The r/Place Reddit Pixel Art Battle Included A Hilarious Tribute To Quebec

By the time the last square was filled on Reddit's collective online mural, r/place, Quebecois history and culture featured prominently at the centre of the canvas. Poutine, maple syrup, and even traffic cones meshed together to make a quirky 8-bit tribute to La Belle Province.

Redditors from all over the world banded together for four days at the start of April to fill a blank, four-million square pixel grid with competing artworks.

There were some limitations. Users could only add one new pixel every five minutes, which meant slow progress for anyone acting alone. A little coordination between users, on the other hand, meant artworks grew in detail and size quickly or were covered over by other designs. An art battle of epic proportions ensued, and the evolution of the mural was captured in a timelapse video.

Over the course of the project, members of a Quebec subreddit community staked out and defended a sizeable portion of the canvas, covering it with tributes to favourite provincial landmarks, historical figures, and cultural items. Canada became the 11th most celebrated theme on the grid.

The resulting patchwork of pixels layered a maple tree under Quebec City's Château Frontenac and a recognizable portrait of former premier René Lévesque.

A flying canoe filled with one-pixel-wide lumberjacks emerged from the moon, paying homage to the Quebecois fairytale, La Chasse-galerie (The Enchanted Canoe).

Nearby, a Godzilla sporting a toque and scarf burned down what looks like the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

The logos of McGill, Concordia, and the Université de Sherbrooke fitted together like tiles in a mosaic, while the provincial flag held a caribou, an Inukshuk, and an owl, along with the controversial figure from the nationalist patriote flag.

An illustration of Gaspé Peninsula's Percé Rock was next to logos for the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques, a famed hockey rivalry despite the fact that the latter team no longer exists.

The Laval "L" logo rounded out the bottom-left part of the mural with a line of orange cones framing an outline of the province.

Even the SAQ got a shout-out — its logo nestled under the Olympic Stadium.

On Monday evening, the art battle came to an end. Users were given the option to place only white tiles on the vibrant grid. It didn't take long for all of the artful chaos to disappear entirely.

This is the second time in five years that Reddit has hosted the collaborative pixel project. A smaller, original launch took place in 2017.