Just submitted, dying to see what everyone else is doing, looking forward to seeing tomorrow! I don’t want to post my image here yet, to keep the spirit of the jam, but I do wanted to chat about process.

I know the field was open to any art format, but I ended up wanting to do an in-game screen. I grew up with Game Boy games, so stepping into the occasional bit of GB art is sort of like cosplaying the devs of my era. I can kinda imagine some smoke filled dungeon, Nirvana blasting, CRT glow, and slaving over DPaint all day. Probably hell, but sorta romantic.

I know I wanted a boss encounter style screen, and I wanted a mix of a big boss element, and structural level elements. I thought I wanted a large main character too, but it turned out feeling really nice to have a tiny little guy. Luckily the balance theme clicked into place with the initial concept, so I could sort of ignore it while I was working. Or not focus on it, I guess. Probably a little obvious, but it’s visually pleasing, plus is feels like an intuitive game mechanic? Really curious if this style would work on a real DMG at all. Feels like it would be too busy? Makes for a fun image though :)

One odd thing: when you’re building for a game, setting up tiles, especially in 1-bit where it feels like you need lots of blank space for legibility, you end up recycling so many tiles be default that when I went to check, I was way under the count. I went back and beefed up the tile count, but I hit the finish line before I could use them all. Kinda wasted some there 😅

How did you come up with your art?

English is not my first language, but lets go. I finished the one from last year with 96 tiles I think, I was so afraid of the limit I kept repeating details. I never did something bigger than 64x64 too so I didnt know what to do with the space, so there was that.

For this one, well, I started trying to do someone balancing in a rope, thinking about the guy that stayed for hours between two high rises. Them I realized anatomy is even harder on 1bit after failing to do legs for 3 hours. I them heard my friends and tried to do a cat balancing on a wall. Cats are anatomy too, go figure...

I Them spent most of today making the balance from the egyptian myth, looking here I realize I was not the only one with that idea and that somehow Im both lacking details and at 140 tiles. I then decided to try and see if I could make the coin balanced on its edge from legacy of kain. Perspective and anatomy, and I cant find a single reference of the game where raziel is both looking sideways and not crouching to make him in the coin like your profile picture. I honestly dont know if I keep trying to improve the balance, even tough the perspective is messed up but I cant shade due to 1bit without destroying stuff, or if I full send into the coin and hope I do good enough to make it clear it is about balance.

It's really cool hearing how every gathered their inspiration! This is my first jam, and also kinda my first real experience with pixel art, but I've had a lot of fun! For the theme I originally considered doing a bus perched on a cliff's edge or Atlas holding a plate with a teetering stack of retro objects. Eventually I saw a tightrope walker above a city skyline and decided that was the way to go! In the end I tried making it look like a cutscene in a theoretical Lupin III GB game. I'm not used to working small and don't really have a workflow for it, which is funny cos it sounds like a lot of people were apprehensive about reaching the unique pixel limit, but I accidentally blew past it and spent hours trying to find areas that I could turn into pixel patterns to try and claw it back lol

I didn't spend a huge amount of time on the idea because I hadn't don't 1-bit before so I focused on that. But my thought of Balance was the karate kid training right away haha, but  that is so overdone that I used a yoga pose instead but I liked the idea of a sunset still so I kept that

It's really neat seeing how everyone interpreted the theme differently, and the results are in so many different styles! I've put my inspiration on my submission page, but I'll rephrase it here. The idea of "balance" reminded me of balancing lighting, so I went for a portrait with very dramatic differences between light and dark. The end result is a bit simple overall, but I like how it turned out.

Well, this is my third year participating in the jam, and I consider it a nice tradition. I've been participating in this event ever since I started drawing pixel art, and I consider it a personal challenge to learn and brainstorm ideas.

This year was a very difficult challenge, since I usually use a lot of colors in my work, and having to work with 1-bit was very challenging.

Regarding the theme, the first thing that came to mind was an octopus doing acrobatics on top of a house. After a few pencil sketches, the idea of a takoyaki restaurant came to mind.

Out of curiosity, I showed my work to a friend, and he told me it looked like a background from a Beat 'em Up game.

Sorry if it's not very clear; I don't speak English, so I used the translator.

My mind somehow wandered to the concept of a "balanced" breakfast. I thought it would've been cool to draw a mockup of a game where you build a "balanced" breakfast, but I ultimately went with an ad for a space-themed cereal called "Orbital O's" with the tagline "part of a balanced breakfast". 

I also thought about the astrology sign Libra whose zodiac sign is the Scales! Ultimately I put the libra constellation in my final work as a little easter egg :)

I went for an Escher-inspired piece for mine!

“Balance” made me think more of visual balance and how repeating tile patterns fit together :D

it started out as a hummingbird but I couldn’t get it to fit and soon pivoted - I’m glad I did because I managed to turn it into The Tortoise & the Hare

it’s a great balance of slow & steady thinking vs OHNO-THE-DEADLINE!!

I went for an abstract piece, using "balance" but also "disintegration" as my inspirations. I wanted part of it to be clean and use clear lines and gradients, and part of it to be messy, as though breaking the typical spritework standard. It's also my first project submission, so there's a chance it's just haphazard lol.

First time I've really done any dithering or 1-bit so I'm happy with how it turned out.

Was thinking of something in line with the fates and an overseer

Finished it at line 1am Sunday and almost forgot to submit it 🤣

I enjoy tarot a lot, and the idea of a tiny pixel tarot card sounded really appealing to me! So I picked Temperance to match the theme of Balance (Temperance shows balance through the imagery of the cups - the water isn't flowing just from one cup to the other, but equally between them. It's symbolism for equivalent exchange, that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction) and tried a few thumbnails to see what would look effective at that scale. The best thumbnail when scaled down, was focused primarily on the cups.

When it came to the actual pixel art itself, I tried to save as many tile slots as possible by reusing tiles where possible. Once I'd finished my focal point and border though, I'd only used about 90 of the tile slots, so I then focused on a background, and then added some additional details all around (some unique tiles for shading on the cups, making sure there's a legible border between the background and the cups, the Tarot suits in the corners of the borders). In the end I was still pretty far under the tile limit (I may have been a little over the top with saving them...) but I'm really happy with the result visually. It feels authentic for GB styled art which was ultimately my goal! 

Cool hearing everyone's ideas. I landed on a tightrope circus motif; so literal balance. I ended up making a little music video rap to go along with it after I was done with the art and spent probably 10 times on the song and editing than I did on the actual piece.