“Pixels are a medium not a style of art”, this quote was given by Castpixel in an interview published on this site in the 2021 article: Pushing Pixels to the Extreme . If you aren’t convinced by the idea, take a look at the Pixel Art Jam 2024 Gallery ROM, which consists of 343 pieces, all unique and bursting with creativity and a variety of styles.
The Jam grew threefold from 2023, as a result of being a featured jam on itch.io, the promotional help received from Brandon James Greer, collaborated with lospec, and the wide spread word of mouth of returning participants from last year.
This year, we decided to introduce colour, and chose four colour palettes to serve as the theme. This was one reason to collaborate with lospec, as it hosts an incredible selection of palettes to select from. New palettes were also created by Ben Jelter (thanks Ben), and added. Participants simply chose the palette that inspired them. It was our hope the colours themselves would serve as the inspiration, however, we used the titles of the palettes as reference and these lent an added dimension.
The jam got a noteworthy mention on the itch.io blog in recognition of our unique way of using the jam platform on itch. The sense of community, celebrating pixels, and using GB studio to make it happen was very satisfying. Most impressive of all, though, was the quality of the submissions themselves. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the diversity and creative use of the colours was inspiring.
It has taken over 6 months to process the images and get the GB Studio created ROM together. Emi used some wizardry, which hopefully he will describe in an upcoming article, and created a truly awesome framework for the gallery. Like last year, there is an artist index, also a palette index and a slide-show. View it here.
Now we have to start thinking about the next one!
English Teacher, GB collector, Artist, Home-brew Games Maker, GB Studio Central Contributor, Proud Dad.
