Mission Pixel I

Recently I decided to start teaching myself IPA?-?that's isometric pixel art for average slobs like you and me. Not to be confused with Indian Pale Ales (another thing with which my experience is lacking), isometric pixel art is this sort of thing:

This is the beginning of my attempt to recreate Mission Pie, the awesome pie shop where I used to work (and where my girlfriend still does). I'm actually working on their website right now, which I'll post about another time.

The biggest challenges with isometric pixel art are recreating shadows/highlights and getting intricate curves correctly. A good example of both challenges is the coffee cart in the piece I'm working on right now:

Hue differences aside (this is far from the final version), you can see how my efforts to properly highlight and shade this are in heavy need of improvement. However, my attempts to recreate the somewhat intricate curves on the base of the cabinet came out pretty well. Zoomed in close, though, the pixelated version is a confusing mess. This dichotomy?-?that creating detailed shapes is harder in the detailed view?-?is the biggest challenge for me.

I'm pretty happy with how this is coming along, though, especially as a first foray into the genre (?) and I'm eager to have a finished piece.

It begins here, or, Hodgmania

Okay, after a few failed attempts to start specialized blogs that aimed really high, I've decided to put less pressure on myself and start one of those dreaded generic personal blogs I've read about in the local alternative weekly. I don't plan on discussing too much of my own life, though. While this may disappoint fans of really boring stories, that demographic has never been that profitable in the long run, which I'm sure you know.

Today, a pretty spectacular thing happened. John Hodgman, emperor of all that is beautiful, posted a picture of mine on his website. Admittedly, it was just a quick photoshop I did for the Maximum Fun forums, but this is basically the most important thing to ever happen to me EVER.

It was this momentous occurrence that made me realize I had a lot to share with this world. Soon enough, blogosphere, you will fall before me.