18 Color Palette Competition!
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: Collaborations/Challenges
Forum Discription: Submit pixel art project ideas/templates or contribute to an existing pixel art collaboration.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=27567
Printed Date: 08 September 2025 at 8:46am
Topic: 18 Color Palette Competition!
Posted By: Mirre
Subject: 18 Color Palette Competition!
Date Posted: 08 September 2023 at 10:49am
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Pixeljoint is holding another palette competition which is open to everyone and is quite simple.
Submit your 18 color unique + original palette HERE! The winning palette will be used in PJs next Isometric collab: mISOlogy - where the theme is MYTHOLOGY. Other award winning palettes may also be used in other events and challenges.    
Add a rare trophy to your profile. Competition closes on September 29th, 2023. - The winning palette will be used on PJs next collab project. If you submit a palette you acknowledge that it will be used by others for the purpose of this project and credit may not be posted by participants if they submit their project piece to their gallery but you will get overall credit for it. These palettes are not to be considered art so no adding to your galleries. Its best to assume that others may use your palette beyond this project. By entering you are giving permission to all. - Win a spiffy trophy + points which are rare and will look great in your profile. Pts+1000Pts+500Pts+250Pts+100-HM
* multiple honorable mentions may be awarded. - Judges are your PJ Mods and select PJ members. - Palettes will be judged on the basis of how it would work on the project theme; mythology. - A unique + original palette is the goal but a well balanced palette is very important. - You may enter more than once but quality is better than quantity. There is an upper limit of no more than 3 entries per person, to raise the quality and to make the judging process fair to the judges. - Use the below template for your submission. 
You must name the HEX values and NO black - 000000 or white - FFFFFF Palette entries: DimWiddy: Illumin18 
Drea: Fabletone18 
Drea: Historian18 
gawrone: Ancient Fresco 
marceles: Absolutley_18 
Mirre: Serene18 
Morganne: Eris18 
Night: Asympix18 
Nightmare3711: Mythoturgy 
Nightmare3711: Silkbound18 
Reo: CerbeREOs 
skeddles: Greyteen 
Space-AgeWrangler: CygnusX18 
Stunmachine: 
thest1076: ST 18 Myths 
Tipleloop: Bad Idea'18 
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Replies:
Posted By: Nightmare3711
Date Posted: 09 September 2023 at 8:08am
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Here's my more or less finished palette. I took some inspiration from medieval artwork, while also trying to make it a broadly applicable palette. [EDIT] Let's call this palette Mythoturgy. |
Posted By: Space-AgeWrangler
Date Posted: 09 September 2023 at 11:19am
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CygnusX18
Good for: -Steampunk -1 bit pixel art -Art-deco Bad for: -Nature -Heavenly clouds -Pixel Joint mISOlogy collab 
Also made an example image 
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Posted By: marceles
Date Posted: 09 September 2023 at 3:36pm
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Absolutley_18 DB palette analysis:  little sketch with the fellow from the last ISO collab:  |
Posted By: Tipleloop
Date Posted: 10 September 2023 at 3:27am
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Bad Idea'18 DB palette analysis:  Some quick sketch sample:  |
Posted By: Morganne
Date Posted: 10 September 2023 at 6:24am
Eris18
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Posted By: gawrone
Date Posted: 10 September 2023 at 8:10am
Ancient Fresco |
Posted By: Nightmare3711
Date Posted: 10 September 2023 at 11:13pm
SILKBOUND17
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Posted By: Reo
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 2:02am
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The 18 headed CerbeREOs
Pretty pleased with it! Gonna whip up some examples at some point."BEADE8" is the MVP of the pack, perfectly named lil color. |
Posted By: Hapiel
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 2:18am
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Originally posted by Reo "BEADE8" is the MVP of the pack, perfectly named lil color. Good name indeed  |
Posted By: Trigonomicon
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 2:31am
| @Nightmare3711 reminder that this is the 18 color Palette Competition, you may want to edit one more color in there. |
Posted By: Nightmare3711
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 9:08am
| @Trigonomicon Dang where did I learn to read?? The palette needed an extra color anyhow, I'll get that up soon. |
Posted By: Nightmare3711
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 9:25am
Added a color, as requested. |
Posted By: Stunmachine
Date Posted: 12 September 2023 at 2:29pm
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Step into a realm of enchantment and ancient tales with my Mythology color palette.
Inspired by the captivating myths and legends of ancient civilizations, this palette invites you to explore a world of mystical hues and timeless beauty.
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Posted By: Reo
Date Posted: 13 September 2023 at 12:29am
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Originally posted by Hapiel
Good name indeed You're awful! I meant as in pearl beads! Anyhow took it for a spin on Vierbit's Dead End. 
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Posted By: Matt
Date Posted: 21 September 2023 at 6:18am
Historian18
 
 
  
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Posted By: Night
Date Posted: 24 September 2023 at 6:19am
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Asympix18
Lowkey been waiting for this, I really enjoy this type of competitions and had some ideas I want to experiment with. As with my previous palette, Equpix15, I decided to go with a more logical approach to the entire thing, giving the palette some base structure before delving into the details of it all. The fundamental difference between the two palettes lies in the balancing act. While Equpix15 was an attempt to create a thoroughly balanced palette (with some caveats), it ignored the fact that humans don’t give equal importance to every colour in the spectrum, not even close in fact. So this is what I seek to remedy with this palette, make it “human-centric” as it were. The first part is to sort which colours are the most important and focus on those for the palette. The most important part of the spectrum must be between red and yellow; it accounts for all parts of the skin (the epidermis, hair, nails, erogenous zones, etc.), it accounts for numerous things in nature, key amongst them earth, wood, and other animals; for sunsets, for blood, for numerous human creations, and so on and so forth. I think the importance of this colour range to the human mind cannot be understated, and overshoots any other one. The majority of colours in the palette will belong in this range. The second and third I will address in one section for some brevity. It was basically a tie between the blue and green colour ranges to me. I chose blue as second, and green as third by a small margin. Ultimately the former wins for two reasons: 1. It acts as a strong complementary to our main colour range. 2. It is ultimately more “abundant” to our eyes (e.g. in the sky and sea). And that’s it as far as colour groups are concerned, realistically I cannot add any more, or any more varied combinations, to an 18 colour (16 minus black and white) palette. The next part, which is more important to workflow with the palette, is the shading distribution. With the previous palette the shadow and light groups were equal (7 colours each), but in keeping with the logic previously established, I could push it a little. I think it would be accurate to say that we place more importance on the lights than on the shadows as humans, and so I decided to make a rather clutch asymmetry between the lights and shadow – 11 and 7 respectively. This ends up being a double-edged sword of course, as on one hand we have less variation in the shadows, but on the other we have more variation in the lights; I reckon it’s a worthwhile trade, however. As far as value distribution, I decided that the two extremes, white and black (which subsequently influence all others), ought to be slightly reduced in intensity. Despite reducing the overall contrast, this provides us with greater unity between all colours of the palette, due to the transitions between each colour becoming less dramatic – smoother transitions are the effect. All in all, this should prove to be a highly balanced palette with decent flexibility and variance in colour. Besides testing the palette on other artworks in the gallery, I also decided to create a new artwork to test and demonstrate its viability; this being the cherry on top of this whole experiment. 
A summary chart or infographic of sorts: 
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Posted By: Matt
Date Posted: 24 September 2023 at 11:13am
Fabletone18
 
  
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Posted By: thest1076
Date Posted: 26 September 2023 at 9:46am
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ST 18 Myths
DB Palette Analysis: 
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Posted By: skeddles
Date Posted: 26 September 2023 at 11:50am
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Decided to make an entry for this. Recently been trying to understand using nonlinear ramps in my pieces, so I tried to design a palette that supports lots of mixing of shades. It features an 8-shade grey ramp (which can also be split into warm/cool ramps) Presenting Greyteen:  http://https://lospec.com/palette-list/greyteen - Download on Lospec Linear vs Nonlinear Ramps:  DB Analysis:  ------------- |
Posted By: Mirre
Date Posted: 27 September 2023 at 4:37pm
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Can't pass on a palette competition myself!
I present to you: Serene18
I was going for a vibrant, but not glaring, palette. With cohesive colours that can be mixed in many different ways to create a diversity of ramps. Touching on a pastel look, but not quite that. A serene magical vibe. Tested on one of my own old pieces. 
Dawnbringer Palette Analysis: 
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Posted By: DimWiddy
Date Posted: 28 September 2023 at 6:02pm
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Illumin18 A color palette based on illuminated manuscripts   Thank you for running another one of these--they're my JAM!
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