March 29th was the one year anniversary of the debut of Ready Player One in theaters. So, in light of that important milestone, I wanted to share with everyone a couple of different ways I have been customizing my tech gear with Ready Player One artwork.
The Source
The most obvious source for imagery and artwork is the internet, but that is not where I got my Ready Player One artwork. After all, paid-for art is much better than free art (says the artist that can afford to eat). So instead, I turned to a book titled The Art of Ready Player One.
There are a lot of “the art of” books like this out there for the more successful movie franchises, but this one, in particular, is worth checking out if you are a fan of Ready Player One. This holds especially true if you are a fan of the novel, as there are many instances in this art book that explain why certain styles or designs were used. For example, I never noticed the design on Parzival’s shoes in the movie, but the concept art in the book for Parzival’s shoes was actually based on the description of a pair of sneakers worn by Art3mis in the book (see page 20).
My iPhone
Hopefully, everyone by now knows how to quickly and easily turn any photo on your iPhone into lock screen and home screen wallpaper. If not, here’s how. Navigate to the photo you want to use and press the iOS “share” button (the square with an upwards facing arrow) and scroll to the right until you see the “use as wallpaper” icon. Press this icon and the photo you are viewing at the time will automatically be set as either your iPhone’s lock screen or home screen background image (you will be prompted to choose).
I opted for a cool looking shot of the Iron Giant as my lock screen (you know, to intimidate anyone trying to steal my iPhone).
For my home screen, I chose Halliday’s childhood room concept art (it is my “home screen” after all).
My iPad Pro Smart Keyboard Cover
A couple of weekends ago I was reading a saved article from my Pocket account. It was about a company called Slickwraps that makes “skins” you can stick directly to your electronic devices (phones, tablets, laptops) or their cases and add some protection and a lot of class. I was also pleasantly surprised that the company is based in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas.
I’ve got a 12.9” iPad Pro with a Smart Keyboard case and I love it, but the case is just not all that pretty and attracts a lot of grime. So I checked out their website and realized they were running a sale (they pretty much always run a sale of some kind by the way, which is great) and proceeded to spend the next hour or so finding Ready Player One images from the book that I wanted to decorate my Smart Keyboard case with. I’m pretty happy with the results.
I guess the thing that really stuck with me about Ready Player One (both the book and the movie) was the wide variety of interests and personas that you can take on when in the OASIS. So why not do that a bit in the real world and decorate your tech with images and artwork and make your technology feel just a little bit more like you?
