#A lot of characters are like that for me - their common designs from 2010-2015 shaped how I imagine them now so newer cats tend to be more

[kinda-daily-warriorcat]

[bluriginals]

Blu Blogs: First Thoughts on OK K.O.!: Let's Be Heroes

So after a long day of highs and lows, I arrive home at around 5:40 pm with little expectation for anything big. I'd already heard about the teaser picture of Metal's leg and how Smash is totally, maybe (stay-tuned-for-more-news-because-this-is-how-Nintendo-rolls), coming to Switch . At best I was expecting the highlight for the new content to be some cute new thing related to NEO-KOSMOS (even though we just got a new update the day prior). But no. We got something big, something unexpected. We got...

STEVEN UNIVERSE: SAVE THE LIGHT (A SEQUEL TO THE 2015 APP ATTACK THE LIGHT) WHICH IS A FULL FLEDGED CONSOLE RPG WITH PAPER MARIO GAMEPLAY, 4 PLAYABLE PARTY MEMEBERS BEYOND THE 4 MAIN CRYSTAL GEMS AND A NEW STORY WRITTEN BY REBECCA SUGAR YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES

But that isn't what we're here for today. Today we're here to talk about the long-awaited show 3+ years in the making: Lakewood Plaza Turb--

Oh.

So I log onto tumblr and the first thing I see is this:

So my eye is immediately drawn to the girl because girls are cute she's in the foreground, and I just don't recognize her. I look at the other characters and think "wait is that rad and k.o. what the HELL is going on". So logically, that means the girl is enid, ergo something is going on relating to Lakewood Plaza Turbo. I read the comment below that said "woooo OK KO! theshow i’ve been boarding on for over a year is finally announced!!!!"

I immediately have SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. Is the series getting another app? More shorts? A game? What's going on?! And as I scroll down the truth comes alll the more clear:

Lakewood Plaza Turbo is finally becoming a show.

REDEMPTIOOON SOOOOOOOONG

But not without some changes (ala Steven U). The artstyle, name of the show, and theme were all changed and just like Steven U my kneejerk reaction was "what the fuuuuck IIIIIIIIIIIIIIS this shit?". And also like Steven U it quickly grew on me and I accepted that this was the righteous path. Well, the artstyle and theme anyway, I'm still a bit iffy on the name. But enough context, let's talk about the show!

ok i lied, more context. so part of what contributed to my kneejerk reaction was the fact that Lakewood Plaza Turbo was in development purgatory for 3 years and in that time we got the app/shorts, but also in that time shows that had been in circulation for less time like We Bare Bears and Magiswords had gotten onto CN without seemingly as much struggle. I'd just given up hope for the series becoming a show and on top of that I'd even begun to lose my liking for the pilot, but then again Early Installment Weirdness is my Achilles heel of Tropes so make of what what you will. So when I saw the show come back in such a different form I was instantly turned off. Just from how it looked I was getting Teen Titans Go! & PPG16 vibes: a loss of the show's soul.

The artstyle looked so rudimentary and basic and the theme/intro wasn't doing it any favors, with its lyrics being very non-infortmative to the premise of the show: all fluff no substances. I had come to really like Lakewood Plaza Turbo's theme because its lyrics just felt as though they encompassed the tone and subject matter of the show: stupid(in a good way)ly-awesome with a video game/anime flare). But this was just....a non-event. And once again, the simplistic artstyle is so lame! Until I began to think of it another way...

Lakewood Plaza Turbo/OK K.O.! are clearly rooted deeply in gaming/anime culture and in some ways the new theme, title, and artstyle reflect this. Starting with the new theme, check out the opening shot of it panning from space all the way down to the plaza and the shot of K.O. staring down Lord Box Man with the opposing sides behind them.

Not only is this shot really badass, but it just REEKS of anime influence! And that extends to the theme! The simplistic subject matter and referenec to being friends/heroes feels very reminiscent of 90's anime with Engrish lyrics that have a very simple, positive vibe. It fits! The subtitle "Let's Be Heroes" also reflects it but I'm not as fond of it. You know it's going to be akin to "Adventure Time with Finn and Jake", "The Amazing World of Gumball, "The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack" and "The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius": extra parts of the title that'll all be abandoned in advertising and common discussion in a year. Regardless, the title/opening grew on me. And the artstyle? Awesome! While initially reluctant I came to realize that Lakewood's artstyle wasn't all that impressive. I never really liked K.O. and Enid's noses so the cute little square Elmo/Stan Pines gumdrop is cute.

Precious.

And in general, Lakewood sort've had a generic 2010s base artstyle. It definitely had defining features such as the eyes, aforementioned noses, and character designs but the colors used along with the thin lines didn't do much to set it apart. The new proportions, radically unique way of drawing things, and scraggly crayon-like lines should help. I initially thought the style was too squishy and inconsistent but not in the good, Ren and Stimpy/Steven Universe way. But after I got addicted to the visuals in the opening, I began to really enjoy the style and see the merits of it. Especially in this shot.

It looks SO cool.

I have no idea what this artstyle resembles but the closest I can attribute it too is Sonic CD/Mega Drive and Mega Man which I LOVE.

Also forgot one thing! Both Mega Drive and OK K.O.! have scraggy outlines

It does wonders for K.O., Carol, Lord Box Man (especially Lord Box Man, the way his mouth is drawn all muppet like gives him a real sense of dimension and it's great),

Perfection.

and the other tertiary/background characters but Enid, Rad, and Mr. Gar...

Umm....

Yeaaaaah. Now granted, that opening shot of them isn't doing many favors since admittedly they look REALLY bad (mostly Enid), but even without it they still look a bit. The simple geometrics really makes Gar and Rad's muscles look not very good due to how, well, simple they are. Enid on the other hand suffers an almost opposite issue—her legs are  sometimes drawn with definition/shape (like with the black and white photo storyboarder's picture from the beginning of the Blog) which makes sense considering she's probably based on Chun-Li. Other times, like the picture just above this paragraph, and this one:

Her legs are basically parallel lines that bend. Even worse is that shot above seems to be from an actual episode, meaning Enid will likely look like that a lot. In general, I think I don't think I'm happy with the new design choices for Enid. Not only is there the leg thing, but her ponytail and bandaged torso from Lakewood were a lot more appealing.

Even so it's not impossible to make any of these design choices look great. Just check out the official poster and you'll see all of them, especially the 3 we've been talking about for the past while look great.

One last thing to note on Rad/Gar/Enid's proportions: The strange Garnet-esque chest proportions on Enid and Rad's shirts despite their lower torsos indicating that there's nothing under said shirts.

Enid is a bit more understandable, as nothing about her lower torso indicates that something should be up there but this man Rad is /shredded/. You should definitely be able to see his biceps leading into the shirt, as made evident by Mr. Gar. These don't necessarily detract from the excitement of the show, but they're worth note and could become problematic if made out to be very obnoxious out of proportion in show.

Two more design changes to note before we wrap up: K.O. has a darker skin tone (which I like) and now has buttface.

Buttface, along with flat simplistic colors and thin lines will go down as the defining aesthetic traits of the 2010s.

And also Rad's antenna have gone from being on the front of his forehead to in the middle of the top of his head, which looks a lot less awkward tbh. Overall good choice.

Despite the many issues it has, the artstyle still looks pretty different from everything else we have atm, and the simple way the characters are drawn should be beneficial as with said simple characters action scenes will be a lot easier to make and thus we'll be able to get higher quality, well-animated fight scenes. Despite the bad initial reaction, I have high hopes for OK K.O. Long as they keep the tone and spirit of Lakewood Plaza Turbo alive we could be looking at the next big show. Oh, and great on Ian for percerviering and becoming the second African American to create a CN original. Can't wait to see the young K.O. rise up to greatness just like his creator.

p.s. for being the defensive teammate, steven's hp sure is garbage in that screenshot of attack the light

[newyorktheater]

Bobby Steggert LMSW

Bobby Steggert, actor headshot

Ragtime, 2009 in his Tony-nominated performance as Mother’s Younger Brother

Ivan Hernandez and Bobby Steggert in Yank, 2010.

Big Love, 2015

Bobby Steggert, Frederick Weller, Grayson Taylor and Tyne Daly in Mothers and Sons, 2014

Two years ago, Bobby Steggert, a Tony-nominated actor with extensive credits on and Off Broadway (Ragtime, Big Fish, Yank! etc) , surprised the theater community by announcing that he had switched careers. In an article on Medium, he explained that he was in the middle of getting a degree in social work from Columbia University. “My master’s degree will be a piece of paper, but my life as an artist will make me a great social worker, this I know.” Since July of 2019, Bobby Steggert LMSW has been serving as a psychotherapist in private practice and a staff therapist at the Institute for Human Identity Therapy Center,. Three-fourths of his clients, he tells me, are “actors, singers, dancers, directors, writers, or designers,” and (his staff biography says) he comes to the therapy relationship with “warmth, humor, and a solution-focused approach.” He seemed the right person to ask about the specific mental health needs of theater artists during this stressful period, and he readily agreed to speak with me.

Have you had any new thoughts about your switching careers since you wrote that piece in Medium in 2018?

Time and retrospection have been even more clarifying. I think that what I struggled with most of all near the end of my performance life was a lack of meaningful purpose when not employed. This is obviously part and parcel of any freelance career, but a lot of that sense of purposelessness was within me, and in my inability or unwillingness to find sustainable and grounding purpose in other parts of my life. As a result, I focus quite a bit on finding purpose with clients, and how they can foster these essential elements of a satisfying life, even within the extreme limitations of a time like today.

Based on your own experience as a therapist, and that of your therapeutic colleagues, has there been a general uptick of mental health issues over the past few months?  

Most definitely. I think that we are in a time of great anxiety as a culture and so of course that trickles down to individual experiences. There are a lot of people who are experiencing heightened anxiety and depression, and, as a result of that, dealing with an increase in substance abuse and also relationship issues and, of course, issues with unemployment and loss of income.

My colleagues and I have gotten quite a few inquiries from people who want to enter therapy. I am at capacity so I try to find other therapists for people who call me in order to get them treatment as soon as possible.

People are struggling pervasively because we have been challenged with unbelievable limitations. When you don’t have community and you don’t have a sense of purpose and you don’t have a source of income, those are definite recipes for mental health struggles.

I understand that every person is individual, but are there issues specific to (common in) theater artists during this time of pandemic and unemployment, or ways in which theater artists feel these stresses in a different way?

The most devastating thing about this crisis for theater makers is that there is really nowhere to turn for alternative employment in live performance. Theater artists are singularly gifted in creating work that is shared and felt in one communal, physical space, and in this moment, it’s practically an impossibility. We are all making major sacrifices right now, but theater artists have their hands tied in a way that is unique, and any adjustment to other work is felt as a true loss to one’s core sense of contribution.

What advice or words of comfort have you been giving to artists — or could you give to artists now?

The irony is that so many artists buy the line that they have “no real world skills” and yet they are the most creative, adaptive, and flexible people around. They are made for shifting and unexpected circumstances. They understand the vicissitudes of a highly inconsistent industry, which uniquely prepares them for a highly inconsistent time. I try to remind my clients that their fantastic relationship and communication skills alone make them highly qualified for any temporary adjustments to employment or living situations that are required of them right now. I also like to remind my clients that they are excellent at making meaning – that’s what artists do – and one major thing we have control over now is to make conscious, growth-oriented meaning out of our experiences, even when they’re terrible. And while many can’t make meaning through work right now, they can make it through their relationships, parts of their identities outside of the profession, their bodies through health and self-care, and their creative voices, whether broadcast to the world or quietly to themselves.

What about theatergoers rather than theater makers? Are you aware of ways in which the lack of live in-person theater has had a tangible, diagnosable effect?

I am not sure if I could call it diagnosable but I do think that humans benefit greatly from gathering in groups and physical spaces and in experiencing collective energy together. I think that is why theater is so special. That’s a huge reason why people, for example, attend church. Without that live shared energy, I think that is why people are suffering from loneliness even when staying connected to fiends and family through the Internet.

So what can people do about this?

I think it depends on people’s risk level and how far they are willing to go to be in contact with other humans, but I have suggested to my clients to find as many opportunities as possible to meet friends in the park or to be around other people in outdoor settings as a way to feel more physically connected to other humans.

It’s interesting that you talked earlier about finding purpose, because that of course is the main characteristic of your Tony-nominated role as Mother’s Younger Brother in “Ragtime.” Is that just a coincidence?

In retrospect, I think that as an actor the roles you play can teach you about yourself, and I do attribute that experience to be the seed of an investigation for myself as to how I could find more sustainable purpose than I was able to find as an actor who too often has to wait around for invitations to participate n what they do. Another role really taught me something — Will in “Mothers and Sons.” He was a young man who was so integrated into himself as a gay person. That character taught me that I needed to do more work to embrace the fullness of my own sexual identity.

So you’re saying that your roles helped shaped you as a person?

Very much so. When you inhabit them you take on their energy and you take on their psychology and if you are open to it , that character can teach you new things about yourself.

I admired your performances, and was struck by how much vulnerability you allowed your characters. Feel free to disagree with my premise, but, if you agree, was that vulnerability deliberate, a reflection of your own nature, or just a result of the roles for which you were cast? And is that quality a help or a hindrance or irrelevant to  your new career?

I do agree with the premise. The purpose I did find as an actor was to expose the complexities of the human condition in a way that was raw and that was vulnerable. I think that is because I am naturally a more emotional and more vulnerable person. I think that quality inspires others to be more vulnerable, and so I find it very helpful as a therapist. I’m asking others to become more vulnerable and through that vulnerability to understand themselves and to experience life more deeply.

But do people seeking therapy want vulnerability, or rather somebody who seems confident and authoritative?

I think that the most important quality in a therapist is that the person feel safe with them. That sense of safety can help them to open up and to be braver in their own introspection. [My vulnerability] changes shape because as a therapist there are certainly boundaries, but at the same time I try to exist in a therapeutic relationship with total openness and with a certain kind of vulnerability that I hope can inspire others to be the same.

Where can people go for help?

I have two layers of an answers to that question. Specifically for theater people who are looking for mental health help, I think that the Institute for Human Identity is a great option because they have a lot of availability for therapists who are in the arts or who understand what it is to be in the arts. Another resource is the Actors Fund, which has a wonderful list of therapists who are also in some way connected to the arts. Those are the two places I would send theater people if they are looking to talk to someone.

On another layer, I think the best way to deal with stress especially under these circumstances is to find a physical practice, because being connected a one’s body is sometimes the best option. So I am finding that people are turning to yoga or exercise or mindful meditation.

But what if the theater person doesn’t have any money? As you said, most are unemployed now.

That is really rough. The Actors Fund also provides grants to people who are unemployed. There are also much more affordable options, such as a therapeutic apps called TalkSpace.

Is there anything about theater that you’ve used to help your clients – or yourself – cope with the stresses of the current situation? 

I find it oddly comforting to think about Shakespeare’s time, in which London theaters closed several times due to the plague. He mentions the plague in several of his plays, including The Tempest and King Lear. And during the two year period between 1592-1594 when he couldn’t write plays, he turned to poetry. He adapted just like we all must.

If possible for us to telescope out of this very moment, and while acknowledging all of the suffering and hardship we are enduring, we can be reminded that human history is full of enormous disruptions to life as usual, and yet we keep moving forward, because we have to. Live theater will never leave us – and we will inevitably return to the day when we gather again to take in stories in ways that no other storytelling can replicate.

  Centers for Disease Control: Coping with Stress

Bobby Steggart, Actor Turned Therapist Q & A: Theater Artists Are Suffering Two years ago, Bobby Steggert, a Tony-nominated actor with extensive credits on and Off Broadway (Ragtime, Big Fish, Yank!

[ntrending]

Why we have a ginger emoji

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/why-we-have-a-ginger-emoji/

Why we have a ginger emoji

In November 2014, a tech-industry consortium announced a new set of emoji that would diversify the physical appearance of the pictograms.

“I checked and saw that redheads were just not on there,” says Emma Kelly, editor and founder of the site Ginger Parrot. “I wondered, has no one brought this up? Is there no one at Apple with red hair? Has everyone forgotten about Ed Sheeran?”

Kelly fired off a post on her blog, launched a petition on change.org, and fed quotes to The Guardian and other media outlets. But she soon discovered it would take much more than an online protest to get her way.

Emoji are subject to a complex technical bureaucracy. The type and number of new pictograms released each year are strictly controlled by the Unicode Consortium, an international nonprofit organization of companies—including, most notably, representatives from Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe. Unicode’s core mission is to convert the world’s alphabets and symbols into code that all smartphones, desktops, laptops, and computers can read. The dollar sign, no matter the phone or font, is U+0024. The taco: U+1F32E. Websites, email clients, word processors, and other interfaces then transform that code into words and icons—and vice versa.

For most of its 27-year history, Unicode was concerned with simple characters—musical and mathematical notations, currency signs, punctuation marks. Starting a decade ago, this group of accomplished linguists, font designers, and software developers began including the smileys that had become popular across several Japanese telecom companies. Thereafter, these technical overlords were tasked with debating such matters as the prevalence of unicorns and the cultural import of a pile of poop. A deeper look at Kelly’s campaign for ginger representation reveals that they do not accept their responsibility blithely.

Chapter one

Adopting pixelated cuteness

Emoji began in 1999 in Japan, a country with a long history of pictographic language. In 2007, Unicode members started seriously debating how to include stylized picture characters to make it easier to exchange them across platforms. By 2010, the updated Unicode standard, version 6.0, had some 722 emoji.

Michael Everson, linguist; Irish national representative to the International Organization for Standardization, which helps develop Unicode: Emoji were originally these little pixe­lated images that people could send along with their text messages in order to augment them with cuteness. A lot of people thought all of this stuff was, shall we say, unsuitable for encoding.

Doug Ewell, emeritus member, Unicode Consortium: Are people going to be sending each other face-palm emoji in 10 or 20 years? It’s like encoding a shag carpet.

Everson: We said, OK, if it has to be done, it has to be done.

Ewell: What Unicode ended up doing was to add these emoji to the standard in such a way that it would be possible to interchange them as if they’re characters.

Paul Hunt, font and typeface designer, Adobe Systems; member, Unicode Consortium emoji subcommittee: To your computer, it’s just the same as a letter A or a Greek Alpha. Your computer sees a code that maps to a particular concept. For alphabets and other writing systems, the code matches to letters. For emoji, it maps to a particular little picture.

Everson: We added a whole bunch of emoji and moved on. Nobody knew what was going to happen.

Ewell: We assumed it was not going to grow out of control, and, over the years, it did.

Fred Benenson, author of Emoji Dick, a version of the novel translated into emoji: Integrating emoji into Unicode turned them into a standard that was easy for hardware vendors to implement. Before that, it was just this mess of glyphs—things like hearts, arrows, and cat faces.

Jennifer 8. Lee, co-founder, Emojination, a diversity advocacy group; vice chair, Unicode Consortium emoji subcommittee: The fact that they are not infinitely variable, that there is a very controlled set, makes them a common ­vocabulary across people and cultures.

Jennifer Daniel, creative director for Google emoji, Google: At first people used them as nouns. Now they’re being used more as punctuation to indicate intent, the way an exclamation point signals enthusiasm. Emoji allow people to text the way they talk, with tone and emotion.

Chapter Two

Diversifying the emojiverse

Each year, Unicode approves more emoji, but the organization doesn’t determine their final appearance. That’s up to vendors such as Apple and Google. As these companies began to render their versions, user expectations changed.

Marcel Danesi, anthropological linguist, University of Toronto: Early emoji removed issues of gender, race, and class completely. They were abstract symbols devoid of any of those connotations.

Everson: When Apple released a version of iOS with emoji in 2011, everyone thought it was cute and fun. Except Apple had screwed up skin color, because they hadn’t made all the people blue Smurfs or yellow Simpsons. They made them white people.

Danesi: If you’re using these a lot, one day you’re going to say, I’m tired of using the basic yellow smiley face. It doesn’t reflect my own skin.

Daniel: People don’t want to go to the emoji keyboard and not recognize themselves.

Everson: I proposed a fix that if we needed five grandfather emoji, let’s just encode five grandfather emoji. What Unicode ended up doing was encoding five skin-tone patches that relate to the Fitzpatrick skin-burning scale.

Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, dermatologist (1919–2003), “The validity and practicality of sun-reactive skin types I through VI”: A simple working classification was proposed, based not on hair or eye color, but on what patients say their responses are to an initial sun exposure.

Unicode Technical Standard #51: Five symbol modifier characters that provide for a range of skin tones for human emoji were released in Unicode Version 8.0. (Ed. note: Fitzpatrick’s two fairest tones, I and II, share a modifier.)] ED-11 emoji modifier: a character that can be used to modify the appearance of a preceding emoji in an emoji-modifier sequence.

Hunt: These things happen below the level of user interaction. The user just uses their emoji keyboard, and it will spit out the corresponding Unicode sequence for “princess with medium skin tone” or “woman runner with dark skin tone.”

Everson: It was a way of dividing this thing up reasonably. There was a problem, and Unicode fixed it. It works, and people seem to be happy using it.

Apple had screwed up skin color, 🆘 because they hadn’t made all the people blue Smurfs or yellow Simpsons. 🌈 They made them white people. 🙄

Chapter Three

Great, but what about the hair?

With the release of version 8.0 in June 2015, Kelly and other redheads were fuming. Modern Family actor Jesse Tyler Ferguson tweeted his disappointment, and comedian Scott “Carrot Top” Thompson wrote a think piece for Time. As far as Unicode was concerned, dye jobs weren’t part of their job description.

UTS #51: It is beyond the scope of Unicode to provide an encoding-based mechanism to represent every aspect of human-appearance diversity that emoji users might want to indicate…. No particular hair color is required; however, dark hair is generally regarded as more neutral because people of every skin tone can have black (or very dark brown) hair.

Kelly: I was quite angry at the time, so I fairly hurriedly created a change.org petition. Eventually we gathered more than 20,000 signatures. Unicode originally told me that what these images look like wasn’t actually up to them, that it was up to Apple and Google and the others.

Daniel: There are differences in how we render them. Apple’s emoji are highly rendered and realistic. Google’s are more illustrative and playful. The circles, for example, aren’t perfect circles. They’re kind of squishy and soft. But that softness helps because it makes the illustrations friendlier.

Kelly: We wanted to physically go down there. We put out a call for redheads. A group of them went to Apple headquarters and delivered the signatures in a carrot-shaped USB drive.

Apple Inc.: Did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Kelly: Of course, Apple being Apple, we have not heard anything from them. Someone has got it somewhere there.

Daniel: Ultimately, vendors like Google are at the mercy of what Unicode passes and fails. The amount of emoji being added every year, and which are added, is really up to them.

Lee: We want to slowly ratchet it up as opposed to dumping them all at the same time. Fifty to 70 per year is a good target.

Hunt: The process starts with a proposal. If you want a new emoji to go into the Unicode standard so everyone in the world can use it, you need to create a report. Unicode ­provides a template, which is on its website.

Benenson: I think it’s kind of a bar for people who care about submitting emoji that shows they’re putting thought into whether it should really be an emoji. Adding that little bit of process helps weed out unserious people.

Lee: It’s really not that hard to create a good proposal. If you did reasonably well in high school, you could figure this out. It’s the level of a high school lab report.

Benenson: If it’s a food-related emoji like the oyster, you have to take screenshots of Google search results on oyster versus hamburger to show that it’s popular.

Kelly: I thought it was crazy that I had to do a proposal. It was so obvious that the ginger emoji should be there. So, as a form of protest, I refused to do the proposal.

Lee: It’s not like the emoji subcommittee is rejecting ­proposals willy-nilly.

Everson: The committee did delete the frowning pile of poo as a candidate. I made a lot of noise about that. Proponents cited reasons such as, “We need this because what if you had digestive issues and wanted to text your proctologist.” Can you not use words? Do you have to send your doctor a picture? What is wrong with you people?

You want a bagel emoji? ❓OK, let’s make an emoji that looks like a bagel. ✔️ But the ginger — it’s not straightforward. 🤔 What are we coding? 🤷

Chapter Four

Let there be gingers!

On January 17, 2017, emoji subcommittee vice chair Jeremy Burge, citing social-media and online buzz, submitted a proposal summarizing the group’s options for adding redhead emoji. Gingers were still far from official. Unicode would spend more than a year debating how to implement the hair-color change.

Hunt: We have quarterly Unicode technical committee meetings. That’s where we’ll decide which emoji will progress, how they will be implemented, and what the mechanisms will be.

Lee: The meetings are so long—it’s like C-SPAN but with emoji. It’s four weeklong meetings, and emoji are between one and two hours a day for the first four days. With the ginger, we had to go back to the drawing board three or four times.

Hunt: Part of why it was a difficult problem was that there were many ways this thing could be handled.

Lee: You want a bagel emoji? OK, let’s make an emoji that looks like a bagel. But the ginger—it’s not straightforward. What are we coding? Redheads could be old, babies, boys, girls. How do you approach that? Modifier characters are used in only one situation: skin tone.

Mark Davis, lead internationalization architect, Google; president and co-founder, Unicode Consortium: Changing the architecture by adding more modifiers typically requires code changes that might be difficult to retrofit to older devices.

Hunt: It was going to be easier if the hair colors were treated as Zero Width Joiner (ZWJ) sequences—the sequence that involves several emoji glued together.

Davis: Existing and older systems know how to handle ZWJ sequences without code changes.

Unicode Technical Report #51: The U+200D Zero Width Joiner can be used between the elements of a sequence of characters to indicate that a single glyph should be presented if available.

Lee: If you don’t have the underlying emoji to glue together, then you still need to create the atomic-level ones—say, the happy woman on her own. One concern was, what does it look like when one piece of the puzzle is missing?

UTR #51: When an emoji ZWJ sequence is sent to a system that does not have a corresponding single glyph, the ZWJ characters are ignored, and a fallback sequence of separate emoji is displayed.

Everson: At one point, they suggested combining the person with a separate red-hair glyph. Basically, they were suggesting encoding scalps, which I thought was offensive. We got that changed to a dotted face with the hair on top—a way of showing that it’s a control character if the sequence unravels, so you’re not sending someone a disembodied scalp.

Chapter Five

Bagels, lobsters, super-villains, and redheads

*Unicode announced on February 7, 2018, it would add 157 new emoji, including superheroes, the infinity sign, and red, white, curly, and bald hairstyles. As Kelly awaits Apple’s digital gingers, Unicode members and designers ready their keyboard updates and ponder the future of emoji. *

Hunt: The process isn’t completely finished at that point. Once the Unicode standard becomes official, then Apple and Google and the other vendors will take that information and do their own renditions.

Daniel: We consider a range of questions when designing an emoji. Is it abstract enough for you to relate to? Or is it overly specific? If it’s a person, did we get the expression right? Some emoji are really difficult and require lots of back and forth.

Hunt: Once the vendors update their operating systems with the new characters, people can start using them on their smartphones.

Daniel: Some you just kind of nail. The redhead is fairly straightforward from a design standpoint: You just change the hair color to red or orange.

Kelly: I felt relieved, mostly because it had been going on for so long, and I was very happy that all the work we’d done had finally paid off. It was long and confusing, but hey, we got there in the end.

Benenson: I want people to sympathize a little with Unicode. This is a standards body of software developers, and due to a fluke in corporate history, it ended up in charge of this extremely salient cultural touchpoint and creative expression.

Hunt: It’s a lot of work, but it’s still fun. That’s part of the reason why people love emoji. They’re fun, and it will be interesting to see how this does evolve and how it changes the way we think and talk and communicate.

Everson: I don’t think 70 years from now people will be sending each other pictures of eggplants to discuss certain matters. I don’t think 70 years from now people will be sending each other colorful emoji at all.

Daniel: Really, I’m interested in finding a way to mix and match these emoji to create something new. In the same way language and slang evolve, I hope there’s a way for emoji to evolve.

This article was originally published in the Fall 2018 Tiny issue of Popular Science.

Written By Gregory Mone