About the Work
Art 187, Introduction to Electronic Art, was my first digital art class, taken in my first year at Allegheny. It is where I learned Photoshop compositing, Illustrator vectors, animation timelines, and my first Premiere video, mostly by making things that made me laugh.
The Emoji That Should Exist
The assignment was to design something not already represented in Unicode. I was thinking about disability representation, which led me to how little representation injuries get. So: the broken leg emoji, finished like a real proposal, rendered at 1000, 100, and 18 pixels in the standard yellow plus five skin tones. My next recommendation was a broken arm, and I believe Unicode has one now, so somebody out there agreed.
Cats and Dogs, Personified
The icon collection (a cat in three moods: sneak, snooze, and fear) was technically about learning Illustrator, but I was thinking about how important cat iconography has been throughout the ages: the expressions of animals, and our habit of personifying them. It is a posthuman question wearing whiskers. The sneak cat now lives at the bottom of every page on this website, peeking over the footer.
The animated dog trio (Ghost Dog, Hoodie Dog, and Nerdy Dog) continued the thought: personification again, this time through costume. Put a hoodie on a dog and watch how fast you assign him a personality.
The Orchard
For the Photoshop unit we were tasked with imagining a future that solves a problem. I chose the food crisis and the mistreatment of animals: an orchard calmly growing 100% synthetic beef across the path from 100% synthetic apples. Eventually we will find a way to grow meat on trees like produce. I stand by that vision of the future.