That is so awesome. I do envy you kindly. Speaking of "remembering Obra Din" I just checked if Lucas Pope is working on something new and found out about Playdate. This thing is so cute!
@eishiya: Speaking of "remembering Obra Dinn" I just retrured from a vacation that included a short guided tour aboard the reconstructed east indiaman Göteborg and it was kinda surreal how the layout of the ship felt vaguely familiar from playing Obra Dinn. Very cool expereience.
@Trigonomicon: This was a replay, my previous one was in 2020 or 2019, and the only thing I remembered was to pay attention to some things I ignored for a long time in my first playthrough :] My memory's pretty bad, so I just need to wait a while longer and I should be fine. But I want to play naaaaao.
Is that a quip you want to make, glass houses and all?
I always love checking into PJ every now and then to see what new great pixel art has been produced and also how greenraven continues to stir up drama or reminisce about how he misses Jal. Keep being you, GR, it'll get you far lol
I didn't wanted to go there but apparently a broken record of going back to already dismissed arguments, using a subject which is not the center of the debate as an argument in it, cherrypicking or pretending that arguments of interlocutor didn't exist, or thrivialising strong arguments as non significant, basing on a false logic, and many other behaviors which makes the conversation frustrating, embarrassing and pointless, is more than any of us can bare.
I'm temporarly shutting down the topic of AI art, until greenraven discovers a different topic which can give him a trolling enrichment.
Any post about AI art in the chatterbox will be deleted. This temporary rule does not apply to discord if anyone is interested in debating this matter, even if the whole "debate", was just many people trying to either explain simple things, or point out that the problem is much more complicated, and all were hitting a brick wall.
I mean frankensprites, recolors, and rips were always a thing. AI just makes that process mildly faster. No one ever freaked out to this extent about bootlegs before when it was just humans doing it.
Yeah it sucks that people are stealing commissions but as long as there's profit to be made grifters gonna grift.
At face value though I don't see anything wrong with AI art. If anything we should be encouraging AI to be more artistic, because we're only a few steps away from living breathing artificial intelligence and real actual thinking machines. AI art is probably the luckiest boon in the field of mechanical sentience.
I wish to add to that a slightly different situation - an aspiring art student, who went to academia before all that situation started. I'm very certain that I cannot comprehend how devastating this could be to a person, becasue I cannot imagine how this could feel, when you decide to do something you love for a living, so you put everything you have on that, and just before you earn the profession and start working, it becomes meaingless and obsolete in so many aplications. (I actually know a story of a real person like that who is having a long list of problems put to work on psychotherapy).
I belive people like me, who already worked in so many totally different jobs, could eventually cope with AI "replacement" after a great deal of struggle, but someone who is just starting their proffesional life can be unmeasurabely devastated and damaged irreversibly by that, which - if even overcomed - will have an impact on everything since. But of course I'm not forgetting that someone who had worked their whole life as an artist and only that, and that is the only thing they know, can be literally killed.
All the individual economical or psychological stories are probably the worst negative outcome of how the AI art technology is being released into the world and how it is being used. But there are much more problems on a much wider or much deeper scale, that could, and should be adressed. And maybe we will, but with people willing to honestly invest into that debate and equipped with basic debating skills.
Okay green. I'll be honest, I was trying to largely avoid engaging with you on why AI art is harmful to the art community at large and how it's negatively affecting artists' careers, especially independent artists. Frankly, I'm not emotionally invested in explaining this to you, so I won't be citing any sources, just explaining what I've encountered online. You can choose to consider my points invalid for that reason if that's what you wanna do, but I'm not just going to sit here and watch you continue this drama for I don't know how long over willful ignorance.
AI art is essentially training a neural network to generate images based on a collection of other images from a database. I'm sure you already know this, but I figured I would explain just in case. On its base, AI art seems like it could be an interesting tool if ethically trained, but it seems that it's been coopted by bad actors who just write bots to scrub the images off of sites and use artists' own works to generate derivative images, effectively using an algorithm to graft already made artworks together into a new image. It's admittedly more of an automatically generated edit than it is an original artwork.
I've seen this phenomena used by additional bad actors to start a commission process for an artwork, and save the sketch before they've actually paid for it, so they can just have an AI "complete" the artwork for them. This denies artists of what might very well be their primary source of income, and artists who live off of commissions have their lives put in jeopardy because of it. Believe me, I actually do live off of commissions at this point in time, and am already in a difficult position without people stealing progress images for an AI to produce a more derivative product for a cheaper price.
in response to the game question, I recently played through Signalis, and it honestly dethroned NieR Automata as my favorite game. EXCELLENT survival horror, and a beautiful story to top it all off. highly recommended
I never played them but they were from the same team so I think they would count.
Planescape Torment is one of my all time favorite games. I replayed it a lot and still find new things every time I do. They made a sequel of sorts but I didn't end up playing that as much just because I don't have the time for long play games anymore.
Nice. I played Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment as a kid but never got that deep, replayed Torment like a decade ago and it was just as good as I remembered. Still didn't beat it because I'm terrible at sticking with games, but came close.
The first one. Never played through it before but definitely enjoying it
It is not very long so nothing more special than one totally free day is needed (or a two day weekend just in case). 
Damn, strong recs for Return of the Obra Dinn here! I'll save it for sometime special.
@Yogurt: that sounds super fun! I never got the appeal of watching other people play games until I become too busy to invest the time to be good at any and realized that I still missed them lol.
@bobs: glad the new MH stepped it up again, seems like a pretty great series. Which BG, the new one? I spent so many hours on Shadows of Amn / Throne of Bhaal years ago, good times
I'm playing Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak on the weekends with some friends and am enjoying it a lot.
Was a huge fan of the PSP era MH games up to MHFU and came back to the seriens with MHW, which felt a bit disappointing (still enjoyed it tho) so I'm glad I'm getting a lot out of the current game.
Other than that i have a baldurs gate save that is waiting for me to return but haven't managed to set time aside for it (not because of busy but because of terrible time management)
"Civil discussion"? That's rich coming from a place that's too scared to have any actual discussions and feels the need to vet users and kick out people from discord conversations before they even have a chance to say hello. "Civil" right. 
)@eishiya: Haha, good luck with that. Only way I found even close to relive that high was to make someone else play it so I could watch them solve it.
@eishiya I played it in 2018 (also one sitting) and I was disappointed that I cannot immediately delete my experience and start it all over again. I will try to play it soon because I'm curious if I will remember anything.
@Amorph not playing technically but my friend just streamed the entirely of oracle of seasons and ages over discord. i'm crap at games so playing vicariously was a ton of fun. since then gameboy color art has been all i can think about haha.
@Amorph: I played through Return of the Obra Dinn in one sitting yesterday by accident, and now I still want to play it but I need to wait until I've forgotten enough of it ;~;
How is googling something more informative than asking artists directly? I asked an honest question because I wanted to know what you people thought, not what google is trying to push.
Also not everyone has a twitter account or watches youtubers or reads those "thousands of articles" from clickbait sites like Kotaku, Polygon, or CNN. I just asked a simple direct question. You're making this more complicated that it needs to be.
You can snarl at me all you want, it's not going to change your situation, I'm not responsible for what's happening to you.
@DoubleSBS, I didn't even realize they're making another Duke Nukem game. I thought the franchise was dead.
That first article is actually pretty informative. Thanks.
Is what it is I suppose. It's a new technology in a changing world. There's bound to be some unhappy people in the way of progress.
Oof, I scrolled down and read some more, that was a mistake. Anyone playing any good games recently?
Its in the process of taking jobs... Its still evolving
https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/21/tech/artists-ai-images/index.html
https://mashable.com/article/netflix-ai-art-anime-boy-dog
https://kotaku.com/duke-nukem-ai-art-midjourney-removed-sucks-evercade-1850498595
The only reason these are news is because they got caught as the AI gets better companies will feel more comfortable using it.
You've recieved dozens of answers...and ffs, googling "how is ai putting artists out of work" is right there. There's literally been thou-sa-nds of articles, youtube videos, twitter threads etc over the last two years. Get the fuck out of here! I know you're not dumb enough to believe that the state of several industries is how it appears on your personal reddit feed? Jesus christ. As someone who actually works in the game industry I've already had several publishers/studios I've worked with on games before skipping the concept art phase entirely and wanting me to work from AI-generated concepts. But yeah given your ideas about how the film industry functions you seem to have a 14 year old's grasp of the world and how financial incentives work.
Just dropping in without reading anything below (sorry it's way too much for me right now), but anecdotally it's put a lot of concept artists I know from Twitter out of work, and then more generally it's at the center of the Hollywood writers strike happening right now -- welcome to the age of robot-written movies and TV, yay! Give an exec a tool to lay people off and line his pockets and ya know he's gonna use it
How is it putting artists out of work though? Everyone keeps saying it but I'm not seeing anything.
What mainstream game, what mainstream show or movie, is using AI art?
The only thing I've seen so far are a handful of pieces on reddit, which are 100% free, so no one is losing any money, the only thing it's endangering is egos.
@greenraven
I do think AI art will bring good things.
But its kinda sad that these engines use artists work signature/techniques ,recreates them effortlessly , gives no credit and ends up putting artists off work.
A parasitic approach that kills creativity.
P.s: And yes, people are using it for their own profit not just for the love of art.
Thank you king bobston for this wonderful example on a neat explanation why oekaki is not pixel art.
The name "oekaki" comes from the program which was an old in-browser drawing program that was integrated into imageboards and such. The old standard brush of it was binary (without AA) which resulted in the pieces often displaying visible pixels, just like when you draw with a binary brush in any other program.
Around pixel art communities the term established itself (much to my dismay since it has nothing to do with the program itself) to stand for drawings or paintings with binary brushes that result in visible pixels but without the pixel level care put into them.
There was a decent amount of the actual oekaki art (that was done in the actual program) had some pixel level touch up too, not necessarily to make it more into "pixel art" but rather to clean up the more faulty looking strokes.
Of course you can make a pixel art piece in oekaki from ground up or clean a drawing up until it becomes one just as in any other drawing software I'm aware of.
But also considering how the program was used for the most part (in imageboards etc) the aspect that i think resonated most with it was the community part and sharing drawings quickly which is great and has its own merrit. It was the social drawing experience before things like drawpile and their serverside equivalents really took off.
The word itself means "drawing", but since japanese has some other more common words for that I'm not sure if it may have a more nuanced meaning to it.
Regardless drawing with binary brush is a lot of fun imo and drawing and painting in general helps ramp up your understanding of more universal art concepts.
I think calling it pixel art is a disservice to the its strengths because from that perspective it gets reduced to "more chaotic pixel art" while when seen as its own thing it's not chaotic anymore since the judgment criteria becomes the stroke and overall craftsmanship, not the pixel
Wrong. You can say false infinite times and it will not turn into truth. Another proof you are unable of logical thinking. Just if you could find few examples of oekaki (which you haven't yet), which accidentally check the rules of pixel art, doesn't mean all oekaki is a "legitimate pixel art". It only means that both sets can have a common part. You keep making fool of yourself to the point of contradicting yourself in one message. If you are trying to make "precision" strokes imitating brush or pastel, and you will not zoom to correct all the jaggies (for a start) you will inevitably produce that way, than you are not making legitimate pixel art.
Also you have been told several times that nobody on PJ is following "1 pixel at a time" rule. You are advocating only against yourself.
Another thing said to you million times, you keep refusing to understand is that we all here at PJ know there are lots of amazing art out there which is not pixel art. The decision to not keep everything on PJ is not "closing ourselves" from that other art. We know it is there and we love to admire and contemplate it all the time. We are just not including it in this gallery. We are not closing ourselves from oekaki the same way as we are not closing ourselves from 3D art, poetry or dance choreography. PJ is not for dance becasue dance is not pixel art. So is oekaki.
"But mooooom, dance just like pixel art can be made out of single tiny steps, even ONE AT THE TIME, so it is a legitimate form of pixe art". No son, it is not.
oekaki now that's a word i haven't seen in forever. i always just imagined it's what pixel art looks like if you never zoom in ahha
don't wanna get in on the convo tho but it is pretty funny reading this chatbox lately
Can good pixel art be made in oekaki? Probably, its got the tools for it. But it also has tools used for digital art. Saying all art made in oekaki is legitimate pixel art is like saying all art made in photoshop is legitimate pixel art. You gotta judge every piece by its own process.
The reference you posted isn't even oekaki, its copic marker https://www.deviantart.com/nekophoenix/art/Oekaki-952616540
Wrong. Clearly you people haven't seen any decent oekaki.
Because proper oekaki focuses on precision strokes which emulate physical brushes and is more akin to pastel paintings. That takes skill and practice.
Here's a decent oekaki piece, go ahead and try your "sloppy chaotic" nonsense now.
This is why I always advocated against the "1 pixel" rule because PJ is closing itself off from some pretty great art.
I said it before a million times and I'll say it a millionth and one: Oekaki is a legitimate form of pixel art.
You are not dumb, and this is a legit question. Oekaki has many things in common with pixel art, but compared to it could be called rather a sketchy, dirty, sloppy, or chaotic pixel art, instead of higher resolution pixel art (this is not a definition, just a similar simplification). It is not something good or bad, better or worse. It's just something different, and has it's own appeal. Also, you can make very clean pixel art on enormous resolutions https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/61838.htm
Your first submission is an example of a very clean pixel art.
I will say that I'm a bit unclear on what makes something traditional pixel art vs oekaki. I thought for a while that oekaki was just much higher resolution pixel art, but if that were the case, my first submission on this site would be considered oekaki, and I didn't even get chewed out by a mod for trying to post it, it was just approved without issue.
note: this is not me trying to troll or incite anything, I'm just kind of dumb
You summed it up neatly. No one for PJ community is going to Twitter telling people who can or can not call themselves pixel artists or critique awesome pixel artworks for not being clean enough. But I saw the push on PJ from outside and from inside was so heavy that debates to loosen up the admission rules were frequent and they were already successful. What doesn't help is the fact that the boundaries between what is still traditional pixel art and what is already something different/evolved/mixed are blurry, and that they are constantly moving organically. Also mods are different people with individual understanding of pixel art. Lospec gallery is actually the best thing that could happen to help with this problem. Especially with frustrated artists who find places like ArtStation too wide and PJ too narrow for their artwork.
[The cinema metaphor again 
]. There are ten cinemas in town, and one of them decided to play only B&W silent movies. If you are offended that this cinema doesn't want to play your movie, because it is has colour and sound, than you are not very wise or not very honest. Too bad that in case of pixel art, the borderline is much wider and nuanced, than this.
I wrote a big novel at first but decided to try to spare you all and instead made a summary of what i tried to write - altho I'm tired so excuse in advance if i worded something weirdly
tl;dr i think puritan pixel art as well as pieces that push the definition are cool and have their place but i also think this is the place for the more puritan pieces
I realize i crammed in some points from past discussions about these topics that weren't brought up now specifically so forgive the tangents (i blame my sleepyness) but i think they are still related enough (and people here are familiar enough with them) to leave them in (and go to bed, good night!)
I wonder if its worse to not have heard of "1-pixel at a time" or to purposfully misunderstand the principles behind it so you can have something to gripe about?
Once again you have trouble with understanding simple text. I was not "attacking you for defending old ways". I was making fun of you for pretending to defend something, but actually mocking PJ, with imaginary rules no one follows, even hard core purists. Also this is Pixe Joint not Oekaki Joint, get over it.
Whoa whoa, hold on there. So here you are attacking me "defending the old ways" and you've never even heard of "1 pixel at a time"? So why even bother going to town defending an idiology you know nothing about? XD
Also make one of the weekly challenges oekaki, I want to see that now.
I did not know that, but I'm a photoshop dork. I need to try other programs some time.
Morganne, Aseprite actually has dithering settings for the gradient tool, it's pretty cool actually, I'd probably use it a lot more if my personal style choices didn't revolve around a lot of flat colors
I saw this rule mentioned a lot WAY back in history (lol I'm an old), probably 2000's-ish era, and it made sense for what we were doing at the time. I think most people wanted to emulate how it had to be done on oldschool gaming consoles? I was also a teenager with a very limited understanding of the world, so I could be remembering incorrectly... but I do have a distinct memory of making a dithering brush and telling no one for fear I would be told I wasn't a "real" pixel artist. I also saw many a good artist run off for this type of thinking, and it was no fun. While I have no problem with a pixel-based spray tool, I personally think the gradient fill tool is pushing it out of pixel art territory, and I realize that very much makes me the same kind of elitist no fun person... but MAYBE thats just a manifestation of my trauma 
To be honest I never encountered "1-pixel at a time" rule even in non literal understanding. However, even if I've been playing pixel art games since the 80's, I've started making pixel art (and reading about it) in 2019, so there is a chance I somehow had no oportunity to encounter that rule.
What what you are describing I understand as the rule of "every pixel have to be placed intentionally". With the rule formed like that, drawing with a large brush, using the line, circle or rectangle tools, drawing shapes by hand and filling them with bucket tool (just to have most obvious examples), always result with every single pixel placed intentionally, even when not alll of them were placed separately, one by one, by hand.
Spray tool or gradient fill tool, for example, does not result in intentional pixel placement. On the very basic surface, without going deep into very detailed analysis of very specific examples of controlled or conscious uses, and adding the intentional examining the random effects and decision of choosing specific results as correct in the context, etc
Gawrone, in response to your questions:
I can't speak for everyone, but I try to always participate in portrait challenges because they're easy for me to do quickly. I love character creation and jump at the chance to do them. I usually really want to participate in other challenges but my free time to do art is very limited, so I end up not being able to do so. Its something I want to change, because broadening my horizons atwise is always a goal. The other challenges are good, keep giving them!
As for the "1-pixel at a time" rule, I always thought it was universally understood that it meant that the level of care taken was one pixel at a time... for example, paying close attention to how every pixel interacts with each other to form the piece as a whole, not that every pixel had to be placed one at a time. Thats silly. I often do place one pixel at a time AFTER I've used the fill tool or shift-clicked a decent line. Nobody should seriously believe you have to pixel every single square at a time.
Ok, I admitt that my first test included only my own artworks. I tried the one from the link, and then few others and I'm getting the same error. I will pass the word, and in the meantime, before we will identify and solve the problem, try to make an 64x64 artwork yourself to use it as a temporary, non-default avatar.
I'm really just trying to find artworks I like that have the button to allow users to use them as an avatar, the one I was hoping for was https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/152291.htm?sec=showcase
However, every time I try to click the avatar button, it gives me a 500 Error.
Ahh, apologies for not interpreting that properly then. It's hard to determine tone out of text, I'm new to the site and don't really know its social rules, and to top that off, being multiple types of neurodivergent, I often struggle with everyday social queues in general. This isn't meant to like, guilt or shame, just to explain why I wouldn't have picked up on your intent.
I didn't wanna get involved in the conflict with greenraven because I feel like I've had the same argument on Twitter and other social medias numerous times, and never do they go anywhere. As long as any active, competent participant in this site and its activities understands why art sites being used as a repository of resources to train AI is unethical, that's what really matters.
@HachiKitsune I just checked, and it works perfectly for me. Tell me how are you trying to change your avatar and which 64x64 artwork you are trying to use?
Trying to brief on a very large subject of endless debates, Pixel Art emerged as an art form or genre because of some specifical technical limitations that were present during the time. Very similar thing happened in music. Limitations available at different times led to why a music album has a specific length or why a standard song is around 3,5 minutes. Today we have songs that can last 20 minutes, but we recognise it as something different or even experimental, because we got used to a standard. We also got used to movies to be of a specific length because technical limitations forced a standard. We are now able to enjoy movies 4 hour long.
There is nothing wrong in recognising similar thing in pixel art and trying to preserve those standards and create a place for art that follows those standards. This is not any form of gatekeeping. We are not trying to say that 20minute songs are not songs or that 4h movies are not movies. We are not forbidding people to create pixel art exceeding those traditional boundaries of pixel art or mixing it with modern techniques, and we are not forbidding them to call themselves pixel artists. We also make different stuff too. We are just not publishing it here becasue we decided to keep Pixel Joint only one place in internet where you can find only pixel art that follow the rules (more or less). Would a cinema that decides to play only silent movies be a bad thing? Would it be gatekeeping? Would it be discriminatory? It's nonsense.
But traditional pixel art is not "1 pixel at a time". It never was.
This post of mine was a joke, that's why there was
greenraven is using strawman argument to ridicule Pixel Joint.
No one is thinking that "1 pixel at a time" is a pixel art rule. No one ever said that and no one ever will say that. It only could happen becasue greenraven is not making any pixel art :) otherwise he could recall tools like larger brush, rectangle or fill bucket...
is using a larger brush size not "1 pixel at a time"? Cause I ain't using no 1 pixel brush
If I'm being honest, "1 pixel at a time" is a fairly limiting rule of pixel art that really only serves to make the process more tedious, and counter-productively, can make pixel art a lot less precise. I personally feel like using line tools, curve tools, and fills isn't an inherent sin to pixel art, and in fact makes it a lot easier to process for those of us who don't have an intrinsic understanding of the calculations involved in creating the forms we're trying to depict.
I'm not saying that smooth gradients and weird deformations are the future, but the Aseprite curve tool definitely isn't the devil.
"1 pixel at a time" really just feels like an outdated regulation that shouldn't apply to people with access to more modern tools.
Is the avatar system bugged for everyone? every time I try to change my avatar from the default, it gives me an error page. Is it doing the same thing for everyone?
Oh I have another idea. A survey:
Question 1:
Do you think that a "golden rule" of pixel art is "1 pixel at a time"?*
*If you also agree that keeping PJ a place for traditional pixel art is a good idea (at least historically or organisationally), and not in conflict with other sites opened for modern/enchanted/mixed pixel art.
End of the survey
Trigonomicon. Since we agree on few things, and feel similar exhaution and futility, I suggest adding few other topics here. May be casual, but should bring some air to the chatterbox we all love :)
My first attempt:
I have a PJ weekly challenge thing I would like to explore. Is it true that recently only/mostly portrait challenges are popular? And if so is the current, most frequently active participants prefer portraits or it is something more global? What we could do to change it? Or should we even try? Maybe we know how to make good portrait challenge but fail in others?
greenraven. You are repeating for the 3rd time the same arguments already dismissed long ago. You are not only lazy but also boring. And you are making basic logical fallacies in your "argumentation".
I already told you about arguments of replacing painting with photography or musicians with dj's, which are false analogy to AI replacing artists. But you decided to bring something even less analogical - robots and machines doing mundane, boring, dangerous or hazardous chores? Truly brilliant ;)
But even if we would assume it is correct (for the sake of the argument) that robots building cars instead of people is the same thing as photographers taking the field of realistic visual representation from painters, and that is the same as AI replacing humans in creative work... this would still be false argument. Just because something was happening and still is happening doesn't mean it is good and should be accepted. I can give you an easy contr-examples. There always were wars, right? People always were stealing and murdering, right? Therefore we should accept it and get over it, right?
Also, showing you that you are hypocritical becasue you were the one deleting your own gallery is not an ad hominem argument. You calling AI criticism "hysterical" is ad hominem.
Your "argument" about "strike bad, go to work" is beyond critiqe and presents your very poor understanding of social or economic issues on the level of talking stupid things to appear as edgy.
"Everything is copy of the past and nothing new in art" is a false or very simplistic observation. Just because it's harder to find creative work of people (because the quantity of content grows geometrically), doesn't mean there are none. You just don't know where to look and it can be seen based on your examples that it's obvious you will not find creativity in your mainstream bubble, where profit is not only the main but often the only factor (not to mention that appearing to member berries for profit is a result of algorithm more than creative thought) ;)
I could go on with analysis of your poor attempts but it is pointless because it could only serve others, and others already know you are full of *** and not very highly equipped or willfull to honestly and competently participate in this debate. And you are also obviously not someone who could admitt to be wrong in something , which is another thing making a conversation with you pointless.
So let's see... nobody should be able to make a living doing creative work because... the buinsismen who hold all the IP rights and funding decided to do a few remakes too many? And I'm sure your opinions on the strike comes from a position of being very well-informed about the current situation with streaming and residuals. Yeah I do not have the patiens to peel back this entire onion of poorly informed opinions, I think I'll just go back to ignoring the chatterbox for a while. Feel free to feel as smug about it as you want.
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@Trigonomicon
The ship looks amazing. Must have been a blast.
Speaking of games, I am following the development of a point & click adventure version of Name of The Rose here: https://twitter.com/superrune/status/1334076049030778880?s=20