Adventures in Design…

… changing the world one sketch at a time …

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.