What would The Dark Knight look like if it was a NES game, and not a Batman movie?

Find out here ;)

Its a fake NES game intro, made by an animator called Macbee.
I found a few of the image, and I expect them to be very good reduxes, not pixel art, but still its fun to watch :)

Preview image

So, the first thing what comes in mind when you hear sprite comic?

Crappy stories made with ripped megaman, sonic and mario sprites?  Yes, thats what I said too.

But here is a different one!
Pixel artist Neorice, who has also been making sprites for battle for Wesnoth and is working on the game Frogratto is since the end of november 2008 writing a webcomic!

Three different stories of three different heroes in the same world. Beautiful detailed double pixel sprites, on non pixel art backgrounds. At the moment there are 124 unique pages, and it is really worth the time to read them all!

Have a look at this webcomic!

This is a follow-up to the news post below by Evilagram.

Japanese pixel artist Syosa joined PixelJoint 1.5 years ago and has developed a refreshing new style, beautiful animations and the cutest girls! A 23 year old living in Osaka, Japan and studies Neuroscience at Osaka University. When not creating pixelart and video games he analyzes cell morphology and performs experiments from morning to night. About 4 Years ago, Syosa became addicted to making computer games and found himself practicing pixel art.

Since a few weeks ago, I (Lollige) am trying to run a pixel art blog featuring news, tutorials, inspiring and interesting articles about my beliefs and asking for discussion! Come and have a visit at MrLollige.com!

Most interesting articles online so far: Pixel art software, coloring linearts and how to fix firefox. Coming soon: An interview with artist ThereIsNoCure and an article about realism in pixel art.

Comments on articles motivate me to continue writing, and I am always willing to hear opinions on subjects!

Stefan Bogdanovic, PJ's Mrmo Tarius is a computer graphics designer from Serbia (Belgrade). Mrmo Tarius creates some amazing and unique pixel art. He was kind enough to let me interview him for this revealing feature.

Join this ambitious collaboration project!

Open Pixel Platformer, a game collaboration project hosted by Hapiel on the PJ forum first began in May 2013. Due to lack of time and technical difficulties the project stalled for a while but is back stronger than ever with Damian and Noburo joining in as Project Managers.

In this article/showcase PJ member Retronator writes a bit about the pixeljoint's past.
Retronator mentions a part 2 is coming in the future too!

The OPP is once again back in action, now with a cool video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYv700yeLv4

The Open Pixel Project was born here on PJ in 2013. We create free game graphics using the DB32 palette. If you're interested in joining us, come say hi at the forums or our new discord chat

If you wish to use our sprites, or just have a look at them, from now on you can download everything on the brand new website:
OpenPixelProject.com

GraphicsGale, my favorite tool for pixel art animation has been around since 2004. As it was recently released as freeware, I was curious to find out who is behind this software. Tomoya Kikuchi, who has developed GraphicsGale all by himself, was so kind as to exchange some emails with me for this article.

Survey will close on Tuesday 28th of November!

Hi all, as you might have already read, Sedgemonkey is working on a brand new PJ build.

Besides fixing all of the bugs and drastically improving uptime, this also gives the opportunity to rethink our values and our features and prepare pixeljoint for the next decade.

What do you think should PJ look like? What kinds of art should be in the gallery, and what kind of functionality should it feature?

To collect your answers on both of these questions we've created a small survey . Please help us and fill it out!

It's time for the News Icon Competition!

Every PJ front page news post gets a small icon, for which we search the gallery for 50x50 images. More often than not we can't find something very relevant, and therefor we challenge you all to make some new ones!

You are welcome to make any icon you like.

In this competition you can win a spiffy trophy + points which are rare and will look great in your profile.
+500 Pts+300 Pts +150 Pts+100 Pts for hm.*

This competition will run until the 28th of January.

Find all the rules and details in the forums

Stray Pixels, your semi-whenever pixel news update!

Useful links:

Retronator made a guide about the best pixel artist channels on YouTube!
Watch it here on YouTube

Cyangmou made a little overview about the pros and cons of a couple 2D game projections, featuring his own stunning artwork
Browse through it on Twitter

Saint11's tutorial animations are both insightful and pretty, and regularily new ones are added!

Another year has passed, so let's have a look at what happened in 2017! We'll start with:

The monthly #1 pixel art from January to December

The News Icon Competition has finished.

13 Participants submitted a total of 40 icons!
We've already been able to use many of them for news posts like this one, and the others will definitely be used in the future.

Judging was done by your PJ moderators and a few PJ members: Adarias, doctorcello, eishiya, Mr_Hk_ and Theoden

See the results below.

Pixeljoint has had a twitter account for ages, but we've never really used much...until now!

To let everyone know we're in action, for the next 24h hours we'll be retweeting all pixel art shared on twitter with the hastag #pixeljoint ! Really anything you want to be shared, old and new works.

We're going to try a new kind of compo here at PJ. There will be participation awards for everyone involved so be sure to take part!

This teamwork compo works as following:
Everyone has a bit over two weeks to submit line art, or any image which uses only 2 colors (which matches the image requirements and theme). The day after the first submission deadline you will receive a message containing line art from another random participant, you will have 3 weeks to finish this other persons work into a colored pixel art.

After the competition is over, non-part taking PJ mods and selected judges will look at the end results and select a top 3. Both the submitter of the line art and the submitter of the final result will receive trophies, so you can win twice! Everyone who submits both a line art and a colored artwork will receive an award.

Image requirements:

The theme for the image is: An unlikely couple

Canvas Size - exactly 150x100 or 100x150
Colors - Max. 32 for finished work, exactly 2 colors for line art.
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

Eleven artists took part in the teamwork competition, for which the participants had to submit line art, and then had to finish someone elses line art to which they were randomly assigned!

This competition was judged by PJ members and moderators: Cyangmou, Jinn, Dawnbringer, slym, skeddles, skamocore, pyrometal, Mandrill and myself (Hapiel)

The winners:

First place goes to Jeremy (lines) and Arkan85 (colors)

Second place goes to Nevercreature (lines) and Jeremy (colors)

Third place goes to jackhummer (lines) and JerryPie (colors)

All of the other particicpants receive a participation trophy, check them out here!

Thank you everyone for taking part, and congratulations to the winners! I hope we can organise more interesting collaboration events in the future, feel free to suggest some!

Just a quick notice:

If you have any kind of issue, please contact a PJ moderator by PM. Do not use the report/contact feature, this is outdated and these messages will almost never be responded to.

You can find a list of active moderators on the About page, feel free to message anyone on that list except for Sedgemonkey. When in doubt, pick Gecimen.  

You can contact us for just about anything: Changing your PJ name, lost account access, issue with another member or a piece of art, questions, etc.

The current contact function is sadly being abused by spammers, and therefor we moderators can't keep up with all the messages.

We're looking forward to help you!

Do you have a perfect idea for a weekly challenge? Something that is well defined/restricted, but still open to creativity? We would love to use it!

We've made this forum thread where you can submit your idea, or comment with suggested improvements on others. There is no guarantee on if/when/how we might use it, to keep the upcoming challenges exciting and fair for everyone. But if "your" challenge takes place, you are of course welcome to take part too!

If you were to build your (childhood) dream house, what would it look like? We are taking a nostalgic trip back to the Isocity days, and challenge you to create the isometric building of your dreams!
Here is a tutorial about how isometric projection works, in case you need a reminder.

Canvas Size - Max. 200x200
Colours - Max. 20 colors.
Transparency -  Optional.
Animation - Optional.
Extra requirement - Must be in isometric projection!

We have opened an official discord server!

Discord is a chatting service, and we have opened the server to talk about pixel art, get quick feedback, or just general chat about games, hobbies, or anything else you wish to share with fellow PJ members! Right now we are a group of 20 people, and we wish to keep it relatively small, cozy and friendly.

The server is for PixelJoint members only.

Click this link to join! We're looking forward to see you inside :)

This year we met a visitor who comes to us every 6766 years. We will hardly be able to enjoy its short-lived brilliance again. In its honor, capture the scene of the celestial passer however you want; the condition is that the comet is the dominant part of the scene.
 

The palette for this challenge is SLSO8:

Canvas Size - 120x100 max, either horizontal or vertical.
Colors - max. 8 colors, only use colors from the SLSO8 palette
Animation - Optional.
Transparency - No.

Back in 2008, PJ member 7even suggested a legendary challenge idea:

To pixel a medival knight, using one of these 7 prompts and the 7 colors that belong to it.

7evens obsession with knights led him to create the succesful game Rogue Legacy, but with 90 entries to the weekly it was clear that more pixel artists are fascinated by these characters!

Which is why we're rerunning the challenge! So to recap:

Pick a number from 1 to 7, and create a 100x100 image of a knight using the 7 colors of the palette (no black & white, no mixing from other palettes). As always, mutliple entries are allowed.

Canvas Size - 100x100 exactly.
Colors - 7 colors, from one of the 7 palettes.
Animation - No.
Transparency - No.

Inspired by the recent Nintendo leaks which showed prototype character models for Luigi in games such as Super Mario 64, this week we challenge you to redesign a Luigi sprite!

What would Mario's favorite brother look like if you were in charge? We recommend he remains green and tall, but other than that you can draw him however you like!

Canvas Size - 64x64 max
Colors - max. 8 colors. Transparency is a color too!
Animation - Optional.
Transparency - Required, no background!

Use these simplified shapes of Senegal, Cambodia or Bolivia as a canvas for your pixel art this week! Choose any one of your liking, or as a bonus challenge try and enter 3 times!

Senegal

Cambodia

Bolivia

You are allowed to rotate by a multiple of 90 degrees or flip the canvas. All pixels need to be placed within the template area, the rest remains transparent.

For inspiration, you can have a look at hidden in Georgraphy I and II.

Canvas Size - The exact template size (may be rotated or flipped)
Colors - Max 17 (must include transparency)
Animation - No.
Transparency - Yes, required

PJ member SovanJedi did all the major pixel art in this pretty amazing music video!

Check out: The Living Tombstone - Love I Need

Using either only tall pixels 1x2 or only wide pixels 2x1, you are challenged to draw a scene which focusses on one of these 4 dinosaurs:
Triceratops - Tyrannosaurus - Brontosaurus - Stegorsaurus

A wide or tall pixel scene means that all pixels take up double the amount of space, aligning to either grid below. You have to pick one, you can't mix the grids. For an example, have a look at this recent widepixel image from Christoballs.
Templates:
or

Also the colors are very specific: Perfect black (#000000), perfect white (#FFFFFF) and any perfect grey of your choice, meaning that the red, green and blue component all have the same value (such as #A0A0A0 or (160, 160, 160))

Canvas size - 100x100 for the final image (so 100x50 widepx or 50x100 tallpx)
Colors - Exactly 3, black, white, and one gray of choice.
Transparency - No
Animation - Optional

This challenge was suggested by Stickman

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

Last time, the Tiny Sprites challenge canvas was a bit... tiny! So this time you'll get some more space.

Create a tiny animated character. Here is an example: 

Canvas Size - Max 17 x 17.
Colors - Max 17.
Transparency - Required.
Animation - Required.

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

Seeinng the succes of the Discord Pokemon collab, it's about time that we too do another pokemon related event!

There are a lot of specific rules this week, so read on carefully, and feel free to ask questions.

You are challenged to make 3 original creature designs, also called fakemons. While they can look like they fit in with the Pokemon world, the designs have to be 100% original! The 3 creatures must follow each other up, one could evolve into the next. For some examples, check out these sprites, especially in the top rows there are a lot of series of 3 in there.

For each individual creature you can work with a maximum of 4 colors: Black, white, and one of the color pairs from the pallete (one row). You could do all 3 creatures with the same palette, or optionally have 3 different palette creatures, but within the 56x56 square you must work with one of the 9 given palettes!

The template must be used, but you are welcome to modify the borders and border style as you see fit, but only using the colors that are already in use.

You can try and adhere to the Pokemon style, or go as crazy as you like, it's all up to you!

The template:

The list of palettes (every row is a seperate palette):

Canvas Size - Exactly 182x68 (56x56 per creature)
Colors - Max 8 (Max 4 per creature, from one row of the palette. No mixing of palettes)
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

For extra inspiration, here is a link to the original It's Evolving challenge

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

Draw a scene which involves water. For example: a calm lake, a gardener watering their plants or a mockup of an underwater level, anything goes as long as there is some water visible.

The twist: there are no "blue" values allowed. You can use any colors between [0,0,0] and [255,255,0], but make sure that each color has 0 for the blue component!  If using hex codes, colors will be #XXXX00.  (This also means no gray, white, or magenta, as all include some value in the blue channel).

Canvas Size - Max 128x96 (any orientation)
Colors - Max 16, all having 0 for the blue component.
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

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

Challenge winner Quiara wants you to create a Punch Out sprite.

One of the most iconic games of the 8-bit era was Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! The character animations in that game were fairly impressive for its day... but what would its cast look like in 2020?

Create a sprite of a fighter facing forward, following the restrictions below. As a bonus challenge you can try and match the style of the original fighters.

For some inspiration, here are a bunch of original character animations.

The sprites need to use the NES palette:

Canvas Size - Min: 30x80, max: 64x130 (when using minimum sizes, the sprite needs to touch all walls of the canvas)
Colors - Max 7, 6 from the palette + transparency.
Transparency - Yes, required.
Animation - Optional.

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

Pixelween has awoken from its slumber, and it promises rewards for those who endure its horrors!

This year, you will be crafting the storyboard of your own horror film over the course of four consecutive weekly challenges. Each challenge will be one more part of your film, and all the scenes together shall be your Pixelween entry. Call forth your darkest nightmares!

Rules
To be eligible for the Pixelween prizes, you must submit to at least 2 of the 4 weeklies. As long as at least two of your submissions are on time, you are  allowed (but not required) to submit more up until October 25, the final deadline. Having a full storyboard is not required to win, but the fates favor a finished film.
The winning storyboards will be chosen from all eligible entries by a jury of select PixelJoint members, perhaps with the help of some dark attendants who for now remain in the shadows...
The weeklies also function as normal weeklies, with the usual prizes. Your success in the weeklies does not influence your chances in Pixelween judging.

Every week there will be specifications about theme and color use, and for every scene the canvas size will be 130x80.

Prizes:

• 1st place will receive a printed Masters of Pixel art book volume of your choice, and a software key.
• 2nd place will receive a 30$ steam gift card, a Master of Pixel art ebook, and a software key.
• 3rd place will receive a 20$ steam gift card, a Master of Pixel art ebook, and a software key.
• 4th and 5th place will receive a Master of Pixel art ebook, and a software key.
• 6th - 9th (and possibly more) place will receive a software key, see info below.

There are 3 Aseprite, 3 Pyxel Edit, and 3 Pro Motion keys, which will be divided among the top 9 entrants. The highest placing winners get to choose first, and if a winner does not need a software license it will be moved on to the 10th place, and so on.

All weekly challenges until October 25 are part of Pixelween, a contest with prizes. Read the announcement for more information.

You will be drawing a scene of the start of your very own horror story, using one of the following prompts:

• Outside, all alone
• Teens having fun
• Everything is quiet
• An unfamiliar place

You are free to interpret these themes in any way you like. Stereotypical horror/halloween tropes and characters are allowed but not required. Please clarify in the description of your entry which prompt you've used.

Next week there will be 4 new prompts for part 2 of your story, so don't worry about planning ahead too much.

Technical requirements for this week:

Canvas Size - exactly 130 (horizontal) x 80 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

We're exicited to hear who will be joining, let us know in the comments with an "I'm in"!

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 25 are part of Pixelween, a contest with prizes. Many prizes have been added since it was first announced! Read the announcement for more information. This is week 2, but even if you missed out on week 1 you can still participate and win!

You will be drawing another scene of your movie, in which the plot develops. You are recommended (but not obliged) to somehow follow up the scene of the first week, as your Pixelween entries will be judged together as a whole.

Use one of the following prompts:

• Something is watching
• A crack appears
• A sudden sound
• Something appears in the distance

You are free to interpret these themes in any way you like. Stereotypical horror/halloween tropes and characters are allowed but not required. Please clarify in the description of your entry which prompt you've used.

This week you will be using the Japanese Woodblock palette (from polyducks):

Technical requirements:

Canvas Size - exactly 130 (horizontal) x 80 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - From the given palette only (max 12).
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 25 are part of Pixelween, a contest with prizes. Read the announcement for more information. This is week 3, but even if you missed out on week 1 and 2 you can still participate and win!

All current entries can be found in this forum post, please let us know if your entry is not displayed correctly!

You will be drawing another scene of your movie, in which a conflict takes place. You are recommended (but not obliged) to somehow follow up the scene of the first weeks, as your Pixelween entries will be judged together as a whole.

Use one of the following prompts:

• It strikes
• It opens up
• A scream
• It is right behind you

You are free to interpret these themes in any way you like. Stereotypical horror/halloween tropes and characters are allowed but not required. Please clarify in the description of your entry which prompt you've used.

Technical requirements this week: 5 colors!

Canvas Size - exactly 130 (horizontal) x 80 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 5.
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 Pixelween: The Plot 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 Pixelween: The Plot forum thread for more information.

All weekly challenges until October 25 are part of Pixelween, a contest with prizes. Read the announcement for more information. This is week 4, the last week.

All current entries can be found in this forum post, please let us know if your entry is not displayed correctly!

You will be drawing the last scene of your movie, in which your story ends. You are recommended (but not obliged) to somehow follow up the scene of the first weeks, as your Pixelween entries will be judged together as a whole.

Use one of the following prompts:

• Demise
• Possession
• Barely survive
• Happily ever after

You are free to interpret these themes in any way you like. Stereotypical horror/halloween tropes and characters are allowed but not required. Please clarify in the description of your entry which prompt you've used.

Technical requirements this week: 4 colors, 3 from the palette below and 1 free choice!

Canvas Size - exactly 130 (horizontal) x 80 (vertical) pixels.
Colors - Max 4 (3 from palette and 1 free choice)
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

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: Pixelween: The End.

Draw a character which performs an action, and animate it in just 2 frames. This could be any kind of action, like walking, cooking, washing, punching, as long as you can display it with just 2 frames.

Canvas Size - Max: 100x100
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - Optional
Animation - Yes, 2 frames.

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

Over the past 4 weeks you guys have absolutely blown us away by the amazing number of Pixelween entries and their al-round high quality! 55 entries, 84 people who participated to some extend and 226 images in total. That is insane, in the best possible way! Thank you!

How did you like the event? Would you join in if we did this next year? What would you like different? Let us know in the comments of this post.

Judging 55 entries is nearly impossible. Luckily we have an amazing team who pulled it off:

Pixelblink, the organiser of Pixelween 2005 - 2007
Prowler, the creator of the Masters of Pixel Art books
NeoBerserker, the moderator at PixelDalies
Ali Aydin, a TV director / writer (it was a storyboard compo, after all!)

PJ members: Cure, Cyangmou, DawnBringer, Mrmo_Tarius

And your moderators: Gecimen, Irena, Christoballs

With all that being said, and with real prizes to be given away, I'm sure you're excited who the winners are. So read on!

Pick a country and depict something which you associate with that country. That might be a person, a dish, a location, or anything else.

Your palette is the exact colors that you find in the flag of the country in this wikipedia list. No AA colors or inbetween colors, only the main colors of the flag. Colors used in the emblem icons on flags are also allowed to be used, however should there be many colors in a flag then the maximum amount of colors you can use is 8. No extra colors, so for many countries this will become a 2 or 3 color piece.
If you click on the flag name in the list you'll most often find hex color codes in the wiki article about the flag.

The size of your canvas will depend on the flag you pick, it needs to match the same width/heigth aspect ratio as the flag. You can find a list of aspect ratios here. So for example if your flag has an aspect ratio of 2:3 and you make the height 50px, the width becomes 75px. If you don't know how to calulate this: Multiply your height by the number in brackets () on the wiki page. If you choose a flag with an irregular shape your canvas needs to match that shape, and the rest of the canvas is transparent. Maximum height is 80px.

This challenge idea comes from keeling00

Canvas Size - Height: max 80px. Width depends on the height and the flag you choose.
Colors - The main colors of the flag you choose only, as given by the wiki page. Max 8, should there be more colors.
Transparency - Only if the country you choose is Nepal. Otherwise no.
Animation - No.

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

Challenge winner Eggy is proud to present you a challenge themed around her favorite thing: wizards!

Draw a scene involving one or more wizards of any kind. For this you will pick 2 palettes from the list below, one is exclusively for the wizard(s) and one only for the background. So both the background and the foreground will have exactly 4 unique colors.

Bonus challenge: Depict Gargamel (Eggy's favorite)

Canvas Size - Max 120x80 or 80x120
Colors - Exactly 8, pick 2 palettes, separate foreground and background as explained above.
Transparency - No.
Animation - No.

1. Quiara
2. Hapiel
3. Jinn

And Novembers's most favourited award goes to:
andylittle

The L stands for Letter 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 L stands for Letter forum thread for more information.

It's time for tiny towers! On a very narrow canvas, you are challenged to make some kind of tower structure. Existing, or based on fantasy, however you like.

Canvas Size - Width: exactly 16px. Height: Minimum 64px, taller is allowed too.
Colors - Max 16
Transparency - Optional
Animation - Optional

Happy new year!

To celebrate the new year, we'll host boardgame sessions over at the PJ Discord. Come meet your fellow PJers and join us for a quick game of connect-4, chess, uno, or one of the many other games in our library!

Games will only be online until January 3rd, from on January 4th it will be all about pixel art again.

See you there!

Don't forget to comment on the pieces you like!

Not only does a comment have the potential to make the artist's day, if you post a lot you'll win one of the fancy new trophies

1. Theoden
2. Hapiel
3. disemq

And December's most favourited award goes to:
andylittle

I've built a tool that allows you to browse the Pixel Joint gallery by searching for colors. It's online and free, go play with it!

Here is also a video demonstration of how you might use it.

I hope you like it!

Special thanks to all the many PJers who helped test this during the creation.

This weeks theme is sprite sprites!

You will be creating 2 sprites of a sprite, pixie, fay or fairy. The two sprites need to be the same character, drawn in two different sizes. One needs to fit on a 64x64 canvas, the other on a 16x16 canvas.

Both sprites will be submitted on one larger canvas, max 100x100. You don't need that much room, but this way you keep some space between the sprites if that helps to present them better.

For an example have a look at this image from Damian, obviously these are 3 sprites (and not pixies) but you only need 2.

Bonus challenge: Also add a 32x32 version of your sprite! (so 3 in total)

Good luck with your pixie pixels!

Canvas size - Max 100x100.
Colours - Max 20. Use the same palette for both sprites.
Animation - No.
Transparency - Yes, required.

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

Don't forget to comment on the pieces you like!

Not only does a comment have the potential to make the artist's day, if you post a lot you'll win one of the fancy new trophies

1. Theoden
2. StevenM
3. Hapiel

And January's most favourited award goes to:
Fool

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