I wanted to up the ante (for myself, anyway), so I not only drew Gio in a different pose with open hands and his arms posed to look like he is talking to someone offscreen about the blue door beside him, and his head in perspective, looking to the left (right from our perspective) with his left eye (right from our perspective) distorted to make it look like his face is blocking it, but I also drew another pseudo-3D isometric background - but this time with a curved wall behind him along with the floor having a polished mirror-like surface - and even a door on said curved wall. I'd say the results are pretty impressive for using only Microsoft Paint (the Windows XP version) with absolutely no 3D software used to create the background or the mirror effect on the floor. I added the door so that Gio wouldn't be pointing to nothing, and so that there was something in the picture other than than just Gio and the wall and floor. The picture is at 50% Luminescense with a tint of 64 Red, 16 Green for each color (There are a total of 29 colors in this picture, which I manually tinted every single one).

I drew this picture in low resolution (72x72 pixels) and manually upscaled it to 8 times (8x) the original resolution, first doubling it from 72x72 pixels to 144x144 pixels and finally from 144x144 pixels to 288x288 pixels, enhancing the details in the new higher resolution each time I enlarged the picture by filling in the missing pixels and fixing the details to match the new resolution to get the results you see now.

Believe it or not, the hardest things to draw correctly was the doorknob on the door, which is shaded correctly according to the light source (which is to the upper left, above the door), and Gio's hands, which looked more like fingerless mitts instead of hands in the highest resolution before I redrew them to actually look like hands by rounding out the tops of his fingers and "cutting out" his thumbs in the highest resolution when I redrew them.

Note that the picture is 1440x1440 pixels, but the resolution of the pixels in the picture is still 288x288. I only enlarged it for your (the viewer's) viewing convenience, and also to intentionally add screen blur to the picture - because pixel art is not supposed to be perfectly clear when you look at it.

I did this by enlarging the picture from 288x288 pixels to 1440x1440 pixels in the new Windows 11 version of Microsoft Paint - as when you enlarge images (or parts of them) in the new Windows 11 version of Microsoft Paint, it automatically blurs images when you resize them unless you first resize the the canvas to be equal to or larger than the new desired size before resizing the part of the image you want to match the new canvas size. This is a major glitch that makes the new Microsoft Paint (the Windows 11 version, at the time this was written) almost unusable to the average user as it ruins one of the most basic features of Microsoft Paint which is the ability to easily resize images (or parts thereof). I am well aware of this glitch (but unfortunately, I don't work for Microsoft), and use it as a tool to intentionally create screen blur - which is useful for art (such as pixel art, and also animation) as a special effect (screen blur) in capable hands.

The least Microsoft could do is add an off switch to this feature (the automatic blurring of resized images) in the new Windows 11 Microsoft Paint, with it set to off by default and a warning that says: "You are about to enable automatic anti-aliasing, which will distort images that are enlarged beyond the size of the canvas. Do you with wish to enable this feature?" with a Yes or No prompt like when you are attempting to close an unsaved file on [Microsoft] Paint or other programs or apps in Windows.

- Gio

Monday, October 28th, 2024
4:21 P.M. Central Daylight Time (CDT)