Explore - explore deeper
Original note:
"(HMPH, looks like Deviantart can't show the pic in it's original size!)
"Captain! I think I can see the glow of gold near that forest!"
"We'll settle here!"
And so the group of tiny men began their work. They'd have to to be quick, for the winter was on its way...!
I'm really happy with this one. I needed desperately a new desktop background, and because of my laptop's weird resolution (1366x768), my earlier ones didn't quite fit. I have a policy that I only want to use desktop backgrounds made by myself, so I created an idea I have had for a long time.
I decided to make it pixel art because I wanted to give the piece a mockup-like feeling, as if it was a screenshot from a real game. The bloom is kinda cheaty, I guess, and probably also amateurish in the eyes of better artists, but it gave the piece the darker overall colour I needed. Also I like bloom.
Inspired partly by Minecraft, partly by Lord of the Rings and partly by Dwarf Fortress.
About 3 hours with Paint.NET."
To be clear, the scene was constructed in Multimedia Fusion 2, then screenshotted and finished with the bloom effect in Paint.NET.