Pixel Art Workshops on the forums

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Has anyone here have memories of these? A small subsection on a forum where people would make "workshops": in other words, set up a topic with a friend or two to take requests of sprite edits from other users

I remember a Pokémon forum I used to roam, and I liked browsing these "workshops" to see what they had to offer, things like:

- Recolors (giving Pokemon A Pokemon B's colours)
- Fusions (always been a popular one with Pokéfans, I see)
- Revamping/devamping sprites to make them look from an older/modern game
- Custom pokeball & egg sprites
- Trophies
- "Negative" / "Yang" Pokémon
- Siameses
- Custom Chao & Poring sprites (I really liked these!)
- Custom trainer cards
- "Angel" & "Devil" Pokemon (aka recoloring them white/black/red and giving them wings/horns/halos...)
- Blinkies, GIFs, signatures... all the good stuff...

Has anyone had an experience similar to this on the old net? Is there something closer nowadays? This was my first dip into pixel art, and I guess it has happened to many other people, too.

[BlazingCobaltX]

I don't think I've seen pixel shops specifically, but on the first forum I dwelled on there were several Pokémon sprite showcase threads. During this time I also made sprites myself (first fusions and later devamps). It was really fun to look at other people's creative choices in making sprites and fusion designs.

That's one thing I really miss about Pokémon, playing with the 3D models basically requires you to learn multiple programmes rather than just MS Paint.

[candycanearter07]

I've never heard of that! That sounds like a really fun way to promote engagement though, maybe we should try and set one up here! I'd personally be up to trying it out, even as a one off experiment.

[GarbCat]

omg no I've never heard of this? This sounds so cool. I've never been on any Pokemon forums in particular so maybe that sort of concept never really left those spheres (though I did spend a lot of my childhood on a Mega Man forum, where the pixel art scene is similarly strong <3) I'm all for reviving the concept of a pixel art workshop, I'm currently in the process of de-rusting after 3-4 years not touching any pixel programs and I think a workshop would be a fun way to practice 

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Glad to see people like the idea, even if not everybody experienced this!    I've seen a few uhhh I don't know how to call them, pixel art games on Neocities? Where people can contribute with their own pixel art to a theme (a town where each one makes a building, making their own cats out of a base, etc), which I'd consider a cousin "species" to this community activity. 

And I'm here again to bring a few treasures from the era!  Most of the forum I used to roam is archived in a very bad state, with most images gone or replaced with Tinypic or Imageshack ads, but I managed to find a few still intact sprites. These are a few I personally "requested" back in the year 2009. You can tell who were my favourite Pokemon back at the time...



They have that little white banner because it seems that whichever image hosting website were these originally from decided to add a watermark over the original art instead of replacing it with a "All your images safe and sound with Picshack". I really like the detail of adding the blush onto Mawile's fake jaws LOL