About Showroom

The Spot, Revisited

How it started

Well, actually, it started almost a year ago with The Spot. Being a noob, all my associations were that X marks a spot and not one of the more important events within the C64 scene.

That said, I've cursed myself for not having saved it for X 2024, but that feeling didn't really last long, because there can always be another X.

The first version was done in June 2024 and it lead not nothing release-worthy.

I also did an iteration of it, fooling around with border for the X as well as working on the hardest part, the four chars in the very center.

Flash forward to May 2025

The reason why I've reopened this pic is something I can't really explain; maybe it was an itch, hiding in the back of my head, maybe I've got triggered by a poster or something, but anyway, here we are tweaking that X.

Revisiting a pic was a thought that I had early on when starting out. I thought, challenging myself to re-do a pic after a year or two would be fun and would - hopefully - show my progress in pixeling, so I just loaded it up.

First things first, the "arrows" needed fixing, or more precisly, those shapes felt like arrows and thus was tweaked to resemble ones. The overall pattern also got some iterations, although only this following step survived the session. Throwing in a checkerboard char felt bold but boring, but after adding a contour, it kinda started working for me.

Trying to follow up The Spot's look, the corners got trimmed and a colorful background was added...

... but my Pixel Punx mindset won over and thus this imagined rule of consistency was, well, overruled...

... and overruled again ...

... till it was settled.

While fighting with myself over the background, the pattern and the center piece got tweaked till it just clicked. Doubling down on the checkerboard with an enlaged "mega char"-like one created a visual path, luring one into starring at the center; it's not head-on like a 3D effect, but it's there and I really like it.

Conclusio

The summary for the release has a sentimental touch, reading "Over a year has passed since The Spot and I felt that I should freshen up my mark, kinda making it for myself clear, that this here is a place where I'm happy and thus I'd better mark it with an big X. Again." and even if it differs in detail from the recounted story above, it does reflect my feeling finishing it up perfectly. It's not a "let's see if I got better", it's indeed a "I'm still here" pic.

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