256 Levels of Zen

Our first project for this class is to have a chain of some sort, with the clasp as the focal point. And as you may guess I'm basing this one on Pac-man. You may also be wondering then why I didn't title this post Pac-Mania or something similar, but we'll get to that in a moment. First some back story though.

Long time readers know I went to a CAD workshop last year hosted at the college, and came up with an abstract Pac-shape that I reeeeeeally wanted to use at the time but didn't quite have time to dwell on it. Now that I have mulled over it for a while my plan is thus:

I'll start by loosely riveting flat brass Pac-men eye to power pill. Since it will be a necklace I can't really paint the metal bright colors like I originally wanted, since the friction will likely wear it away. I may break up the monotony of the chain with blue Pente or Parcheesi pieces as a reference to to the color of the maze, ghosts, and as a more visible pellet. 

The clasp however will be a big 3D Pac-man sitting on the back of the neck. Not only will it reference the transition in to three dimensional games in the late 90s/early 00s it will also represent the 256th level of the original arcade Pac-man from 1982. Wikipedia explains what happens on that level better than I can:

"Pac-Man was designed to have no ending – as long as the player keeps at least one life, he or she should be able to play the game indefinitely. However, a bug keeps this from happening: Normally, no more than seven fruit are displayed at the bottom of the screen at any one time. But when the internal level counter, which is stored in a single byte, reaches 255, the subroutine that draws the fruit erroneously "rolls over" this number to zero, causing it to try to draw 256 fruit instead of the usual seven. This corrupts the bottom of the screen and the entire right half of the maze with seemingly random symbols, making it impossible to eat enough dots to beat the level. Because this effectively ends the game, this "split-screen" level is often referred to as the "kill screen". Emulators and code analysis have revealed what would happen should this 255th level be cleared: The fruit and intermissions would restart at level 1 conditions, but the enemies would retain their higher speed and invulnerability to power pellets from the higher stages."

 And this is what it looks like. Therefore my clasp will be an unrecognizable  barely Pac-mannish shape, all glitched and distorted. Exactly how I'm not sure yet, but there's still a little bit of time to decide on that. All in all I'm actually looking forward to this project more than usual, goes to show what a good theme can do for generating ideas. For the immediate moment of this post there's no where to go except to drag up some relics from 1982 and the height of Pac-man (and arcade) fever starting of course with the Buckner & Garica  song:

The board game version:

and the intro to the cartoon:

Not to mention all the other merchandising...

Video Games and Shiny Things

What better way to introduce the theme of Fun and Games than with a sweet video? This semester I've decided to look at games of all types; board games, card games, sports games, and video games. Despite my best efforts to look at the other categories my projects and posts will probably tend toward being about video games, as that's my main area of intrest and the one I know the most about. (incidentally if you're looking for an excellent book on the history of video games pick up Replay by Tristan Donovan, unless you're looking for highlights of acrade history then Supercade is your ballywick.)

I'm not alone in my fascination with video games and art, as there is an entire gallery dedicated to it called I am 8bit, in California. They also have a couple art books out which I have yet to look at. So this long story short, I am super excited to get started on this theme! Time to go round up some new theme appropriate music for my mp3 player!

All Over Again

As much as I said I would accomplish the world on Christmas break I actually got very little done jewelry wise, other than realizing how ill planned my next epic project is. But, I am beginning to assemble a studio at home! One sewing cabinet from the early 1940s on blocks plus an old tea cart of some kind equals a passable bench and storage. I've got a bulletin board complete with in-jokes tacked to it, a clock for time, a very useful flexible shaft, and most importantly music (courtesy the family computer speakers circa 1998).

All these new amenities and the only result is the discovery that as gratifying as smashing things flat with a hammer is, it's probably not the best choice design wise.

I rather like the bottom pendant the best: it's still somewhat three dimensional plus there's room to nestle a small stone in it. Nothing has been soldered on owing to my lack of a torch at home, which is becoming more and more of an annoyance/problem. Also notice the bezel is made of brass and not silver. I have no idea if using a tougher metal to set a stone in this manner will work but why not try, especially since the bezel "wire" came pre-made in the perfect size. But now its on to the proper start of the semester and the long awaited reveal of the theme, I'm sure all four of you are just dying to find out!