a place

I often find myself unprepared for a situation. I can’t think of a better way to put it. I’ll want to take a picture, write something down, sketch an idea, or just kill time, and all I have on me are my keys, wallet, and cell phone. I need a go bag for my gear.

My friend Adam swears by his Chrome messenger bag (well, he really likes it). But the price turns me off… $135 can get you a lot of other nice stuff…

Maybe I’m just being a tightwad. But I want to make a project out of this. I’m thinking of designing and making my own bag, tailored to suit my needs. If anything, it’ll be a fun sketch project. I’ve never really sketched bags… unless you count that one intro project… but we don’t talk about that……..

For my online 20th Century Art History course, I decided to write a research paper on pixel art. I’ve already mentioned my love of pixel art on here. I thought it would be a good learning and discovery process for me. Then my professor reminded me of one limitation: my paper had to focus on pixel art of the 20th century. So I tried to constrain my research to this era.

Here’s what I’m going to focus on:

• Pixel art “predecessors” such as mosaics, pointillism, Van Gogh…
• Introduction of GUI and bitmap technology.
• The icon designs of Susan Kare for the Mac OS.
• Video game sprites.
• The return to pixel art despite advancements in display technology — celebrating the pixel
• Traditional media art that imitates computers.

I’m writing my first draft, due Sunday. So far, it’s a jumbled mess of thoughts typed out rapidly. We’ll see how it goes.