About Anthology

Getting to know a database - A generation ago, the author got advice from a woman in new technology business: Get a database. He was not sure what she meant, was it software or content? “Both” is the answer. Now he has a database of text. He speculates on how it can be a money-maker. 1603 Words. vp100312. ©2010 Bill Ritchie

Hidden Messages

On the trail of a game - This art professor—who has no university—would like nothing more than to create a digital game for learning that is a work of art as well as a wonderful, meaningful game. He wants to hide all his assets in this game for students to find. How can he do it? 983 Words. vp100202. ©2010 Bill Ritchie.

Story Arc

Good games have good back stories - An Emeralda Game Inventor has a routine going for him. To invent a game, he must play it. How do you play a game that hasn’t been invented? It’s like asking, How do you follow a star that hasn’t yet risen? It’s the artist’s way, and game invention is art. 359 Words. vp100123. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Getting Started

Notes on a minigame - He would teach printmaking online, but he would not choose the path other people are taking. He would make his own path, and leave a trail. To start, he must give his students a list of things they’ll need to go on a path in the unknown printmaking world. 1080 Words. vi100113. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Teaching Prints

A proposal to teach printmaking online - These times are right to teach printmaking online, writes this professor. For three decades he believed he could teach printmaking at a distance when his time came and technologies were available to the people who want to learn printmaking out of the box. 461 Words. vp100103. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

More On Metaphor

In the metaphor, you're in a car museum. You see an auto mechanic's toolbox. It's locked. One drawer opens with a key you found on the floor. In the drawer you find a wrench. With the wrench you can tighten the hood ornament on a car, which lets you find the car key to start the sports car, which turns on the lights, revealing a coin. Put the coin in the juke box and music plays.

In Printmaking Camp, you open the box of accessories, you find useful things, such as the blankets, test plate, the user's manual, the certificate of authenticity, and the disc. Each item branches to another level, another challenge. In the backstory, you must trace the pathway of the forger and do as he does. You may find Issey being the one to narrate this pathway, solving the puzzle.

Treatment Plan

Back story for a hundred years - He wants to write a treatment for Act II of a screenplay about a woman who is on a rescue mission in a strange, heavily guarded but lovely artist’s paradise—front for a doomsday plan requiring the artists creative process to end human life sustainability. 1137 Words. vp091020. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Writer’s Respite

Taking a moment to think about writing for a moment - The author’s goal in life was always to be a teacher—a Great Teacher. After reading about a unique individual named Elmer Gates, his life and his commitment to education, he determined that to reach his goal he would have to take an unusual course: Games. 1447 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. vp090801. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Licensing Halfwood

You can take it with you - After five years of developing the design of the Halfwood Press, the designer contemplates a way he can continue the product line concurrently with helping it grow to its full potential. The best option is to license the designs and production to someone. 1383 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. vp090622. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Screenplay Blender

Writing backstory, screenplay and scripts for ELPO - Taking on the project of a blended online printmaking course gets complicated when your online presence must assume a virtual role, playing in a virtual world. You must be a writer as well as a printmaker and you must write in both real and virtual forms. 942 Words. vp090612. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Benefits of Learning Printmaking Online

Ten reasons to invest in Emeralda: Learn Printmaking Online - As an artist and professor in higher education and the inventor of a digital-game-like user interface for a fine arts online course, the author provides ten reasons why people taking his printmaking course at this time think it makes a good deal of sense. 1377 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. vp090314. For full text email: ritchie@emeralda.com

Moment Numbers

Elemental time and space code words for ELPO - 20th Century artist printmakers used edition numbers as part of their art’s provenance. They did not consider edition numbers to be important, but to the publisher, art dealer and collector they were, and are. Moment numbers replace edition numbers today. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. 1853 Words. vp090523. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Renewing Goals

Kansas calls - An email message from a professor in Kansas gives pause to this professor in Seattle. The email suggests a visit to the Midwest University to give a workshop and display. While this may be in keeping with the author’s goals, he has to wonder how it is so. 801 Words. Full text by email request

Knowledge Art

Coming out of the woods - A visit from a new friend awakens in this artist a sense that despite his friend’s wide knowledge of regional art and artists he doesn’t have a deep knowledge of this artist himself. He concludes it is because he has taken on a different kind of artistry. 449 Words. Copyright 2008 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com.

Emeralda Grant

Proposal to make a fine art game
After a coffee shop discussion between two creatives about fine art and computer games, they consider writing a grant to take their idea higher where other artists can make use of it. This essay gives the background and describes the problem and solution. 972 Words. Copyright 2008 Bill H. Ritchie. Full text by email request.

When Kepes Was Here

Print, video and digital ghosts in the new machine
Thirty years ago a renown master teacher stood up students in a video art class and thus became the target of a spoof about pure information theory. The video professor of the class sees a parallel in a new article, and how mastery may be learned on-line. 1807 Words. ©2007 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. Full text by email request.

Ideal ATC

Searching the metaphors for online Artist Trading Cards
Early in the morning the wannabe inventor of an online game, Emeralda, that entertains and teaches printmaking is struck by a comparison of his most recent addition to the game—Artist Trading Cards—to an ongoing free software application for making blogs. 1050 Words. 4885 Characters. Copyright 2008 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request.