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.
People who actually want to do their jobs should maybe actually do their jobs then.
One very specific example would be writers of tv shows and movies. A little while ago they went on strike, and I find that hilarious. What exactly did that do to earn their pay in the first place?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080240/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7942796/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096684/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17043230/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105812/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6436620/
Everything in the last decade has just been trite reboots and remakes, almost no original ideas in sight. So at this point, yeah why not turn it over to AI, might actually get something new for a change.
@Reo - It's sad that you think I'm trolling. God forbid people in 2023 be exposed to a different opinion that isn't part of the hivemind. A little debate every now and then is healthy.
Believe it or not but I still care about this place, a little bit, what it used to be at least. The only alien concept is why PJ embraced the wierd lie of "1 pixel at a time". Because I've seen artists from LucasArts and Sierra and a bunch of other places talk about art and they all seem very confused about this supposed "golden rule" of pixel art.
I feel like this should come as a realization to you Green that this is, in fact, an artist community. We are having this discussion because you inserted yourself into it after Skeddles offered to help make sure people's art wasn't scraped off the internet and used without their consent (an objectively nice thing of him to offer and raise concern about) with you waltzing in saying "who even cares?". You're the only person who uses this site to biannually try to troll and annoy people you knew on the internet a decade ago. Plenty of us actually make a living doing art and care about the art we create but this might be an alien concept to you at this point.
You're making an ass of yourself. Again.
Okay but you don't see the difference between automation eliminating jobs people actually want to be doing rather than, assembly line workers and such?
As for what audience I mean, I am being unspecific since I don't actually know exactly what whill happen and which mediums it will impact. Wil publishers give up on the expensive and risky process of signing new authors and just let language models generate books based on market-research keywords? Will they start writing blockbuster scripts? Will generative art models become capabel of animation anytime soon? to the point they start replacing live action as well? And mayhaps you are more optimistic about AI's artistic capability, but personally I'm quite convinced this will lead to a general drop-off in quality becuase while quite impressive for a pile of math AI isn't actually all that good. Yes, like 99% of what human artists do is copy each other and remix existing ideas in one way or another yet despite this art and culture has actually evolved over the years, and I'm farily certain neural nets will never be up for that 1% that's missing. The people with the moneybags won't care because they will probably still save more money than they loose.
Idk, it seems like your viewpoint is grounded in "thing were always terrible and stuff getting worse is inevitable so why care?", which I just can't get behind at all.
Ok, an actual anwer.
Large companies replacing human workers with automation is just something that happens in life. Plenty of other sectors have dealt with it. Time for the art world to step up.
Also when you say "audiences" what do you mean? Movies? Comics? Video games? Traditional paintings? What's the medium for this hypothetical audience? Because depending on what it is it might night be as much of a "huge loss" as it may seem.
Ok so AI speeds up bootlegging. Cool. Get rid of AI and bootleging will still be there, it will just take slightly longer. But people will still find a way to rip people off.
Withouth personal attacks? Bold word for the man reaching for "hysterical" in each and every post. I kinda doubt that you're actually here for an honest attempt at understanding our viewpoint, but just in case I'll give a shot at explanation:
I think the critical point you're missing is an issue of scale and economics. Sure, a human person can decide to try an imitate another human artist. And, if they put months or even years of hard work to it, they could get prety good at it! But where does that lead? There being one more human person who can compete for the same attention, under the same terms of actually having to spend time and effort to produce anything.
By contrast, generativ AI is a machine that anyone can use with little effort (well, there's the matter of the obcene amounts of energy certain AI systems consume, but that's a different can of worms) to get very quick results. A single guy can in an afetrnoon decide to start cribbing several artists for comerical gain, and could potentially undercutt them in price as he doesn't need days/weeks to producce anything.
So saying Generative art and humans taking inspiration and/or copying eachother is the same thing is like saying... I don't know, assualt rifels aren't dangerous because if people wanted to kill each other they could already do it with blunt objects?
And that's just the small fry. If it's ever legaly feasable for the big money publishers and producers (who's wealth gives them considerable influence over the law...) to start replace human creators with automated systems, they'll do it in a heartbeat. This would be a huge loss both for the people who want to work creatively full time as well as for general audiences.
Your point being? You must have me confused with someone else because I wasn't hystercial when I deleted my gallery, no one criticized my art, it wasn't a rage quit. You're probably thinking of Dumbo.
Also this deflection doesn't move the conversation forward regarding AI. So congrats on continuing to prove how backwater and irrational this place is, because you can't even defend your ideology in a normal conversation without resorting to personal attacks.
Hysterical screaming and deleting galleries huh? Really odd behaviour!
Yes but how a tool "is inserted" into society is no different than how an artist "is inserted" into society.
That's why I said what's the difference between an AI doing an art piece and an artist doing an almost 1:1 "reference" piece.
And all I'm hearing is hysterical screaming. Some folks over on DA went as far as removing their entire galleries because they don't want them used as a learning reference for AI, but what's hilarious is that it was always used as a reference by humans.
So again, what's the freaking difference? XD
greenraven, that is one of the things I'm trying to tell you, you so strongly pretend you cannot understand, and continuously bring your strawman who "hysterically say AI = bad". Nobody (except your primitive strawman), says that the problem is "the tool". First thing is that this is not only a tool and cannot be reduced to only being a tool, becasue it is far more than just that, even if it have many traits of a tool. The second thing is that it is not it's "toolnes" what is the the problem, but all the cultural, social, economical and philosophical implications of uncontrolled application of that AI into the artworld.
Please stop hiding behind "cultural differences". I know you are smart enough to read short text with understanding. As I said, you pretending that you don't understand the adversary is an argument against yourself only. And please stop ignoring peoples arguments and pretend you don't see them while they wrote you a bunch of things, and you presented literally 0 contrarguments. Debating with you is similar as with an angry child. You are just closing your eyes and ears and screem "ne ne ne ne I can't see your arguments!", which is also only an argument against yourself. Again, "I don't see it" is not a real argument. Flat earth advocates say that they don't see any curvature, which proves nothing except their ignorance.
Copying someone's style is no different when DeviantArt tried to copyright color palettes and restrict people from using colors "they owned". Are we advocating for people to trademark artistic styles now?
@Morganne, I mean what does that tweet prove? Other than one random person was an asshat on the internet.
@gawrone, I'm not sure what your deal is but I'm going to assume cultural differences.
I'm not seeing anyone provide any rational explanations that aren't just a hysterical "AI = bad" kneejerk reation. Sure some people probably used Ai to scam someone but then some people use telephones and email to scam people, and I don't see anyone screaming to abolish telephones or internet connections.
Let's rephrase this: AI is a tool. What is so bad about this particular tool?
edit:
Just as I posted that, this piece popped up...
https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/13962.htm
Explain to me the difference between this piece and if an AI had done it.
greenraven
So you confirmed that you are lazy. You still try to conquer the debate by bringing arguments which already have been rejected long time ago, and pretend that you discovered them, and that they are valid.
This type of analogy was formed many times before, and was always dismissed very easily. The similar attempts were made like this:
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-image-generators-artists-copying-style-thousands-images-2022-10?r=US&IR=T
"People are selling prints made by AI that have my name in the title," he said. "Something like — 'Rusty Robot in a field in the style of Simon Stålenhag' — which is a super aggressive way of using this technology."
Great news, those of us with galleries can rest a little easier now.
Lazy? Brillantly conquered? Cure cancer? What?! I'm sure that made a lot of sense somehow before it was typed but I honestly don't even know how to respond to any of that garbled text.
@Gecimen: B and C are kind of moot points, C particularly. Yeah sure some people are losing their jobs but how is that any different than all the physical artists who lost their jobs when digital video game art started to become a thing. Circle of life.
A seems to be the only point of merit but I don't know of any concrete examples of AI art theft. Please provide an example, I'll be more than happy to look it over.
Sedge implemented some AI prevention tags as Skeddles suggested. Not sure how effective they will be but at least it shows PJ is not volunteering to feed the AI crawlers.
Long story short,
A- AI programs (both text based and visual based ones) are being used partially or fully professionally all around the world and it fully steals from all of the creative people on the web, of course with zero consent and copyright.
B- Thanks to AI programs lots of creative people are losing their jobs & work.
C- Thanks to AI programs tons of idiots around the world started to consider themselves creatives.
greenraven, this very easily look like your annual attempt at trooling out a huge argument, but I will give you only one benefit of the doubt, even if you obviously lost your right to it very long time ago.
If you are not trolling, than what you wrote prooves that the only reason you can't see anything wrong, is becasue you were to lazy to actually get familiar with any actual arguments both sides have, and just ignorantly glanced at web, noticed there is AI art that looks cool and some people who "don't like it" and you quickly formed your opinion about the whole case. If you would at least give it a tiny effort you would know that there is actuall 0 real arguments from artists bitching about using AI for the love of art (and you even will find many who actually do it themselves).
I don't know how someone of your age and online argument experience can still don't know that you really, really, REALLY can not bring an imaginary strawman it to a discussion and pretend that you have to be taken seriously or pretend that you brilliantly conquered all the people who were concerned about the topic for a long time and gave it many hours of thought, study and debate.
You are now acting like a kid who got their first A in biology and wish to go to all the doctors to help them cure cancer. But the difference is that you are the worst biology student in the entire school.
Not a contrarian opinion. I legit don't see what the big deal is. Then again this place has always had weird beliefs.
Yeah it's because its not like that? I mean obviously. C'mon Green, you didn't even commit to that contrarian opinion, you're slipping!
I honestly don't see why everyone is freaking out about AI art.
I mean obviously it's a bad thing if people start selling it like NFTs or whatever. But as long as it's public domain and fair use, and it's just done for the love of art, why the heck not?
is anyone in contact with segde? it doesn't appear pixeljoint has implimented any meta tags / robots.txt configurations that block AI spiders like chatgpt and commoncrawl, meaning all content on this site will be scraped and used to train ai, which im sure most artists would dislike.
I've already added these to Lospec, so anyone needs guidance on it hit me up.
That was cute.
Also i take that as approval of my suggestion!
a waterslide would be cool.
i haven't figured out the excuse- i mean reasoning for having it in a gallery yet but I'm sure it will enhance the experience and appreciation for art!
I guess I was thinking about it partially in terms of the gallery functionality of the site, but an arcade would fit no matter what
What, like some kind of pixel artist clubhouse? It should have an arcade.
Hey chatterbox, if PJ were ever to exist as a physical space what features would it have? (Let's just say an anonymous pixel lover threw ten million USD our way)
Earlier version is here:
https://www.linneart.com/pj/legacy/
Thanks for rehosting it! I was partial to the earlier version's layout myself though xP
Updated bookmarklet for anyone who needs it:
Javascript:window.location.href='https://www.linneart.com/pj?input='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);
(PJ keeps capitalising "Javascript" automatically, you may need to change it to lower-case. Who coded this lmao)
My partner is a web developer and has rescued us! I've emailed EdJr about FixelJoint so let's see if the magnifying glass can be fixed too. : )
I'm hosting it now: https://www.linneart.com/pj/ Just paste the PJ link (ex. https://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/151362.htm?sec=showcase) into the white box and click Inspect
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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