Poor palette control is one thing, but this is not remotely pixel art and I think PJs existence is a better reminder what pixel art is than active forums. Note that newcomers don't ask for advice about what pixel art is, as someone who teaches pixel art at uni for 3 years and made countless workshops, every young person I've met who is interested in pixel art think they know what pixel art is, just that 90% of the time they are wrong (I was there too) . First they need to see actual pixel art, then they may start asking questions.
Fool's twitter was hacked by craptobros
(not posting the link, acct renamed to cr*ptogus98)
[I hope big bad eBoy can't read this, here in the secret cool people club. just kidding. moving on.]
been wanting to hit on this for a while:
It's genuinely interesting to me to observe evolving pixel art trends - how (apparently) new pixel artists often default to a sort of "hybrid" pixel art style.
More and more, I'm seeing submissions here of very small pixel art that appears to have 12 colors but actually has 112. Little or no palette control and full color blurry backgrounds, etc. What seems reckless to me is just normal to others.
A well done example - this recent jorb post
They need more of these done:

These must be hi-res paintings bilinear downscaled with pixel level touch-up on major edges. They look cool, but, imean. I got half a mind to try a real pixel pass on one of these just to see how it would look, with like 12-16 colors or something.
Where's Zizka when you need him. Zizka: Seek and Destroy!
But nah, it is intriging to see what is and what is not "pixel art" to others.
Not trying to gatekeep or any of that crap. But I wonder if in part the death of critique forums has contributed to this. There being far less "guidance" out there for newbz.
Jésus Christos im glad I had Pixelation back when I needed it. I remember not understanding manual dithering, let alone manual AA.
I also suspect that games contribute to pixel art standards relaxing. Specifically games that use pixel art and have dynamic lighting and tween rotation/scaling. We've all grown accustomed to seeing pixel art in games slathered in full color lighting/gradation and smooth blurry fx. So why not just draw that way, right?
@Eishiya I strongly disagree with your guilt by association idea, if that were the case anyone who used a currency would be guilty of all the evil deeds that the country that's the owner of that currency does. In essence, all forms of currency are ponzi schemes. That said, I'm removing said newspost in order to prevent any false assumptions about me or Pixel Joint.
aint it great. new NFT coming right up, get ready to invest. gonna call it Blue Bomber v2.0
just photoshop
really annoying when I want to check out the chatterbox on my phone, because it's a burden to login on my phone... :/
@skamocore Roger. but it doesnt feel right. I would never leave The Blue Bomber like this. activating art skills to fix all artifacts plus some free visual enhancements, GO:

___
uh oh eishiya is annoyed.
But, that makes the chatterbox the secret cool kids club.
Ugh, PJ is logging me out every time I leave the site today ._. If I disappear, assume it's because I was annoyed to death.
Edit: Huh, apparently the chatterbox doesn't display if you're logged out. That's a shame, it means users considering joining don't get to see that aspect of the community.
Edit 2: 3 days later, the issue seems to have resolved itself.
*Mr. Beast voice* "We just called out a guy who color-reduced a Midjourney image on Pixeljoint! *whoosh noise* Now's his chance to win *cha-ching!* 2 million dollars!!!"
Most people don't even notice when art suddenly has 9 fingers ![]()
Don't worry about it, most people don't even notice compression artifacts :)
mayday! significanté fidelity loss detected, sir! Please Advise!

While we're complaining about PJ features, it would be awesome if more pieces could be displayed on the front page at the same time. I know this one has come up a bunch and is also probably gonna be a perpetual wishlist item, oh well.
its time for 𝕃𝕒𝕥𝕖 ℕ𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 ℙ𝕚𝕩𝕖𝕝 𝕁𝕠𝕚𝕟𝕥
hurry, post prescaled slightly rotated blurry megamans while the mods are asleep.

Yep, it turns red when you favorite something. But then it forgets when page reloads I guess.

I also think it used to indicate that you'd faved something (I think by turning red), but it's been so long that I can't remember.
We made it!
How many pixels will I draw in 2023. Check back in one year.
First PJ complaint of 2023:
Am I crazy or didn't the favorites heart button used to indicate that you'd favorited something already? Doesn't matter if I disable FixelJoint extension or not.

Here, something actually useful (maybe) - as a (former and sometimes current, unfortunately) web designer, part of the problem is clarity - it's them tabs.
Depending on how the tabs are scripted, a small CSS change could help a ton:

My edit makes it much more clear you're now suddenly viewing Faves, instead of Gallery.
I know there's multiple skins/themes to contend with, but I assume if one could be changed in this way, then they all could.
Ohh ok, my bad, yeah. So it's even worse than I thought.
What a bummer of a glitch. Really messes things up.
Yeeaaah the fact that PJ shows Favs most of the time is why I never link to my PJ profile :/ What's weird is it wasn't always like this, it used to work fine some years back.
And I don't often browse people's galleries very often because clicking pages has a tendency to show the wrong thing. One workaround for viewing other people's galleries is to not use the gallery tab, but instead use the "Search Pixel Art" option from the menu, e.g. https://pixeljoint.com/pixels/new_icons.asp?owner=34902&ob=search&dosearch=1. This also can get messed up if you're doing any browsing on PJ in other tabs, but I haven't noticed completely spontaneous goofs from it.
The problem i mean is not the wrong gallery link but when someone clicks the second page and it shows the second page of my favs instead of my arts
There's a known solution in this case - go to one of your gallery items and view it, then click your own name or avatar in the description. That URL is the one you want. Here's yours: https://pixeljoint.com/p/34902.htm
My main gripe with that bug is when you share your gallery with someone outside of PJ, i don't want anyone to assume i made the great art in my favorites but i also don't always want to put a disclaimer explaining PJ's behaviour about it that most people won't bother reading anyway...
i did manage to work out a link that should lead to gallery rather than faves once:
pixeljoint.com/p/66890.htm?sec=icons
To me, this link first loads faves but reroutes automatically to gallery after a second or two. But I think it worked a bit inconsistently when testing?
@eishiya Ohhh haha. good thing I just specialize in makin little pictures. 🐀
Buuuut, once in a while I want to check someone's faves and then BAM! Works like a charm - exactly where I wanted to be with just one click.
Definitely the biggest annoyance for me. Looking through someone's gallery is so difficult.
@Mathias: Fortunately ASP is entirely server-side and just spits out HTML/CSS/JS for the browser xP
You also need to take trials of pixels to enter the highest secret inner circle before you can be even allowed to take part in the summoning in other role than the sacrifice. I was sacrificed 3 times so far.
Legends say that mods have to perform a summoning ritual including sacrifices and other questionable actions each time they attempt to contact the sedge
Definitely high up on my list too... But I can't be bothered to ask Sedge again for a bunch of fixes, it's tiring to send lists of stuff and questions and then get a response to one of them if you're lucky...
#1 PJ quirk fix request - when loading someone's profile page, always default to the Gallery tab, never the Faves tab.
Unpopular opinion: I think PJ would still be PJ even if the bugs were fixed xP
On an unrelated note, I love how many Secret Santa entries I've been seeing in the queue, should be great when they're all revealed! Looking forward to a post with all of them.
i gotta say looking at the chatterbox after a long time and reading about technical problems with the site has a homely feeling to it :D
@eishiya, some participants asked about the mars challenge at discord, and I provided my own interpretation of my own rules. How I wrote them ment that you have to use the provided canvas and two colours on it, but there were no rule that you cannot alter the shape of the circle on that canvas.
If I don't write something precise enough in the rules, I almost always settle controversies in favor of creative, weird or out of the box solutions. The only exception would be if a rule loophole could be used to cheat one's way into the challenge or half-ass the entry. Then I most certainly will edit the rules.
Ah, how annoying D: I was hoping there was some way to tell. At least with deliberate entries that misunderstand the rules it's usually easy enough. ...although, in the Mars challenge, I think one of the top 3 was against the rules, at least as I interpreted them, and no one seemed to mind.
They can't be removed from the voting page once the voting has been opened... Very annoying indeed :/
Are entries ever removed from weeklies? Seems like every now and then, one gets submitted by accident, or someone deliberately participates but doesn't follow the rules, and these seem to end up in the voting despite not being valid entries?
It used this template
![]()
The old instructions about what to do where here.
If you want technical insight how the site works to display them you better ask Ennea/Crow who made the site since i only understand the theory not the actual code part :)
Ironically reading about this makes me want to do a partial turn around (spoiler: i won't).
I have an aversion to backgrounds/scenes but sounds like a fun challenge regardless.
Btw pixonomicon made something, somewhat related:
link to all entries (you click on one room and then can move the view by holding the mouse button, close with the x at the bottom text)
Thanks: @eishiya; @gawrone: Here's an update:
STEREOPIXELS
Make a stereographic animated GIF of a scene, moving back and forth between two views of the scene to create a 3D effect, like this example: [link to demo image] (show a 2 frame image and an image with more frames for examples)
Canvas Size - Max 128 x 128
Colors - Unrestricted
Transparency - No.
Animation - required - (Min 2 frames Max 5 frames)
@Stickman: Aye, I think that's better. I think it would be good to name and describe the effect though, e.g.
Make a stereographic animated GIF of a scene, moving back and forth between two views of the scene to create a 3D effect, like this example: [link to demo image; I'd recommend using a 2-frame image as a demo instead, so people don't feel pressured to draw more frames]
I like the canvas size limitation of 128x128, seems like a good size to keep the focus on the 3D effect and not on making a huge impressive scene :D I think the colour count restriction is unnecessary in this case - the focus should be the 3D effect, not on creating three visual planes with a limited palette.
Edit: Also, I don't think "Pixelgrams" is a good name - "Stereograms", which I assume is what it's a reference to, are a whole separate category of stereo vision illusion xP Maybe "Stereopixels" instead?
PIXELGRAMS
Pixel a scene and animate (5 frames max) to create this 3D effect:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fc/f5/42/fcf542d063a19409f936073117173d0f.gif
Please take note of the foreground, mid ground and background parallaxing to complete the effect, along with the object that is the main focus.
Canvas Size - Max 128 x 128
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - No.
Animation - required - maximum of 5 frames.
@eishiya; @gawrone:
Is this better? Feel free to clean it up so that it make more sense.
@gawrone: PJ nerd doesn't care about jaggies, only more pixels. The pixels must flow. 
Good luck with the SS gift. And happy pixelling, Mathias! I will get back on the horse soon too, I hope. Or find a way to make a deep learning model that places pixel by pixel in MS Paint, trained only on Cure's tutorials.
@Stickman, @gawrone: If it's an object, then it's just a partial turnaround, not really a stereogram. What makes stereograms work is the parallax motion between different planes - background, focal midground, foreground. It would be much more interesting if this challenge was about depicting some sort of scene. Plus, I think it's better to give people thematic freedom for a technical challenge like this, let people choose what's more fun or easier to repict in 3D.
@eishiya
I see. I didn't realise that this is what you meant. It's actually a nice idea for a challenge though and somethng that you wouldn't need tools to acomplish with. I'm thinking that 5 frames on a larger canvas would be less finicky:
PIXELGRAMS
Pixel an existing piece of furniture/object(s) in your house and animate (5 frames max) to create this 3D effect:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fc/f5/42/fcf542d063a19409f936073117173d0f.gif
Canvas Size - Max 128 x 128
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - No.
Animation - required - maximum of 5 frames.
@CELS I examined your image and it is possible that jaggies and no AA makes the nerd cry :P But I'm still going to shut up and at least finish my SS gift.
@eishiya - Awesome ok, thanks. Still a tad confused on the decentralized part but I'll figure it out. I think you've pointed me in the right direction.
I did once use Tumblr quite a bit. I kinda drifted away from it.
hehe CELS.
I too am officially quilty of posting more in the chatterbox than actual pixels. I'll work on that.
In a way I'm glad the MS-Paint single pixel placin' purists still show up. Maybe they provide some balance. A different perspective can be useful. Zizka clearly isn't a bad person or anything so he doesn't deserve too much hazing. And to a degree I respect the staunchness of the position. But . . . the 'I dont use X in my personal art process so nobody else should either, or I'll [quote]: "...systematically disregard anything that artist would make in the future" mentality is in my opinion simply ignorant, and I worry it puts unnecessary ankle weights on new aspiring pixellers interested in maximizing their potential.
I'm speaking partly from experience actually. I too was a pixel nazi once, very early on. I know why I grew out of it.
But hey, ya know, if you're here, you're a fellow pixel fan at the end of the day. Surely we can all work something out.
Got a new game mockup thing to wrap up and submit. If I'm lucky, even our boi Zizka will like it.
@Manupix Yeepppp. We were discussing that on the PJ discord a day ago. Not sure what'll come of it, or if Yuriy even knows about it. Another big W for the cryptids, to the moon bro.
@Gecimen 'Newcomers rarely ask for help in understanding what is pixel art and they tend to assume they already understand'. Interesting. Sounds about right.
By the looks of it, what you see here seems to be what "pixel art" is now - https://www.pixilart.com/gallery
A very mixed bag. Imagine you're 15 and you're new to pixel art and wanted to get into it and this site was your primary resource for learning/inspiration. Because Pixelation and such have fallen by the wayside it seems like newbies are much more alone in their quest now. Then again, would they have the patience to earnestly engage with real comment&critique, anyway?