One of Mario's most iconic features is his mid-air pose.

You're challenged to make your own mid-air sprite. It can be for any character, animal, machine or whatnot, original or existing. Animation is allowed, but it should then be a mid air loop, not a whole jumping sequence (no landing and no take off).

Have fun finding interesting mid air moves!

Canvas: Max 96x96
Colours: Max 20
Transparency: Required
Animation: Optional

The topic of this week is Peace Propaganda Poster.

You can make it very tiny or very large but it needs to be vertical in 2:3 ratio (example resolutions: 32x48, 64x96, 100x150, 200x300). Using slogan words or entire sentences is desirable on poster design, but not mandatory. If you have an idea for conveying your message without using any words, it is probably great so go for it.

Please try to remain serious and respectful. We will try to sort out any entries which might be offensive, mocking or inappropriate in any way.

Canvas: Any resolution in 2:3 ratio (vertical)
Colours: Max 8
Transparency: No
Animation: No

This week, due to al-Fitr holidays, we want you to draw a scene of a feast using the 19 colors from  's Festive19 palette. You can draw any sort of feast and may or may not include people in the scene.

Canvas: Max 240x135 px (horizontal or vertical)

Colors: Max 19 only colors from this palette by Paperdomo101

Transparency: No

Animation: No

The MOAI pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the MOAI forum thread for more information.

This week we want you to create living garbage! How you achieve this is up to you, as long as it is obvious the garbage is sentient/living. This could be as simple as trash with eyes, or a whole creature made out of rubbish.

Canvas: Max 100 x 100

Colors: Max 16 (excluding transparency) 

Transparency: Optional

Animation: Optional

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

The Delicious Baking pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Delicious Baking forum thread for more information.

Since we just got through Easter, this week we want you to draw a scene or sprite portraying a Moai (the easter island statue).

Canvas: Max 150 x 150

Colors: Max 10

Transparency: Optional

Animation: Optional

What pastries/bread/cookies/cakes are being made or sold in your local area? Pick something you'd enjoy to eat, and create a delicious baked goods pixel sprite!

Canvas size: Max 100x100
Colours: Max 16 (including transparency)
Transparency: Required
Animation: Optional

Bonus challenge: Animate the baking process.

This week we will design our pixel tarot cards. First they were used for gaming, and later got esoteric and other aplicatons, but we will be focusing on the art here.

Choose a "Major Arcana" card from the list:

0    The Fool
I    The Magician
II    The High Priestess
III    The Empress
IV     The Emperor
V    The Hierophant
VI    The Lovers
VII    The Chariot
VIII    Justice
IX    The Hermit
X     Wheel of Fortune
XI     Strength
XII    The Hanged Man
XIII    Death
XIV    Temperance
XV    The Devil
XVI    The Tower
XVII    The Star
XVIII    The Moon
XIX    The Sun
XX    Judgement
XXI    The World

Use the provided palette:

And the template with three sections:

Add the number in the top section (The Fool usually has this space empty), the artwork in the middle, and the name of the card in the bottom. You are free to design your font and numeration however you like..

Canvas size: Exactly 100x186 (use the template).
Colours: Max 8 (7 from the palette +1 of transparency only on the corners).
Transparency: Required. (There are round corners cutted from the template, which need to stay, but you are not allowed to add transparency on the card surface).
Animation: No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

Another year has passed since the last April Fool's Challenge: it was not the best year ever, and the present one is already competing to become even less best. So we could use some fun, right?

This week, we want you to draw a scene that involves one or more ripples on a water surface. You can draw anything from water dripping peacefully on a pond to a meteor hitting the ocean. You can only use 16 colors from Dawnbringer's DB16 palette.

Optional Bonus Challenge: Also show the source of the ripple at the moment it's entering the water (a stone, a drop of water, a leaf, a meteor etc.)

Canvas: Max 160x90 horizontal or vertical
Colors: Max 16 only use colors from DB16 palette.

Transparency: No.
Animation: Optional

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

The Fungus Amongus pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Fungus Amongus forum thread for more information.

This week's challenge comes from challenge winner Sarahboev.
We're doing a call back to the 2000s with Dolls! We want you to make your own "base" (a nude humanoid) and design at least two looks (clothing, hair, accessories etc.) on said base. You can design more than two looks if you want, go crazy!

Some sources of reference on Dolls:
-Wayuki
-KawaiiHannah
-PinkLand

Canvas: Max 135x135 for the base. The canvas size of the doll and looks combined is unlimited.
Colors: Max 32
Transparency: Required
Animation: Optional

Please note that as per PJ submission rule 7 that if your piece contains nsfw nudity there should be a warning in the preview image.

This week we want you to depict a scene where fungi have conquered the earth! For example you could make a cityscape overun by mushrooms, a cordiceps-infested zoo, sapient fungi playing chess etc. Go wild!

Canvas: Max 300 x 300
Colors: Max 16
Transparency: No
Animation: Optional

The Non-residential pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Non-residential forum thread for more information.

This week we want you to take any (good-aligned) character and turn them into a villain.
It can be a sprite, a scene or even a game mockup, that's up to you!

Canvas: Max 150 x 150
Colors: Max 8
Transparency: Optional
Animation: Optional

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

It's time to vote for the latest pixel art challenge: Non-residential.

VOTE NOW!

The Beaufort scale pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Beaufort scale forum thread for more information.

A collab has been going on at the PJ discord, we've been making terraced houses on a sloped street. See the current entries here at wepixel.art.

But for any good pixel town we need more than just houses. You are challenged to make a non-residential building, such a shop, office, hospital, fire department, museum, you name it!

For this challenge we'll be using a wider template then normal, to have these buildings stand out a bit. They will still have to use the same scale and palette as the other buildings.

Scale and palette:

For the building, use this template. The height is only the max height, you are allowed to make a building that is less high (but not less wide).

You notice there already is a street included in the template. You are free to modify the street as you wish, but please make sure that it can still connect nicely to the street of an adjacent house.

A submission for this challenge will be included on the collab page at wepixel.art as well, unless you specifically request us not to (leave a note in the description or DM me).

Canvas: Width: exactly 128px. Height: Max 152px, min 56px (see the template)
Colors: Max 18 + transparency, only from the palette above.
Transparency: Required, under the road and optionally above the building (don't draw the sky)
Animation: Optional

Bonus challenge: Hide cats on or in the building.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This week we want you to draw a character and make 3 different animations of it, and then present them in a row, next to eachother. The required animations need to portray 3 different wind forces, using only moves of the character garments, hair, facial expressions, eventually objects held by the charatcer. No backround or background items are allowed (like rain, snow, falling leaves, flags, bending trees, etc.). The 3 stages are as follows:

 

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This challenge comes from previous challenge winner specialmin64

This week we want you to pixel your own RTS faction. Draw at least one building and at least one unit in the style of classic real time strategy games (Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command & Conquer, etc.) Choose any of popular themes (history, s-f, fantasy etc.) or invent your own. It doesn't have to be war related. Use top-down or isometric perspective.

Canvas: Max 256 x 128 (horizontal)
Colors: Max 32
Transparency: Optional
Animation: Optional

Bonus challenge: Make your assets look like those old school prerendered 3d assets, for example like in starcraft.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This week, we want you to pixel electric! Draw a sprite or a scene that involves visible electric current. It may be something usual like a cable or plug; or something completely unreal such as electric coming out of hands.

Canvas: Max 120 x 160 (horizontal or vertical)
Colors: Max 16
Transparency: Optional
Animation: Optional

The 3 Steps to become animals pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the 3 Steps to become animals forum thread for more information.

This week we want to to paint a cover for your favourite book. It can depict a scene from the book or just a neat design.

Canvas: Max 175 x 230
Colors: Max 30
Transparency: No
Animation: No

This challenge comes from 1-2-3 Dance! winner Yuanhai. Remember, if you win a challenge you get to pick a future challenge if you message a moderator, but even if you're not a winner and just have a cool idea we'll gladly take it in consideration!

Divide your canvas horizontally into four equal parts.
Draw a fruit or vegetable on the first section.
Draw an animal in the last section.
In the second and third section you draw the transition process between fruit and animal.
That is, turn your fruit or vegetables into animals in 3 steps!

Canvas: Max 100 x 100 per section. That means final art max 400 x 100.
Colors: Max 8
Transparency: Optional
Animation: No

Create a wild west scene scene or character using double wide pixels.

This challenge comes from PJ member sjd_sjd_

Canvas: Max 320 (width) x 200 (height). This is the export size, so 160 wide pixels max.
Colors: Max 16, selected from this Amstrad CPC palette (so don't use all colors)

Transparency: Optional
Animation: Optional
 

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

Happy new year pixel-heads! Have you missed a challenge from the past year? Did you start but couldn't find the time to finish? This week, we want you to pick any weekly challenge from 2021 and make an entry (check the ALL CHALLENGES column on the right. The first challenge of 2021 was Unexpected Visitor).
Please make sure you write in the description which challenge you chose and make sure you follow it's rules and limitations. Have fun!

Canvas Size - see the corresponding challenge
Colours - see the corresponding challenge
Transparency - see the corresponding challenge
Animation - see the corresponding challenge

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This week we want you make a dancing animation with exactly 3 frames and exactly 3 colors. You can draw a single person or multiple, or even creatures or robots. It can be an existing dance or something cool or stupid you come up with

Colors: Max 3 + trans (4 total), only from the palette below

Canvas: Max 120x120 px max

Transparency: Required

Animation: Required, exactly 3 frames.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

The Wummer & Sinter pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Wummer & Sinter forum thread for more information.

This week we want you to pick an old sprite and reinterpret it by their pixel placement. Taking liberty to extrapolate the original intention in favor of weirdness. Make sure to link the original sprite in the submission description.

See some examples that Jinn found here.

Colors: Max 20

Canvas: Max 150x150 px

Transparency: Required

Animation: No

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

The Sock Puppet pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the Sock Puppet forum thread for more information.

It's that strange time of year where the seasons change, but not equally in all places. Those on the southern hemisphere are approaching summer, whilst the northeners can already feel the cold of winter arriving.

Can you create a scene which has some elements of winter, and some of summer? For example, you could draw sunbathing people in the snow, or an ice skating ice cream vendor..

To keep it simple (since you are all working on secret santa too), you can only use 5 colors and a small canvas.

Colors: Max 5 (6 when using transparency)
Canvas: Max 100x100 px
Transparency: Optional
Animation: No

Let's make a sock puppet 64x64 icon. It may look like a famous character or just have a simple, generic sock puppet appearance. If you want, you can make it resemble yourself and use it as your Pixel Joint avatar.

Colors: max 32

Canvas: exactly 64x64

Transparency: none

Animation: none

This week we want you to draw a monochromatic 2-frame animated scene that involves rain; using the Swamp 8-color palette below. You can make any sort of rain as long as the viewer will understand it's raining.

Colors: max 8, use the colors below

Canvas: Max 160x120 horizontal or vertical.
Transparency: no
Animation: required, exactly 2 frames.

This week we want you to depict a scene/sprite with at least one part/object pillow shaded. You read it right! We want you to find a good way to use this (lack of) technique.

Bonus Challenge: Make the whole scene/sprite pillow shaded (good luck on that)

Colors: 16max

Canvas: 160x120px max.

Transparency: optional

Animation: optional

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This week you have to use some kind of dithering! Do you like the mathematically perfect geometric type, do you create new stylish textures, or do you manage to mix 2 or more colors in a completely original way? You are encouraged to experiment, go wild!

The theme is dunes, some kind of dune or desert or drought landscape, optionally with characters in them. Other than that, there are few limitations, so you can apply dithering in the way you think suits best.

Colors: max 32
Canvas: Any size, but the ratio must be 1:2 or 2:1. So width is height * 2 or height / 2, for example if your height is 50px the width can be either 25px or 100px.
Transparency: no
Animation: optional

Please post in the comments your favorite dithered pieces from the gallery to serve as inspiration!

We all loved the horror month, but is there something completely different that we also love? Something that could help us move on? What is an oposite of inanimated scary movie posters? Of course it's ANIMATED SPRITES OF CUTE ANIMALS!

To make things more interesting this week's challenge will be a variant of a random palette challenge. The colours are not random per se, but their choice criteria has little to do with actual colours - those are the colours with animals in their names.


The list in alphabethical order:

#54626F black coral
#C19A6B camel/lion
#FFFF99 canary
#c41e3a cardinal red
#81613c coyote brown
#A7F432 lizard green
#979AAA manatee
#74C365 mantis
#FDDDE6 piggy pink
#00CCCC robin egg
#FA8072 salmon
#59260b seal brown
#DBD7D2 timberwolf
#8a9a5b turtle green


Animals_14 palette:




Canvas Size: Max 80x80
Colours: Max 15 (14 from the palette + transparency)
Transparency: Required.
Animation: Required.
Cuteness: Required. (You can choose a predator but it has to look cute not scary).

Bonus challenge: - draw one of the animals from the colour name list.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

This week, we want you to pixel and animate a piece where the main focus is an eye. It may or may not be a human eye - also it may or may not be attached to its owner's face. The animation can be anything, such as blinking or changing directions.

Canvas Size: Max 100x100 px.

Colours: Max 10 colors.

Transparency: Optional.

Pixelween is over! But whilst we are waiting for the results to come in, we have a bonus challenge for you. You can also join this challenge if you did not take part in pixelween!

This weeks movie is a crossover. Take one of the themes of another Pixelween entry and combine it with yours, or if you haven't participated yet pick 2 Pixelween franchises to inspire your new movie.

You can choose whether you want to include text on your poster or not, but focus on the image either way.

Technical requirements for this week:

Canvas Size - exactly 80 (horizontal) x 120 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 4, from this palette (so don't use all colors!):

This is the Sheltzy32 palette which we've been using for all of Pixelween2021
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

All weekly challenges until October 24th are part of Pixelween 2021, a contest with prizes.

This weeks sequel is about the bride of [...]. We can't wait to see how you'll creatively apply this to your themes!

You can choose whether you want to include text on your poster or not, but focus on the image either way.

Technical requirements for this week:

Canvas Size - exactly 80 (horizontal) x 120 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 32, use this palette:

This is the Sheltzy32 palette which we've been using for all of Pixelween2021
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

EDIT: This post finally contains the full list of participants! Thanks for a record-breaking week!

The Beginning pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the The Beginning forum thread for more information.

All weekly challenges until October 24th are part of Pixelween 2021, a contest with prizes.

You will be drawing a poster for a sequel for your movie franchise, and this sequel is the Space Edition! You could title it "[...] In Space" or something similar and the story obviously takes place somewhere not on earth!

It should be a continuation of your previous movies, but if you did not yet submit an entry for previous Pixelween rounds you're free to pick any subject to put in space.

You can choose whether you want to include text on your poster or not, but focus on the image either way.

Technical requirements for this week:

Canvas Size - exactly 80 (horizontal) x 120 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 16, use this palette:

Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

All weekly challenges until October 24th are part of Pixelween 2021, a contest with prizes.

You will be drawing a poster for a sequel to your first movie, and this sequel is titled: "The Attack of [...]", with the thing attacking being the subject of your previous poster.

For example, if your first movie was called "Blood", your sequel should be called "The Attack of the Blood". With some themes this will be easier than with others, so modify your theme if needed and we trust on your creativity to find a fitting solution. If you did not yet submit an entry for Pixelween round 1 you're free to pick any subject as attackers.

You can choose whether you want to include text on your poster or not, but focus on the image either way.

Technical requirements for this week:

Canvas Size - exactly 80 (horizontal) x 120 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 8, use this palette:

Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

The challenge thread will have all the challenge updates. The thread is also a great place to post your WIPs.

The CGAmbl3rs pixel art challenge is complete and we have three new champions. This week's challenge awards go to the following pieces:

Thanks so much to all who took the time to vote and participate in the challenge! Check out the CGAmbl3rs forum thread for more information.