Amazing Pixel Art Collaborations

Pixel art always had that strange ability to invoke a mix of visual pleasure and nostalgia using VERY limited digital resources. Now imagine the combined creative efforts of 50 or so pixel artists producing one piece! These collaborative projects are so awesome, it surprises me how little exposure they get.
Let’s have a look at some of the pixel art collaborations I was lucky enough to be a part of and also some other amazing collaborations.

ISO-OLOGY COLLAB

by Pixeljoint

For the full forum post, go here.

The theme of the collab that produced the wonderful 186KBs of pixels you see above was simply, “underground”.
The collab ran from 11 September 2010 to 18 November 2011 ( That’s more than a year! ).
The success of this collab has to be largely attributed to the excellent curation and guidance of two of pixeljoint’s more senior members. Many other senior and more talented members pitched in to provide guidance to the newer participants.
I managed to squeeze in two tiles:

On the left you see a rock family enjoying the waterfall spilling over from the lake. What I did not realise then but see now, is that this really required some proper AA.

On the right I try to depict a scene from one of my favourite monster movies ‘Tremors’. Nobody got the reference! 🙁

This tile from pixel artist a3um has to be my favourite due to the LOL-factor and high skill of the artist. Coming in a close second for me would be the fish statues to the left of the main picture. I really like how the lighting and shading were done.

ISO dead people

by Pixeljoint

Full forum post here.

Here is another collab from pixeljoint which I regretfully did not participate in done following the ISO-OLOGY collab.

“The theme for this isometric collaboration is horror. Exteriors and Interiors rooms, halls, catacombs, labyrinths, sewers, tombs, sacrificial altars and anything that fits within the horror theme is OK. As for characters, vampires, mummies, zombies, ghosts, murderers, spiders, even aliens and OTT fantasy are OK as long as they are horrorific!”

Easy Street

by Tzigla 

View the board here.

From Tzigla’s about page :

“Tzigla is for collaborative drawings
Specifically, the type of drawing where several artists create tiles that connect to each other to finally result in a complete drawing. The fun part is that they only see a small margin of the surrounding tiles so theresults end up quite surreal”

Very early on in my pixel art adventure I came across Tzigla. What was amazing was that they had their own pixel art editor incorporated into the site!
I was very much a beginner, so I decided to participate in their ‘Easy street’ collab.
I did the robot thingy in the water on the top left and if you squint you can see some lemmings near the green genie near the bottom left doing what lemmings do and walking to their doom.

Some comments from the collab:

Mathias said:
This is the worst Sim City map ever! Who did this!?
Argyle said:
You guys rock, look at this board it’s visually confusing in the most excellent way! Surprisingly cohesive to look at 😮
IvanM said:
I love the disturbing perspective in the bottom left corner

Checker Collab C64

by Tzigla 

View the board here.

One of the more advanced boards on Tzigla making use of the C64 color palette.

Isometric Collaboration IV

by wayofthepixel/pixelation

View the forum post here.

A collaboration from another popular pixel art forum.

From their FAQ:

Pixeldam

by pixeldam

Pixeldam brought collaboration to an all new level by providing a whole web platform with features catered to pixel art collaborators. From the city map you see above, you may zoom in to smaller regions as seen below:

The city of Pixeldam is built up of isometric plots which may be claimed by pixel artists to place structures of their own creation. ( Note the “For sale” signs which indicate an unclaimed plot ). From this screen you may scroll around the city and explore the creations of the pixel artists that have already moved in!
I of course immediately identified what was missing from Pixeldam and plonked a mamak restaurant down in the northern part of the city.

View it in the city here

Ending notes

Activity on PixelDam and Tzigla has slowed down to near zero in recent years which is a shame. I still pay them a visit now and then in hopes of seeing at least some activity.

Pixeljoint is still going strong and you should checkout their latest ongoing collaboration project ISOcalypse Now!

Hope you enjoyed the pixel art I shared and hope you learnt something new from this short blog post!

okbye!