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.
In Masters of Pixel Art vol 3, Fleja already references the paradigm of Cure's rules as 'traditional pixel art'.
The future is now, and we're all a bunch of old fogies.
@Zizka there is nothing arbitrary in defining art. In history there were attempts to use definitions like "if someone say it is art so than it is true" or "art is whatever you want" but nobody threats them seriously. They definitely do not help in clasificatoon of things and in our communication.
If you want to define something differently and convince others that you are right, you use arguments and this already roots you in some form of objectivity or at least intersubjectivity. There are problems to get one definition that will work correctly and successfully include everything recognised as pixel art and exclude everything that is not, and to get everyone agree with it, so people will argue about it forever by exchanging arguments or inventing new ones.
And you also have to add evolution. Pixel art is constantly changing and new things emerge from old ones before we recognise that they already are something new and before we have a different name for them. Whenever someone says "what is pixel art is arbitrary and everyone can understand it as they like and will be right, and it's just opinions" voluntary excludes themselves from the debate. Just because achieving full agreement is difficult doesn't mean there are no elements of objectivity already established, we all have to agree with.
Maybe in near future there will be something called "traditional pixel art" and "x pixel art" and PJ impact on history will finally be recognised :D but we are not yet there.
It's even harder if I make my pixel art whilst standing on my head. Does that make the outcome any better?
And who runs the better marathon? The person who runs it in 4 hours, or the person who walks for 1k and then runs the rest but finishes in 3 hours? It's again the outcome that is relevant...
@hapiel:
Well, you could advocate "imagine where we'd be if we still refused to use AI"? Where do you draw the line?
As for using shortcuts, I'd think it's safe to say it's harder to design your own palette and using a photo as reference and eye-balling it than color reducing and tracing over it, wouldn't you agree?
@gawrone:
Thanks for providing a counter-argument which isn't grounded in an Ad-Hominem (your pixel art in your gallery is basic therefore you should shut the fuck up). You're right, I love Fool's work and it is a bit disappointing to learn it's traced over. On the other hand, it's something drawn by him, so that's good enough by my standard. It'd be even more of an accomplishment if it had been done from scratch, in my opinion. It's like running a marathon, it's good if you walk 1 km and run the rest but it's more of an accomplishment if you run the whole thing. A line has to be drawn eventually as to what constitutes pixel art and what doesn't. Since it's arbitrary, there's no settling it. I just don't think that the gallery content should be determinant as to who can or can't express their opinion on the concept.
@Zizka, if you will dig the internet enough, you might find fool's WiP's catalogue, (and I don't have to say that he is one of most valued artists here, in PJ's community). Once you're there, you might find fool tracing his concept drawings and pixel over them, so when you do that I guess you could start deleting your praise comments and fav's, and maybe you will finish before 2023 XD
A person with 10 years, 160 pixelart submissions and 2500+ comments on the site apparently doesn't grasp the basic human concepts of 'putting your money where your mouth is [especially in regard to arrogant intolerant opinions on art]' or 'people in a venue will generally judge you by your output in that venue'. And I use 'apparently' to give the slightest room for benefit of the doubt that said person isn't just being disingenuous about the given context, when people can literally scroll down and see the context right there
Mathias:
I didn't realise a certain level of skill was required to have an opinion about pixel art. I also didn't realise that what is in the gallery is necessarily representative of the current level of an artist, it seems to imply that nothing else exists outside of the pixel joint gallery. Fortunately what you consider the required level to have the right for an opinion on the topic isn't something which matters to me.
It's a bit... baffling, as you put it or maybe backwards would be the right way to put it.
@Mathias Mastodon's been around since 2016 :D If you want to join, the admin of .ART has posted a thread about some creative instances (and of course, .ART itself is a nice one xP). In addition to those, https://mastodon.gamedev.place may also be relevant to you. Different instances have different policies, so it's worth reading their About pages before you join - look for one where you agree with the rules, rather than merely being willing to abide by them. If an instance you want to join is invite-only and only provides a Mastodon account to contact for invites, you can either register on a public instance to ask and then move there, or you can ask someone you know who is on Mastodon to ask for you.
I think you need more scare quotes around "good" xP It's been interesting, but also incredibly tiring.
Edit: I forgot to mention in my previous post: Tumblr's also an option, maybe? I left it in 2018 because of their bizarre adult content policy, but it's still a thing, still pretty decent for sharing art (as decent as social media can be, anyway), and it's also had an influx of artists from Twitter.
Wow thanks, eishiya! I really appreciate the writeup.
I should give it a shot.
Didn't know Mastadon had been around that long. Will be interesting to see what becomes of Twitter and any other Twitter alternatives out there. It's been a "good" show so far hehe.
Well that didn't last long.
There are times when someone says something so out of pocket and backwards, you realize there's no point continuing.
Interesting sidenote: I often observe something in common among guys that enthusiastically spew the intolerant pixel purity rhetoric - if you look at their actual pixel work, it's almost always quite simple and basic stuff. Indicating a level of skill disproportionate to their fervor for policing others.
What makes the least-experienced also the loudest-mouthed? It's baffling.
@Stickman: The animated gif approach is to make an animated gif that jitters between the two views, like this. Since there's no true 3D effect and it's done entirely temporally akin to a parallax camera move, it's simpler to present and doesn't require binocular vision to perceive. I think for pixel art especially, it's a good approach, especially since toggling between the views is also the easiest way to preview the 3D effect while you're drawing a piece.
It's also possible to present a smoother camera motion with more frames, like this.
@Mathias: I've been enjoying Mastodon (only one 'a' - the rest are 'o'). I joined in 2017 and stopped using Twitter in 2020 and haven't felt any pull to go back. It's much easier for one's posts to actually be seen by people because timelines are chronological, and because there's the option to view the Local Timeline - all the public posts from your instance. The moderation on my instance (.ART) has been fantastic, and I know it's not the only well-moderated instance out there - though there are also instances with poor moderation.
I can't speak to how good it is for finding clients/jobs, because I don't use it for that. People do boost (reblog/retweet) commission and portfolio posts. If you don't enjoy social media, then Mastodon might be a good choice just for the fact that it won't punish you for not posting regularly or for including links xP
Mastodon's gotten a little less pleasant to use with the Twitter migration recently, but I hope it'll get better again as the newbies figure things out and shed some of their bad Twitter habits. Another issue due to the recent Twitter migration is that most of the good instances are invite-only now to control their user counts so that the moderators and local timelines aren't overwhelmed. "Invite-only" usually just means "ask and we'll let you in", but it can be challenging to figure out how/who to ask.
An important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of game industry people are still on Twitter because they're afraid to lose what's left of their audience, and it remains to be seen where, if anywhere, they'll go as Twitter continues to collapse. I guess you should think about who your ideal clients are - if you want small-scale work for private clients, Mastodon should be good. But if you want to work on larger or commercial projects, Twitter is probably still the best place for that, at least for now.
@eishiya,
Yes - very true that most people will not have the ability to view them with glasses, so I am very interested in this 'animated gif' method you mentioned.
What is this method?
I have never heard of it before and it would be great to test it.
@gawrone:
If one of the top PJ artists would say "glad you like it, I used a bit of tracing in 3rd day of making it, on this area, and at the end i colour reduced a small part of an image here"
I would and would systematically disregard anything that artist would make in the future. Do the work goddammit, enough with this crass laziness to cut corners all the eff'in time. If you don't know how to do something, then you practice until you do, you don't trace or color reduce or anything of the sort. It's like there's no reason to work to improve at something anymore, if it's too hard then you just cheat your way to the end result for instant gratification. It cheapens the whole medium. If you want some AI to do the work for you, just switch to typing keywords and push the submit button.
I mean the general "you" here, not you, gawrone. I feel strongly about this as you can tell. Pixel Art is a wonderful art form and Pixel Joint is the last bastion. It's important to push back on any attempt to dilute it any further with any color reducing or tracing nonsense.
Pixeljoint perishes the day these conversations stop.
The length of text being posted actually feels refreshing in our harsh character-limit Twitter world.
I appreciate the points being respectfully made with sane logic to back them. Good stuff, guys&gals.
@eishiya - Noticed you've been using Mastadon, and I was looking into it yesterday. Would you mind describing how the experience has been so far? Just in general. I'm very curious.
As a very social media uninterested person I'm pondering ways to gain more exposure and find more clients and stuff, so was considering joining Twitter with the rest of 'em. But . . . god . . .
@Stickman: I think such a challenge could be fun, with some tweaks:
I don't think I'd participate myself though, not because of the use of tools, but because I can't view stereoscopic images at all, so a lot of the fun of seeing it in "3D" is lost on me.
Edit: Since most people probably don't have glasses for anaglyphs anyway, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just use the animated gif method instead. No special tool required, anyone can view it (even those without stereo vision!), but the bulk of the challenge remains the same - creating an image with left/right views. Incorporating animation into this would be more challenging, but also more interesting, I think.
@gawrone, I totally agree with you. And sorry if it sounded like that but I wasn't referring to your statement (or others' statements) when I typed my comment :)
What I meant was that it would be very ironic for someone to defend the idea of automated art creation in a gallery like PJ.
I have more of a traditional view on pixel art creation process but of course I respect all other views as well. Progress and changes are bound to happen.
In regards to process, I would like to hear peoples thoughts on a PJ challenge which would involve using a tool?
PIXELSCOPIC
Create any image, then turn it into a stereoscopic image using one of these tools from the link below.
https://listoffreeware.com/stereo-photo-maker-software-windows/
Canvas Size - Max 128 x 128
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - No.
Animation - optional
Once again this is a generalisation. Nobody here is saying that creation proces doesn't matter att all, or in any possible circumstances, or to anyone. I specifically said about demarcation problem. It's weird for me to act like a devil's advocate here, becasue privately I'm one of the most purist oriented mods.
My personal answer to you @Zizka would be: If enter a competition on PJ which value pixel artt in it's "pure", "traditional" form (which is not bad or not good, and not the only possible nor correct way of understanding pixel art), I wouldn't trace, but I will If I will be asked by a client to work on pixel art conveyor belt, to produce an enormous amount of high quality art in very little time, becasue I agree that artists care more about the process than orther art recipents. Usually artists show WiPs not to proove anything but to show off their skill. I would not decide to filter a photo, becasue in my experience, to make it look as pixel art, it would require more work hours than making it by hand from the start. And that is a partial answer to why some top pixel artists would argue that the end result is more important, and all the tools you use along the way matter much less.
And to you @Theoden I would say that I always think we ask for WiP when we have doubts that the art is legit, not becasue we discuss it still counts as pixel art, or if it is a good or bad pixel art, or how much pixel art is in pixel art. Those are different, and much more complicated problems. We can have recreational debates about it, but they are long and usually lead to no consensus, and it would freeze the gallery. But I understand what you mean. I think a sentence like that doesn't actually mean NONE OF THE PROCESS matters, but being super precise is difficult. Of course it matters 100% that the image have to be made of pixels, and of course it matters 0% if it is made with mouse or a tablet. But there are also plenty of stuff that matters more than 0% and less than 100%.
If one of the top PJ artists would say "glad you like it, I used a bit of tracing in 3rd day of making it, on this area, and at the end i colour reduced a small part of an image here", I don't think people would start to delete their admiration comments. They most likely would start to rebuild their understanding of pixel art process.
"The context of that quote was "caring not about the process of creating art, but more about the end product's quality in case of demarcation problem between 'art' or 'not art',"
What I understood from Hapiel's quote is:
"It doesn't matter which tool were used or how it was made, what matters is that the end result looks like Pixel Art."
Then tracing is fine? Applying filters to photographs is fine?
This isn't a personal attack towards Hapiel, but rather the idea being (apparently) put forward here, which bothers me greatly. If the tool being used doesn't matter, then we should allow A.I. generated pixel art. That's my point.
The process *does* matter greatly, it's a foundation of Pixel Art. Learning to do your own Anti-Aliasing for example while you could let the tools do it for you. It would be nice to promote skill, perseverance and hard work as opposed to whoever can use the most advanced tools.
No more than ever we need a Jalonsoesque *firm* stance on human made pixel art.
And asking for WIP to validate arts is fine and could even be mandatory.
It is ironic to say that the creation process is not important on a platform where users are occasionally asked to provide WIPs to validate their art.
@Zizka, in my opinion you are quoting Hapiel out of context. The context of that quote was "caring not about the process of creating art, but more about the end product's quality in case of demarcation problem between 'art' or 'not art', 'good artwork' or 'bad artwork', or more speciffically 'pixel art' or 'not pixel art'.
These debates are frequent in regard of artists using automated effects to create pixel art indistinquishable from 100% hand pixelled art. The artist using the A.I. technology at some point of the creation process would be just at the possible end of the spectrum of this.
"Not caring about art" (in general) has either much wider and many levelled or just completely different meaning. In the case discussed right now it's political and economical, but can for example include philosophy of art, or simple personal taste.
"The end justifies the means" can also concern different things. You can find artists who don't care about craft as long as the end product speaks craft, it means the creator knew craft and could decide "that's good" even if it was after creating 1000 AI images, and choosing the best one. And you can aslo find non artistic art conesseurs who will say that they need to be 100% sure that the photography was not touched in photoshop, or they don't buy, or other fetishes. I think "end justifies the means" doesn't transfer the same way to the problem of bypassing artists in generating quick profit from people's need for beautiful things, by using robots to do that. I think most of the artists, and many art recipents wouldn't agree that end justifies the means in that case.
@specialmin64 Why cyangmou is right. It works how everything goes in this system, the 99,99% of contribution and investment is public, and the whole profit is in private hands of 0,001%. The same thing as when billionares take dotations from public money to fund investments from which they will pay joke salaries to workers and avoid paying taxes, the same is this A.I. deviant situation. The artist, who learns from other artists invest his own resources (money to buy acces to art, time spent on it, intellectual and physical work), which usually (with very few exceptions of "stars") is greater or close to equal of the profit they will make and live from it. What they gain through that whole (in may different ways expensive), education process, always somehow - voluntairly or not - comes back to other artists (well trained artists produce art, that inspire next generations, or actively share wisdom, and so on...), so it doesn't always get back direcly to the artists they were learning from (like directly paying for art, for priviledge to use it in learning, or for art lessons), but the previous ones were also standing onm the shoulders of giants, so you can be the next giant to someone else, and it goes on...
Deviant art did not even ask, just decided, just like bilionares, that if this is public, that I can use it for my private profit. But what will be their "giving back" to the artist community after they will make an enourmous private profit out of their art? Oh I so predict it will be amazing :) This is not the same as a very hard working and luckly tallented artist, who will put out of work get more work than someone less tallented and less determined, as the original capitalist narration would like to sell. This is exactly same as a billionaire who will pay shitty or no salaries and avoid paying taxes, while using publicly gathered effort and little or none of their own. The difference seems to be quite clear.
A.I. will replace a huge percentage of artists, it's probably already begun. In a sense, be careful what you wish for. People will eventually long for the day when people were purists about art. Photo bashing was the first step in an unavoidable outcome. Why do something yourself when tools can do it for you.
Regarding, only non-artist caring where art comes from:
"And I think that's fine, I personally care about the end product anyway?"
Quoted from Hapiel. As long as the prevailing mentality is: the end justifies the means, what could go wrong? I'm being facetious but yeah, I think the quote in a nutshell provides a good insight that people in general could care less about the process.
I personally don't work as an artist but I feel for you guys and there's no stopping it. Your tools are surpassing you.
@Mathias You are so right about non-artists not caring where the art comes from. I mostly agree with a lot of the anti-A.I. artist rants, but the expectation that A.I. art can be stopped is delusional. A.I. is fooling art judges today, and it'll be fooling you and me tomorrow, no matter how "cosmic the human soul is" or whatever. Everything you do or think is just a sophisticated series of calculations, and those can be done better and faster by machines.
Also, to all the Midjourney users who aren't artists reading this (I know you're lurking here somewhere...): if you think for one second that automation will bring about a Starship Enterprise utopia where everyone's living off UBI and generating AI anime video games all day, know that the elite has no incentive to keep you alive unless they get something in return. Once you lose your chosen career to automation, be ready to put on your straw hat and mud boots because you my friend are now a serf.
The worst part is there are sickos out there who like being treated like children, and would probably embrace the White House A.I. from MGS2 with open arms...
I love how much artstation is on fire right now. This is useful: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/03Pbz4
It's grey, and defies a simplistic "art theft!" label. That there's a caveman take.
It's different because there's no human toiling in front of a canvas, spending hours and hours creating one image inspired by another's style - it's all being done by a single robot owned by a small company profiting from it's output.
There's a painter who basically carbon copies Simon Bisley's style, so you could look down on him, though you could also claim Bisley just copies Frazetta. BUT either way, both dudes are very skilled and spend exorbitant effort to make their paintings, even if not totally "original" in some's eyes.
But an AI? Near instant infinite images. There's no work ethic to respect. No human intentionality infused into the images. A large sector of art has officially been cheapened.
By now we've all come across images online that blow us away, but then you learn it's AI generated and go "oh . . . eh ok." Wipes that grin off my face, every time.
But then how did someone win an art contest with an unedited Midjourney image a few months ago? Fooled the judges.
You often can't discern what is and isn't generated. Soon they'll do perfect hands. Polished pixel art too, no doubt.
(If you havent seen much AI art, you have to see it to believe it - https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/)
And like politics, there's different schools of thought, so unity on the matter will probably never happen.
One side is all for it. Other side is totally against it. Everyone else somewhere in between.
Artists always get the short end of the stick. Only artists really care about art. For everyone else it's just a product to profit from if they can.
The genie ain't going back in the bottle.
Yes the generated art debacle sucks, but that's at the bottom of the pile of problems.
I think the real problem with ai automation cutting out human labor is the extra leverage it'll give the already too-powerful corporations once they implement it and need less and less real labor as time goes on. Sounds like some blade runner dystopia stuff but also feels within reason.
___
why dont i end my pointless verbose rant into the void with something of actual value - this cool vid on Kojima's decade-old take on the potential of AI and how it's probably actually needed in order for us dumb monkeys to not inadvertently delete ourselves one day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIYBod0ge3Y
does anyone else not buy the "AI steals from artists" argument? It's basically just using other images as references and drawing something new, like a human would. The real problem is the threat AI poses to artists' careers. At least for now... the technology will probably automate just about every creative job given enough time.
edit: with all due respect to cyangmou, of course. He is (actually) a genius, and I often have the IQ of a monkey so I could be wrong
Oh excellent, the AI will get even better with hands this way :)
I would love to see that AI fully trained like that XD 
I hadn't realised I'd racked up enough for a Silver cup (again), I just wanted to get my comments in for the Pixelween submissions
I like them too, that's why I wanted to collect all three of them, which was very difficult. If you are aiming for the specific one, getting gold is the easiest, becasue you just need to comment like you have no life. Trying to get the bronze one deliberately, usually leads to getting nothing at all. I finally got it by accident when wasn't even trying. 
Those comments awards are nice and a good idea! I like the little cups! Who made them?
Is there any possibility that monthly top pixel art trophies could link to the corresponding news post instead of to the hall of fame? When browsing older art in the hall of fame, it would be useful to have those for context, and a link to the hall of fame isn't very useful.
Actually, Cristie (Adarias) was a mod and she used her mod's power to "ban" herself from PJ. We noticed that maybe a month after she did it. Why she did it, we don't know. Maybe she decided to move on... And we are sorry because of that. We can only hope that we will miss her, and we will miss her beautiful pixel art.
Aye, true. She could've also made a new account if she wanted, I guess she doesn't want to be here any more. Could ask her, since she's still active elsewhere xP
Yeah maybe. I don't think I've ever seen a 'disabled account' page like that before.
If she did get someone to disable her account like that - couldn't she also have gotten them to change her account name?
It says "Disabled account" for me, is that not what normally happens?
Edit: Typically people delete their submissions and stop using their account, I don't think you can just delete your PJ account, but I'm guessing she went through mods. (Sorry, just sort of assumed there was a delete account option, since most sites have one - forgot PJ's not exactly up to date xP)
what was happenning on Adarias account? I can't check the gallery.
https://pixeljoint.com/p/3171.htm
@gawrone, @CELS
Thanks, I will look into your recommendations.
@SDB: Didn't know about that novel, Sacred and Terrible Air. Cool! And I feel the same way with reading, pixelling, drawing or writing. It's not nearly as enjoyable for short bursts as taking the time to finish a chapter or have a proper session.
@Theoden: I don't think there's anyone like Tolkien, unfortunately. But I'll have to echo gawrone and recommend Ursula Le Guin. And then reading Tao Te Ching and/or her essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which gives a better understanding of her unique approach to storytelling, and the lessons to be drawn from her books. For me, I think Arthur Conan Doyle's White Company has some of the things I like about Tolkien. Vivid storytelling, beautiful writing and that old British tone that is so hard to replicate. No orcs, but a nice adventure nonetheless.
So, the best example of super enormous world where action takes place on different continents trough thousands of years, with looooots of characters, races, gods, epic battles, and everything soo vast and overwhelming would be Steven Erikson Malazan Book of the Fallen.
The difference is that the style is more modern, more gritty less poetic and definitely not high in tone and not optimistic and without easy dividing between good and evil. Will not make you feel good and peaceful.
And for the "poetic" language and that feel of word magic and everything else you like, I would say Ursula K. Le Guinn. This will not be as epic but will definitely make you love the pages and feel good.
@gawrone:
In my view Tolkien is simply unmatched but I could never got into any other fantasy series as big as Tolkien's works (Lord of The Rings, Silmarillion etc) so I am surely biased. I tried but none of them stuck with me.
I really like the way Tolkien tells a story. I love his world creation with interesting interactions between characters and events spanning a long period of time and ages (Silmarillion is a very good example for this). His way of writing is simply beautiful and manages to teleport me to the place he is describing. I can clearly see his admiration for good and beautiful things and he always manages to present them in his works. To me his words are like poem. I sometimes pick up LOTR or Hobbit and start reading a random chapter and that just makes me fell good and peaceful somehow.
These might sound very generic and broad but I have no other means of explaining it :)
@Theoden, I'm a cringe fantasy fan so I can talk about fantasy books for days. I could recommend you some, but I first would have to know what about Tolkien you enjoyed the most, becasue people like his books for different things. I was a Tolkien fan, but now I'm an admirer of his lifework (which is amazing and impossible to replicate), becasue I found what I mostly enjoy in fantasy (deep, multidimentional, rich and believable characterisation, and of course high quality prose), and Tolkien has the latter but not the first.
@SeDiceBisonte
Yes FNV is a great game. Best of "modern" Fallouts. Original F1&2 soudtrack by Mark Morgan gets heavy rotation in my playlist. I agree with everything you said, about FNV and about Bethesda. Morrowind is still one of my favorite games and I can ignore the terrible chosen one saving the world trope, becasue of the side quests, freedom and world design.
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Can they be removed from the weekly prior to that?