Game Boy ad

July 31st marks the 20th anniversary of the Game Boy's North American release.



The Game Boy was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the same guy who created the NES Zapper, the Game & Watch, the directional pad, Metroid...and, um, the Virtual Boy, which was somewhat less successful and led to him leaving Nintendo 2 years before his death in a hit and run.

Gunpei had been with Nintendo since the 1960s, back when they were a dying playing card company. He moved up from maintaining the assembly lines to becoming one of Nintendo's principle idea men, when he came up with an idea for an extendo-grip toy called the Ultra Hand. It was a big hit. Nintendo went on to focus on children's toys, and later, electronics.

He followed a philosophy of using mature technologies in innovative ways, in order to keep costs low and products less buggy. He called it "Lateral Thinking of Withered Technologies". The Game Boy's green screen wasn't cutting edge even in 1989, but it allowed it to run on 4 AA batteries for many hours at a time. Competing game systems like the Lynx and Game Gear couldn't touch it.

Summer school projects

I'm taking a graphic design course over the summer. Right now we're on our third project, redesigning an ad. You can see the ad I'm using over here: [ Retro Scan of the Week ] Game Boy is Twenty.



The inked board with all 3 concepts.


Our second project was the "black and white problem". We had to design shapes in silhouette to express images or ideas. These are my sketches.


This is the final.


This is my first attempt at the black square problem our teacher assigned to us as our first project. I gave it another shot, but that copy is currently being graded. The images represent, left to right (first row) order, increase, playfulness and (second row) congestion, instability, and floating.

Begz0r cat

We have a cat.


He's always begging for food even though he's enormously fat. His name is Chomsky, but Pikadeth christened him Begz0r cat.

End of School Special

Some scribblings from my notebook.


These guys were for an idea I had for a game. The stoner would have special Earth majick powers. The pierced guy would have fire/knife fight majix.


This was an idea for my dinosaur collage. Ancient Greeks plus ancient animals. Ancient gods and legendary animals like the sphinx (man head on lion body) already make no sense, so a dinosaur head on a breasted human body makes even less sense and is even better.


This was an early sketch for my major fair poster.


This was my take on my housemate Pippi's "scary butterfly" cloth book.

Coney Island

I went to Coney Island yesterday. I figured it would be a good place to take pictures. I went to the Mermaid Parade in 2008, and there was lots of great, folky art around. And the parks are going to be knocked down for condos very soon.

I missed the hotdog eating contest, but I did see lots of interesting things. As a matter of fact, there was so much to see, hear, do, taste, and smell, it was a little overwhelming.

2009 Staten Island Gay Pride

Day de Dada Dollar Dalliance