What is PAM?

== What is PAM? ==
Pixel Art Maker, Pixelartmaker.com, or PAM is a website in which you can create pixel art. It dates back at least to 2014, and has been used by many different people from all backgrounds. At an unrecorded point, the owner, under the name of Joseph Rocca, had left the website. As a result, the website is no longer monitored by any moderators (with the exception of a single individual named "Lebryan J." who isn't an ACTUAL MOD OF PAM. He's a mod of the COMMENTS not the site just to clarify) As there are no known existing filters, almost anything can be posted. Most people use PAM to just to talk to other people, create pixel art, and roleplay.
== How do I use PAM? ==
Upon entering Pixelartmaker.com, you will be greeted with a blank canvas. You can fill in a square with the colour you are using. With this in mind, you can create designs, shapes, figures, characters, etc., but before you attempt this, it is advised that you learn what use each tool has.
The tools are located on the top left part of the screen. There are a total of 12 tools.
This is the "Hide Menu" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen above all the other tools and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it, it will hide all the tools (with the exception of the Hide Menu Tool itself, which it just replaces with "PAM"). Upon clicking on it again, it will reopen.
This is the "Marque/Select" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Hide Menu tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking and holding it, you will be able to select a certain vicinity in the shape of a square or rectangle. Then, you can click and hold the highlighted area while dragging the selected area in the direction you desire. This will move the image inside of the highlighted area elsewhere (assuming a coloured image was placed in the first place). Finally, click outside of the highlighted area. It is noted that non-coloured pixels are overridden by pixels in the vicinity that the image is moved to. Also, the image is duplicated, not moved.
This is the "Pen" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Marque/Select tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it or pressing "P", it will overwrite any pixels that are clicked on. Also, clicking and holding the item from one pixel to another will create a line. Changing the colour will be explained further on.
This is the "Straight Line" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Pen tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it or pressing "L", and then clicking and holding it, it will make as straight of a line as digitally possible. You can also colour one pixel at a time with this, though that method is slower than the Pen tool. Changing the colour will be explained further on.
This is the "Fill" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Straight Line tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it or pressing "F", and then clicking in a certain vicinity, it will fill the chosen vicinity with the selected colour. It is most commonly used to fill in the background of images. You can also click pixel by pixel with the bucket if the pixels you are clicking on are different colours.
This is the "Eraser" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Bucket tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it or pressing "E", and then clicking a pixel, it restores it to its original colour, or FFFFFF on the HEX Colour Model. You can also click and hold it, which is used more commonly.
This is the "Change Colour" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Eraser tool and is represented by the chosen colour and its ID on the HEX Colour Model. By clicking on it, you can alter the colour and the shade of it.
This is the "Sample Colour" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Change Colour tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it or pressing "S", and then clicking a pixel, you can sample a colour that has already been used without using the Change Colour tool. You can also right click to use this tool, but you will have to move your cursor to the desired colour before you click it.
This is the "Save as PNG" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Sample Colour tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking on it, you will receive a message telling you to press "OK" and click and drag a certain area. Once doing so, you will be given a number of options including setting the image's name, description, toggling if it is/isn't in the gallery, downloading it, or purchasing items with your pixel art.
This is the "Toggle Grid" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Save as PNG tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking it, you can choose what type of grid is used in the background, including a grid in which lines are added between each pixel, and one where there aren't any lines.
This is the "Clear Canvas" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Toggle Grid tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking it, you will receive a message giving you the option to keep the pixel art you have or reset the canvas. If you do reset the canvas, you can revert it with the next tool shown.
This is the "Undo Last Action" tool. It is located on the top left of the screen under the Clear Canvas tool and is represented by the image shown. Upon clicking it, or pressing "Ctrl + Z", it will undo the most recent action. It is noted that there is not a "Redo" tool, and you will have to manually redo the reverted action or edit a previous upload of the image from the gallery.
== Chat and Communication ==
For a time, there was no known way to communicate. However, by May 27, 2009, the Pixel Art Maker Community Sub-Reddit, r/pam was released. The Sub-Reddit was moderated by the Reddit accounts marievegan, depth_charge, _scrotie_, untrampledhonour, and pam_bot.
Additionally, they released a Disqus page, in which by clicking on an image shown in the gallery and scrolling down, you could sign in on Disqus and comment and reply to images, though this feature was not used nearly as often as the Sub-Reddit. Later though, the only known moderators had been suspected to have abandoned PAM, as they quit updating the website. Due to this, the community was limited in terms of communication.
Before Joseph Rocca left, they had added a gallery in which you could post and view pixel art. Eventually, Pixelartmaker.com's users had decided to create their own methods to chat. At first, the most commonly used method was by writing your message in the form of pixel art and uploading it to the gallery. However, the method limited users as it took time to write the messages, and players could easily be impersonated by other members of the community.
Next, the player-base decided that given that you could title your pixel art, you could simply type the messages in the form of names. All anyone would have to do is scroll over the pixel art and the messages would appear in the form of the plain text font. They could also click the image, taking the user to another web page in which the name would appear above the image they clicked on. Additionally, players could leave notes in the description of their pixel art. This still did not fix the impersonation issue though, as it was discovered that by clicking on the image and clicking the link labeled "edit this image", you could access the image before
Many users such as Stellar began posted links to other websites for the purpose of chatting, though it is not as common of an occurrence as the other methods.
In early 2020, r/pam was locked for an unknown reason, though it has been reopened since. Some people suspect it was due to porn (particularly Rule 34 Chara) being posted to the Sub-Reddit, and the only action taken was a non-administrator user reporting the image. In theory, the report left Reddit administrators to believe that the r/pam moderators were not enforcing Reddit's policies.
The PAM Wikipedia was created in early June of 2020. It is an unofficial Pixel Art Maker Wiki made on Fandom.com for the purpose of documenting Pixelartmaker.com, characters made on the website, et cetera. You can talk to another user by going to https://pixelartmaker.fandom.com/f, clicking "What's on your mind, (your username here)?", adding a title on the top of the page (Limit is higher at least 300+), and adding a description. You can also reply to the feed from users via clicking on their posts, scrolling down, and clicking the "What do you think?" bar. Then you may type about anything. Unlike Pixelartmaker.com, however, the administrator of the PAM Wiki (Hboboss21) is still an active and will remove most/all posts that violate the PAM Wiki Guidelines and could potentially block you. The same actions could also be taken if your post violates Fandom.com's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, though Hboboss21 might not be aware of those rules that were enforced. It is also to be noted that given that there is only one administrator, their power can easily be abused. As of now, this is the most recent method.
Finally, there was a update in 2021 with the introduction of more than one gallery and the ability to block users via their id, dark mode was also added. to create a gallery all you have to to is pin it (you can have up to 10 pinned at a time) then where the save button is, above it there should be a box, but the name of the gallery you want to save it in (e.g. rp, this will save it in the roleplay channel).
== Hours With "Heavy Traffic" ==
NOTE: This may not be up-to-date.
Generally, most people will be online between 6 AM and 9 PM (EST). This is not accounting for people who have events that may be occurring in personal lives, people who live in other timezones, how this may be affected by school schedules, et cetera. While images are posted to the Gallery nearly 24/7, between 12 PM and 5 AM, most people are not online, or, at the very least, silent about it. Regardless, it is recommended that you post during those hours.
== Trivia ==
# The colour wheel uses HEX.
# If you go too far back in the gallery, it will say "no more pixels :(". Alternatively, if you visit an invalid/inexistent URL on PAM (for instance, http://pixelartmaker.com/art/4af400d431cb28d), it will bring you to a blank page with the text "Pixels not found! :(".
# For a time, after uploading an image to the gallery, you were offered to get a sticker or mug featuring your pixel art. This is no longer available, possibly due to the website's code being outdated, or a hacker editing it.
# When you load up the site, the colour 1EC7FA (a light blue) is automatically selected.
#The timespan between when the website was first made to when the one-millionth post was uploaded was at 5+ years.
#The two-millionth post was uploaded just one year after the first, on 2-7 February 2021.
#
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