📚 Custom Characters Tool Use Case: 16x16 bit (or 2x2 character) graphics

I'm building some 16x16 bit icons for a program I'd like to create (a randomly generated stratagem chooser for the solo variant of "Blitkrieg! World War Two In 20 Minutes".

To keep things simple, I will be using the Custom Characters Tool to create, for each icon, the four character definitions (in a 2x2 grid of characters) to give me (when the four characters are PRINTed together, a 16x16 pixel icon.

From the board game's documentation, here is the "Big Guns" stratagem token:

Using the Custom Characters Tool, I created each of the 8x8 bit quadrants:

Using those "LETCHR$" snippets, I created the following program:

BigGuns1$ = ".......................................................X......XX"
BigGuns2$ = "............X......XXX....XXX....XXXX...XXXX....XXX.....XX......"
BigGuns3$ = ".....XXX......XX.....XXX.....XXX.XXXXXXX........................"
BigGuns4$ = "X.XXX....XXXXX...XXXXX...XXXXX..X.XXX..........................."
SCREEN _NEWIMAGE(100,80,14)
COLOR 63,60
LETCHR$( 1, BigGuns1$ ) : LETCHR$( 2, BigGuns2$ )

LETCHR$( 3, BigGuns3$ ) : LETCHR$( 4, BigGuns4$ )
PRINT CHR$(1) + CHR$(2) 
PRINT CHR$(3) + CHR$(4) 

And the 16 bit graphic looks like this:

This is a good enough 16-bit icon for my needs.  No fuss, no muss.  Rock'n roll !