Category: Uncategorized

  • New ANSImation: Star Wars opening crawl

    New ANSImation: Star Wars opening crawl

    When Star Wars debuted in 1977, the first sequence audiences took in was the iconic opening crawl: a wall of yellow text rolling up the screen, shrinking toward a vanish point in the distance. This crawl was George Lucas’ homage to the old Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s (which inspired many other parts of…

  • New parallax ANSImation: Millennium Falcon dodging asteroids

    New parallax ANSImation: Millennium Falcon dodging asteroids

    I want to push boundaries. That’s what the original Star Wars films did. Industrial Light & Magic revolutionized special effects with novel new techniques for motion control and amazing model work. When I work on ANSI projects now, I try to think about ways to do things in ANSI that weren’t possible in the 1990s…

  • Detention Block AA-23

    Detention Block AA-23

    Is today the 40th anniversary of the original release of “Star Wars”? Blocktronics is all over it. The ANSI supergroup’s new artpack “Detention Block AA-23” landed today, and amazingly I contributed a few pieces! The first is a new parallax ANSImation of the Millennium Falcon dodging asteroids, inspired by the scene from “The Empire Strikes…

  • RS232 WiFi dongle for your retrocomputer

    Paul Rickards has introduced a cool new gadget called the WiFi232. It’s a Hayes-compatible modem that lets your retro computer telnet to a BBS. Seems like it could be a nice alternative to the UDS series of serial-to-ethernet adapters.

  • Who needs SVG when you’ve got ANSI?

    Who needs SVG when you’ve got ANSI?

    Presidential election years are great times to work at a news organization. As a designer at a newspaper, I love to explore the cool election maps developed by folks at places like the New York Times or the Guardian. My favorite is probably the 2016 Election Forecast from FiveThirtyEight.com, which is full of cool visualizations,…

  • My first ANSI portrait

    My first ANSI portrait

    This summer, my daughter Ludi finally learned to ride her bike. She was the first of my four kids to do it. This dad milestone impacted me enough that I felt moved to try drawing my first ANSI portrait. I have dabbled with drawing ANSI in the past, but mostly lettering or simple icons. I…