2019 in Side Projects

I really dislike side projects and one day will write a long blog post about why.

But I have what I’m calling a compulsive creator disorder where if I think of an idea, then I want to make it immediately, and if I don’t, then I get very antsy. And then I feel bad that I don’t finish most of them.

This is a compilation of side projects I worked on in 2019, some finished but most not.

January

• I started reading a dictionary of Design Since 1900 and started collecting examples I liked into an are.na board [in progress]

Design since 1900 are.na board

• I started illustrating some of my favorite spots in NYC to learn Procreate. [unfinished]

Morgenstern’s, Lennox Hospital, Grand Central Terminal

February

• I illustrated some food jokes that I wanted to ultimately compile into a zine [in-progress indefinitely]

Otter Pop

• illustrated minimalist versions of famous Japanese cats [finished]

March

• I had an idea to do a collection of illustrations titled Shy Guy doing Shy Guy Things [unfinished]

April

• css-animation-sandbox app for playing around with keyframe-based animations [finished]

May

• I started reading How to Read Modern Buildings and building an accompanying street-view-based web app [in-progress]

June

• collaborated with Melissa McEwen on a Glitch project viewer called GlitchDex [unfinished]

July

• playing around with scroll-based animations using laxxx.js to create a seasonal-haiku app [finished]

August

• Animation a day project — tried to create SVG-based animations on a regular basis [started but didn’t follow through on]

• unfinished sprite animator app that uses css animation steps to cycle through a sprite sheet [abandoned]

September

• playing around with easily remixable starter apps that use front-end-only APIs [finished]

• makecode pixel art maker for generation pixel art you can add to makecode arcade [finished]

• started working on getting a tamogachi on the m5stack [in progress]

• played around with alternative avatar designs for Tasty Snacking [abandoned]

Alternative Tasty Snacking icon design

October

• Attempt at Inktober

Fruits drawn in Fresco & Procreate

Lynda Barry drawing exercises

• made custom illustrations for Tasty Snacking [finished]

Illustrated avatar + cover image for Tasty Snacking

• played around with sqlite to save color palettes. never finished app but used the code to build the updated hello-sqlite starter app on Glitch.

• Based on the color-pal app above, wanted to save color palettes I liked. I started creating an are.na board for it, but lost interest.

Are.na board of color palettes [link]

• a family-tree-generating app using dTree to map out characters in the book Homegoing [finished]

November

• connecting to the m5stack with a simple web app [blog post] [finished]

• consolidated US state-specific jingles into an app [finished]

• made a map of my favorite places to get snacks in NYC [finished]

• worked with my friends at Microblocks to get pixel art onto the M5Stack

December

• created a Google Sheets-powered version of my year-end-list app called year-end-list-sheets [finished]

• made a visualization of my favorite music from 2019 [finished]

• ported over an old interactive greeting card I made [finished]