrestricted
Colors: Max 20
Transparency: No
Animation: Optional

Country Flag Rules

Pick an country and create a picture that use the aspect ratio and pallete of this country flag.

Canvas size: Must follow the aspect ratio of country flag.
Colors:Must only use the colors of the country flag pallete.
Transparency:No if the country flag has more than one color, yes if it has just one color.
Animation:Optional

I dont know any official place to find the info, but wikipedia has information about flags, their ratio and specific colors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Mali
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallery_of_sovereign_state_flags


Another idea:
Fake Anti-Monochromatic pallete.

At each color of the pallete, the values must be, 0 for one value, 255 for another and any value between 0 and 255 for the third.
PS: You can have a color that is R: 0 G:255 B: 111 and another that is R: 222 G:0 B: 255, the value of the color that will be 0 and the one that will be 255 dont need to be the same at all colors, so you dont need as some example to always have R as 0 and G as 255.
When talking about monochromatic the average distance between red and green, red and blue and green and blue is always 0. The previous rule maximize the average distance between the values.

Canvas size: ANY
Colors:At least 2
Transparency:No
Animation:No

PS: The Anti-Monocromatic pallete is wrong, forgot the actual collor values are not X but X^2.2, the real Anti-Monocromatic pallete would have just 3 colors, (255,0,0), (0,255,0) and (0,0,255) this would be a boring simple palete.

Ascii Art

Select one of those sizes 9x14, 8x8, 8x14. Your image must be made of pixels of the selected size.

Canvas size: Any, as long all fake pixels your selected size.
Colors: CGA pallete if 8x8. EGA if 8x14. MDA if 9x14
Transparency:No
Animation:No

It's a bit too limiting but I like the idea of "create a character for Virtua Fighter 1" or "create a character for Final Fantasy 7".