Hello everyone! How are you?
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been talking with some members of the Aseprite community about the idea of starting regular pixel art challenges.
I’ve had conversations with artists from different countries about how these challenges could work, sharing ideas and experiences, and I thought it would be great to open that discussion to the entire community.
I’m creating this post as a space where everyone can share their ideas, opinions, and experiences about art challenges, contests, competitions, and other creative activities for the Aseprite community.
Here are some of the questions we’ve been discussing:
- What comes to mind when you think of a pixel art challenge?
- How often do you think these challenges should be held?
- What categories would you like to see? Characters? Backgrounds? Tilesets? Animation? Something else?
- Should there be any limitations, such as time limits, canvas size, color palettes, or drawing tools?
- How should winners be selected? Should there even be winners? Would you prefer community voting, a jury, or both?
Over the next few weeks, we’ll review all of your feedback and use it to create a proposal that better fits the needs of this community. Then we’ll start experimenting with these kinds of activities together.
I’d also like to use this post as a quick poll:
Would you participate in a pixel art challenge?
- Yes
- No
- Maybe
- What’s a pixel art challenge?
The goal of this post is simply to create a space where we can talk about what these challenges could become and build them together as a community.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
James
4 Likes
I would think a pixel art challenge would be similar to a game jam. There would be a theme, time limit, and a max canvas size, and perhaps a specific palette or specific canvas size to spice it up sometimes.
For voting, I feel like a mix of community voting and developer/specifically chosen judges judging would be nice, maybe the community narrows it down and the judges pick the final winner.
I think a nice prize would be displaying the winner’s art piece on the Aseprite home page or website banner (#5374). Perhaps another prize could be a spot as a judge on the next competition.
I think it could be held every few months, or perhaps twice a year. It could also be setup so that there are smaller competitions that are more frequent and are only community-judged, and then there’s a big (community + judges) judged competition once a year.
I’m really excited to see how this develops, I think it will be great for Aseprite and the pixel art community!
2 Likes
Am pretty much a Newbie here so… I would let the veterans decide!
Definitely exciting to see creations from users packed in a challenge event! Once acquiring more skill, I would definitely participate! This sounds definitely super awesome! ^^
Maybe challenges can have a few difficulty tiers. One being more newbie friendly with less constraints, while some tiers can have more constraints (like palette / number of colour / size…), that can be quite fun ! ^^; Animation definitely feel like a must have to me too 
Something that I would also like to see as a newbie is variation of a same pixel art but in various size. For example see how someone would make the same version of a character or item in 16x16 vs 64x64. Definitely interesting ^^;
Anyhow, definitely looking forward! That’s awesome! 
1 Like
I’m really excited about this pixel art challenge idea!For me, a pixel art challenge is a great place to show off creativity and skill. Even though I’m not a great pixel artist, I’d still love to join and see what everyone creates！(≧▽≦)/
About frequency, I feel like once a year or twice a year would be ideal – it gives people enough time to make really polished pieces, and also lets the best work stand out!
For categories, I’d love to see short animations and background scenes. It would be awesome to have separate awards for each category, I think static art and animation should be judged separately since they require different skills. Maybe we could have a main theme, and then run contests in multiple categories at the same time. Maybe entries could be grouped by canvas size to keep things fair.(>3<)
Regarding limitations, I think they should be set based on the group and category. To make it more interesting, we could sometimes ban certain tools. And the time limit shouldn’t be too short – at least a month would be great, so everyone can refine their entries!
For selecting winners, I definitely think there should be winners – it encourages everyone to improve! For voting, a mix of community voting and a judge panel would be best, since that reduces arguments and helps pick truly excellent pieces. As for prizes, maybe display the winner’s art on the homepage, or give out special badges as honorary rewards – that would be really motivating!!(≧∀≦)
Anyway, I’m really happy to hear this is being planned! I can’t wait to see it happen. Looking forward to participating!<(￣ˇ￣)>
1 Like
When I think of a pixel art challenge this is what comes in my mind:
A monthly challenge held on discord where artists make their art using ONLY aseprite and sharing the .aseprite file via a form given on the discord server. The theme/category is changed every month and it could even be event based like summer theme if held right now, spooky if held in halloween, etc.
I have participated in other traditional art challenges (even hosted some with my friends) and i have noticed one thing that seems pretty unfair for the beginners; the fact that the most experienced artists are participating in the same contest. but i came up with a fix for that: Auditions. before the contest would start there would be auditions held where you are supposed to share some of your previous pixelart and according to that the artists would be divided in categories (beginner, veteran, experienced, etc.) and one winner from each category will be selected (somewhat like how football academy matches are held, under 13, under 15, etc.)
But even with this framework there are still some loopholes, such as what if a person fakes a bad drawing to get into the beginner category and dominate them? I have a fix for that as well:
- Firstly, the winner of each category gets points, the better your category, the more points you get. There can be a live leaderboard on the website which updates according to the points. this idea would (to some extent) promote experienced artists to compete in there category as being 1st in the beginner category wont earn them as much points as being 20th in the experienced one
- Secondly, if the judges find an art in the beginners category that looks pretty experienced, it would be discarded
Rules:
- There would be a one day time limit for all categories (or maybe less for more experienced ones) as after that time the form would go offline
- There would be a limit on the canvas size
- There would be a palette provided to each category (can be different for each category)
- The pixelart would be reverse searched to ensure if it wasn’t copyrighted
2 Likes