69 of 365: 35 pixel mosaic of me

I've been thinking about doing abstracted portraits as part of the 365 project for a while, this is my first attempt. I was going to do it all in code but ended up just using Adobe Fireworks (which is a bit like a baby Photoshop, but with some good vector & web tools). For the pool police (me included!) or other interested folk here’s the process:

1) Take a close-up self portrait: www.flickr.com/photos/dumbledad/3113141344/

2) Crop to just the face with no background

3) Resize the image to 5 x 7 pixels choosing "nearest neighbour" as interpolation algorithm

4) Move, pixel by pixel, the image to the new setting.

5) Resize back up to the original size (or there abouts) again using "nearest neighbour" as interpolation algorithm. (NB I had to reselect and remove the background to get crisp white.)

Here are the results: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dumbledad/3113141356/

I gave up on building a pixel bar-graph – working out a pixel match and an ordering which looked good took too long. But at some point in the making I had it laid out as a mosaic, which looked great and would be quicker so I swapped to that.

Done