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[Super-Dot]

It turns out that you don't actually have to come up with sprites! You can just get a computer to come up with them for you.

Linky

This page generates a 96*64 grid of random black and white pixels. Within any such grid, there are a bunch of little creatures hiding! Here, I'll demonstrate with this:



And here's a bunchload of stuff I found in just that one grid!


The first thing that popped out at me was this bipedal elephant-thing, in the upper middle of the image. Check out that ear!


bzzzzz


This one is definitely Seussian, though I think it's more of a Who than a Grinch.


I modified this one a tiny bit, but it was pretty humanoid to begin with. It's from the upside-down version of the grid.


This one looks to me like a chibi thing with a shovel, pointy ears and a horn.


This one is a deteriorating pumpkin, which I'm including for the eyes. Such awesome eyes!


The antler man thinks highly of himself.


Concave head man thinks less highly of him!


Ha-ha! I have hidden traps along this corridor, and the only way to avoid them is to jump over them!


aaaaaaah


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah


This ponytailed girl is really visually concise!


I can't tell whether the ghost is resting against the block or pushing it.


I'm absolutely certain that this is a canary.


I think of this as a little floating helper dude with adorable paws.


Another spitting image!


Try it! You are likely to stumble upon something awesome. Oh, and

(original from a different grid, touched-up)
Let it be known that there are monocles!

[Gr.Viper]

 
You have to be really patient to study those pixels

[Synnah]

Nice!

The bipedal elephant was the first thing to jump out at me in your image, too.

Imagine a competition to create a game solely populated by sprites found in a single image created by that generator. Animating them would be fun!

[increpare]

The bipedal elephant was the first thing to jump out at me in your image, too.

what about the koala on its back?

[Kekskiller]

I also thought about an image generator - generating all possible 8x8 sprites with black/white. But it increasing the image size and color count made it impossible to get good images without browsing for years through an ever increasing amount of files...

[J.G. Martins]

It would be great to provide that kind of feedback to some sort of learning software (say, neural networks?) and it would keep finding and searching for figures that were similar, or with the similar characteristics, to the ones you thought were interesting!

In the least, it would reduce the TIGsource squinting index by over 60%!

[GP Lackey]

There's more sensible ways to do this than white noise!

Examples:
Pixel Robots
Pixel Spaceships
More Pixel Spaceships
Richard's Evolving Sprite Tool

I also thought about an image generator - generating all possible 8x8 sprites with black/white. But it increasing the image size and color count made it impossible to get good images without browsing for years through an ever increasing amount of files...

Heh, it reminds me of this.

[Synnah]

The bipedal elephant was the first thing to jump out at me in your image, too.

what about the koala on its back?

Oh man, how did I miss that?

[Devlin]

haha, I do this but with NES/Atari 2600 games..

[David Pittman]

I also thought about an image generator - generating all possible 8x8 sprites with black/white. But it increasing the image size and color count made it impossible to get good images without browsing for years through an ever increasing amount of files...

Heh, yeah, this is something I wanted to write for a while, and then I did the math and realized that for the same simple case you described (8x8, 1-bit color), there's over 18 sextillion (1.8e+22) possible sprites. If you could somehow generate a billion images a second, it would still take almost 600 years to generate them all. For a typical NES sprite (16x32, 2-bit color), it explodes to 1.8e+308 possibilities. Exponential growth rates are fun!

[Super-Dot]

You have to be really patient to study those pixels

If you're extracting a lot of images from one grid, sure! If you're flipping through lots of images to find things that pop out at you, like bipedal elephants, it doesn't take that much patience at all.

Imagine a competition to create a game solely populated by sprites found in a single image created by that generator. Animating them would be fun!

I'm actually considering using this method for a platformer I'm making, since I can't think of a protagonist.

what about the koala on its back?

There's more sensible ways to do this than white noise!

Examples:
Pixel Robots
Pixel Spaceships
More Pixel Spaceships

Sure, if you consider spaceships and robots to be more sensible than koalas riding bipedal elephants.

Richard's Evolving Sprite Tool

This looks neat, but it's not as effective for discovering new things; it's more about refining existing things.


Here's some stuff I found on my graphing calculator a while ago! More to come.


A bunny in a UFO.


A dude meditating. His posture is about as good as mine.


A gecko! I think this one animated to be climbing walls could be awesome.

[GP Lackey]

Did you try it?  It entirely generates new things, so I'm not sure what you mean.  Except that they are always horizontally symmetrical.

Sure, if you consider spaceships and robots to be more sensible than koalas riding bipedal elephants.

I am saying maybe there's a more sensible way of generating koalas riding bipedal elephants!  Also I just want to bring attention to these things because they're fun.

[increpare]

There's more sensible ways to do this than white noise!

I think random pixels (Actually, even maybe that one initial image posted) aren't in any especial way deficient for the purpose to which they're being put in this thread. I think that the things you linked to are fun, but don't really fulfill the same (or even, in my mind, a similar) function.

Anyway, given that you mentioned it, let's not forget muku's contribution to the area of pg peeps.

[Super-Dot]

Did you try it?  It entirely generates new things, so I'm not sure what you mean.  Except that they are always horizontally symmetrical.

The horizontal mirroring is a nifty idea, but I didn't find anything neat in my fiddlings with it. If you did, post it!

I am saying maybe there's a more sensible way of generating koalas riding bipedal elephants!

Oh, absolutely! I thought you meant that the robots and mirrors were more sensible. But yeah, even if they don't do organisms, they're great!



Parrot.


Elfdemon is distraught.


This one reminds me of Yoshi! It's got a similar body form, but it's long and sharp instead of rounded and it wears high heels instead of shoes.

[Gnarf]

[Xion]

Except that they are always horizontally symmetrical.

you can enable/disable x and y symmetry.

[Nitro Crate]

First thing I saw.

It seems to be a man...with no hands..and a mask like face..and missing a right foot. (his right, our left)

Edit: This is from your pic. From further investigation, it seems to be part of your elephant.

[reetva]

I did something like this!  I made a generator similar to yours in Flash.  I almost did something like this, but decided there wouldn't be enough interest.  I was wrong. 

[Fuzz]

First thing I saw.

It seems to be a man...with no hands..and a mask like face..and missing a right foot. (his right, our left)

Edit: This is from your pic. From further investigation, it seems to be part of your elephant.

Weird that it looks like that to you. To me, it could not be anything other than a kangaroo in mid-jump.

EDIT:

Richard's Evolving Sprite Tool

I tried that and it turned out to be really useful and fun. After about 15 minutes playing around with it, I got this, which is kind of a cat-king-mech thing:


Since it's a bit hard to see, I made a quick coloured version:

[Hajo]

I think they want me to make a game with them

It's amazing though. An in a mind-bending sense, creative.