#miniaturization

Longtime followers may notice that quite a few of them are miniaturized versions of artwork I’ve posted here before; for a recent example, the large block of them in the middle are based on the Pixel Scapes I posted awhile back. Let me tell you, trying to fit the details of 4 pixels into 1 pixel is a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun, and really gets the creative juices flowing. Highly recommend trying out some artwork miniaturization.

Here’s an example of how they would’ve looked in-game. They would have randomly appeared in the background, 2 at a time, each time the player began a new game. Most of the paintings outside the portraits and Pixel Scapes would have been rewards for achieving new high scores and added to the pool of possible paintings that could appear upon being unlocked. Two paintings are not featured here; one that had a much lower chance of appearing that featured a 4 digit code that unlocked another game mode if entered on the title screen and the final high score reward painting of this game’s title screen as a meta-joke.

The hum of the miniaturization machine powered up, and the process began. Lost in her thoughts and her breathing, Clara almost missed that it had happened, it was over so quickly. Like they had all fallen a short distance, but experienced no impact.

The room outside their capsule had blown out into such incredible proportions that it was difficult for Clara to comprehend at first. The tremor that hit the miniaturized lot all at once felt like an earthquake, and yet Clara came to find that, based on the change in the looming shapes above, that it was one of many steps that one soldier had taken toward retrieving them from the machine. She'd only just begun to wonder why they had stopped at just one step when a new set of vibrations approached. These ones were far less intense but more rapid, and heralded a familiar shape.

Clara found her jaw dropping in awe as she stared up and up through the glass at the towering form of not one of the humans, but of the borrower, grinding to a halt after her jog to find them.

She knew for a fact that they were going to be miniaturized to a size far smaller than Zepheera's few inches, but knowing that fact and experiencing it were two very different things. Up til now, everything Zepheera did seemed light and nimble. The way she'd climb her way around and vanish from sight with ease after decades of practice was almost magical. Like something straight out of a storybook, Clara had thought.

Now, Zepheera felt like something out of a completely different story. The capsule itself was smaller than Zepheera's boot, which ordinarily barely covered one of Clara's fingertips. Every motion she made shook the ground as she dropped to her hands and knees to peer inside the capsule, her deep violet irises more clear to Clara than they'd ever been before. 

The level of detail she could make out now was incredible! Short brown hair hanging like curtains of wire around her head, creases of concern in her features that Clara could probably fit her whole hand between. Speaking of hands, Zepheera's were pressed to the ground not all that far away, to support her impressive frame. The fingers were long enough to outmatch any of them, the whole hand large enough to pick up the capsule herself as though it were a discarded soda can. The massive chest overhead expanded and contracted as Zepheera breathed a sigh of relief to see everyone safe and no one made into unbroken lasagne, a displacement that felt like a gust to the miniaturized humans. Not to the point that it shook them up from inside their sturdy little tube of metal and glass, but in that way that you sense wind against a window in a building.

Someone chastised Zepheera for getting so close and interrupting procedures. As a sheepish look crossed her billboard of a face, Clara looked to the others around her. The Doctor was fine– well, as fine as he could be while preparing to enter one of his greatest enemies– and simply shot Zepheera a stern look over his shoulder. Seeing the tense body language of the soldiers who didn't know the towering borrower made Clara recognize that she, too, felt stiff all over at the sight.

Clara wondered if Zepheera felt so intimidated around herself and the Doctor sometimes.

The tremors of Zepheera sitting back on her heels were apparently enough to distract Clara from the approaching soldier, and the next thing she knew, there was an enormous pair of tweezers on either side of the capsule. Before they could connect, Clara shot one more look upwards at the borrower overhead, and their eyes met. Concern was still evident in Zepheera's expression high above, so Clara instinctively stuck out a thumbs-up for her. 

Zepheera's brow rose, but then she smiled and held up her own thumbs-up. With a thumb that very well might have been taller than Clara at that moment.