Text Explaining Project 3

In its most basic form, the if command defines statements that will be evaluated to be true or false. Whether they are true or not depends on the specific conditions the statement describes. If these conditions are true, code will be run. If they are not true, they are ignored and processing moves on to the next statement.

The else command expands on this structure and allows the program to choose between two or more blocks of code to execute when the condition if describes is false. The condition is evaluated, and if it is true it is executed, and if it is false the alternative else command is run.

Broken down in coding language it looks as such:

If (a specific condition is true) {

This happens

}

else{

if the above statement is false than this happens

}

The if/else commands are your basic true or false questions. The important thing to remember is that under different conditions, different things happen. These if/else commands are present in everyday life in basic ways we rarely think about but are easy to relate to. Each morning we get dressed. If it is sunny out we will wear a bathing suit, shorts, a shirt and jandals. If it is not sunny out we will wear something else such as jeans and a sweater. The commands can get deeper and more nested just as our decisions often get more complex. If it is sunny out but we are going to uni, we would not wear our bathing suit. Instead we might wear a dress. If it is sunny out but we are going to workout, we would wear shorts and a singlet. If it is raining out this would be a whole other condition, so a new combination of ifs would be nested in the else commands of the if (it is sunny) condition. Because if it were raining you would wear something different to uni, to workout or to hangout. Through outfits, symbols and sounds to represent dress and weather, I’ve done my best to create a real life association with the if/else processing commands.

The Final Product

With no sound:

With sound:

I made the sounds myself in garage band. It was really hard to match up and the track lags towards the end. While the sounds are fun, a part of me likes it with no sound. It may be boring but I think it's more focused sans sound which leads to better understanding.

Also blogger sucks, I really wish we could use tumblr. Just a thought. My embedded videos never show up?

Post-shooting thoughts

Well first of all, it would have been a lot easier if PEOPLE RETURNED THE TRIPODS. Then I wouldn't have had to make my own with a chair and a traffic cone that wasn't as stable. Then I wouldn't have had to spend an hour and a half plus editing the backgrounds so the photos aligned better.


Other than that I'm happy with how it went. My only concern is that I don't have enough conditions/outfits. But if I were to add more I think it would get too repetitive and the explanation would be lost.

Some sketches/thought process

Deciding what outfits and in what order. Decided to have three different kinds of weather: sunny, clouds/wind and ran. Three different situations: genera/going out in public, going to uni, and going for a run or working out. That's the order each will go in. The main thing I'm worried about is making the sounds match up with the video. Video is not my area of expertise so I think it's going to take me a lot of trial and error.

New Schedule

May 21-28: Work on symbols and sounds, choose outfits confirm date with model

Weekend May 28-29: Shoot pictures and begin putting together

May 30: Finish video, upload and put on blog

Estimated cost: The only cost is time

Slight change in idea

After much thought I've decided to make my project not a booklet but a video. With so many conditions it would be very complicated to cut/make sliders in a way that would look nice and not a mess. Instead it will be a very short stop motion like video. Each symbol will have its own sound that will play over the frame. Sunshine will have a sound, the vic uni symbol will have a sound, working out/going running will have a sound.

Some inspiration came from Blues Clues if you've ever seen that show. Steve the host draws the clues in a very simple, yet efficient way and as he draws them they dance above his head making sounds

From when blogger wasn't working

Two posts can be found here

More Developed Idea

Right now I want to make a photo booklet for the if/else commands. It will be two books in one, the first side being if. The cover will be the view out of a window, the weather is nice. As you flip through it, it will show the process of what happens and the activities you'd do on a sunny day (go outside, skate, go to the beach, get something cold to drink etc). Then you can flip the booklet over, and on this side the cover will be the view out of a window on a rainy day. This is the else side as in if it's not sunny, this is what would happen. It will have parallels to the first side but with things you'd do on a rainy day. Make hot chocolate, watch movies etc.

Project 3 Ideas

For project 3 I'm going to explain the if/else commands. Right now during my initial brainstorming, I'm thinking of perhaps a flow chart, or telling a split screen story and how different stories evolve from one event. For instance right now I'm thinking of how the choice to go out effects your schoolwork and your next day. So, if you drink and this is a true statement you will go out, get drunk, not do any schoolwork and be hungover. If you do not drink, else, you will stay in, get something done and be in bed early and rested for the next day.

This scene from 500 days of summer came to mind in terms of inspiration.

I'm also thinking this could be potentially be made into a board game?

Developments Towards Final Project

First I added color to both the right and left mouse clicks. I added in a twinkling sound that I really liked when I first started my idea with the swirls. However the sound didn't really work for rectangles.

The colors and pattern the sketch created reminded me a bit of Alice in Wonderland, so I started looking up sounds from the movie and stumbled upon this song that I thought worked really well.

Using the song, the sketch changed a bit, and using timers I had the color change according to the song. I thought it was cool, but Ben pointed out that it wasn't really interactive so I went back to square one (pun intended).

I changed the transparency of the rectangles which created a nice layering effect, and using key commands, I made it so the viewer could make the squares the colors of the rainbow by pressing r,o,y,g,b,p for red, orande, yellow, green, blue and purple respectively. This got a little to complicated I thought and it was hard to make any noise sound pleasant with all the different key commands. Angela advised it all to keep it simple, so once again I went back to square one.

I kept the transparency and added an edited clip of the song. I think it could still be more interactive especially with the sound. Nonetheless, I definitely learned a lot of processing through the evolution of this project.

The final can be found here.

Embedding is not working for me for some reason.

The progress towards my final sketch

First I played around with my original idea, with the mouse dragging and then clicking to change and generally just learning the mouse commands.

 

Then I added color and outline

  

Then I played around with random color and making the ellipses bigger and brighter when clicking. 

Then I thought, hey ellipses are boring! I figured out how to make swirls using float, scalar, sin and cosine.

Then using the translate and mouse click I changed it so it swirled when you click and I also added some color.
 

Using an else command I finally figured out how to make them stay the same size.

Then I started experimenting with other shapes. The rectangles were definitely my favorite.

I really liked that a flat sharp square could create swirls and round shapes, I thought it was an interesting transformation. So then the challenge was to add sound and make it more interactive

where did my post go?

Angela and Ben: I had an epically long post about my progress a week ago with a ton of images and it didn't post. Working on writing it again...sigh

Project 2: Refined Transformation Ideas

Since I'm pretty into the idea of creating something colorful and then making it explode to start over, I looked into the transformations of stars, massive stars and the eventual explosion into a supernova or black hole. I really like this idea and think it can translate over to processing and the original thoughts I had about this project. I want the circles/swirls of color to grow and get brighter as the user continues to play with the mouse and continuously overlap what they have already created. Once finished, ideally I would like hitting the spacebar to be the command for the explosion and start over point. I think starting over should be just as fun as beginning.

My only issue is that this may not be a huge transformation? Yes? No? As stated before, my goal is to keep this fun. My challenges in processing I think will be the colors and mouse control. For some reason I don't think it should be too hard to make it explode but only time will tell.

Project 2 Inspiration and Initial Ideas

I was reading about the background of processing and how the creators wanted a program that was simpler to use; like the days of building with legos when they were younger.


Photoshop and even processing a bit remind me of more complex versions of Kid Pix, which was an early bitmap drawing program aimed at kids. I remember spending a lot of time in computer classes when I was little just playing. The program was great; the tools were easy to use and the sounds were fun and appropriate. If you were done with your creation, you could blow it up using the dynamite eraser (very satisfying) and undo any actions with the "undo guy" who would say different things as you took step backwards. My favorite tool was one of the wacky brushes that created fireworks of rainbow colors that you could layer forever. The sound for this tool was a sparkly, twinkly sound. It looked cooler the more layers you added.

I want to create something that was as fun to use as Kid Pix. I don't want it to be overly complicated and I want the experience of the user to be a priority over interest or beauty. Inspired by my favorite tool I want to make something very colorful and easy to layer. With the mouse I want to create something with negative space. In my head I see the user being able to click and erase part of what they have done, but the eraser will be a shape, a stamp of sort. So I guess I just need to get sketching and figure out how to do this in processing.

Project 1 Reflection and Notes About Transformation

From project 1, I obviously gained a better understanding of processing (loops! pi! comments!). Browsing the sketches on open processing really motivated me; seeing such cool sketches made with such little code was very inspiring.

As for next time, I think I need to focus in on my concept, or theme. For this project I did a lot of exploration, but I think for project 2 I need to pick a concept and explore within that concept rather than messing around with a bunch of different ideas.

Transformation:
- I use photoshop quite a bit, and it is nice being able to make patterns so fast in processing
- Didn't really think about how interactive processing is. Quite a bit color than flas (I hate flash and it's hard to use and it alway crashes without fail).
- Computers rely so much on our commands. I never thought about how robotic they are.

My final four wall papers. These are jpegs, blogger cannot upload PDFs. I am pretty satisfied with how they came out. Based off my favorite sketch, I made the series into a progression through repetition, color and transparency. While working on it I began to think it was too simple, but I realized that that's the beauty of optical illusions and the creation of color. I became quite interested in the negative space the arcs create. My only bit of unhappiness is with the last two. Printed out they look a little too similar. I wanted to keep the same base colors to connect it as a series and progression, but the result for the last wallpaper was a little too repetitive of number three. Additionally, my light yellow background is almost non existent when printed but I really can't afford to make the changes and print them again.

The final developments involved a lot of playing with weight and transparency until the wallpaper looked a little trippy while aesthetically pleasing.

I gained a better understanding of loops while creating these and I really liked adding comments to my colors so I could figure out which colors went were. The comments proved to be pretty helpful.

The open processing links for these wallpapers can be found here, here, here and here.

Paper Sketches –– Interim Presentation

1. My first two sketches are based off of the optical illusions of Stanley William Hayter, a surrealist artist.

2. This sketch was inspired by the way Stanley William Hayter would overlay colors. I was also inspired by the marks coffee cups make...and what it would look like if repeated.

3.My third and fourth designs were inspired by real life patterns. I drew these more out of curiousity than anything. This design was based off a stained glass window at a friends house. I also drew some inspiration from some of the doodles and shapes I draw in some of my other classes.

4. My last sketch was inspired by a cat, Ginger who frequents the balcony of a friend's flat. Probably my least favorite of my four. I don't find it particularly appealing, but it was fun to create nonetheless.

Goals: achieve cool looking wall paper, obviously. But I want it to be more than something to just cover the wall. I'm interested in optical illusions and blending and overlap of colors because I feel like they make you stop and stare for a moment. I want the wall paper to be a point of interest, not an afterthought. Next week, when translating these sketches, I really want to do them justice in terms of color and texture.

Cool Sketch

Browsing the sketches, this was one of my favorites. I understand how she made the shapes, but I'm really not sure about the animation. The mouse click commands make a little bit of sense, I realize that the while, if and else commands are directing how the pattern will form depending on how the user utilizes their mouse. I understand what it does, but not necessarily how it works. It sounds a bit like one of those complicated math word problems I had to when I was younger.  I tried to change a little of the code and shapes, but it had no effect I could notice (or I created problems and it wouldn't play).

The one thing that really surprised me about this is how short the source code is. I'm used to dreamweaver where code can go on for pages. It's inspiring to know you can make such cool things without overwhelming amounts of code.

So Many Lines!

This was the optical illusion I tried to make. It was inspired by the work of a surrealist artist Stanley William Hayter who made some crazy patterns and paintings that question your own perception.

I think it's definitely my most interesting sketch. It took me longer than I would have liked but I'm satisfied with the results. I think making this sketch helped me really grasp the concept of making lines and working with the slightly different x y axis. 

I feel like there's a lot of room to modify this sketch, in terms of colors and maybe spacing. I made repeating arcs for the curves, I'm wondering if there's an easier way to go about doing that because it took me a while and got quite boring. The open processing link is here.

project 1 inspiration and such

When we started talking about patterns, the first thing that popped into my mind was the album cover for Merriweather Post Pavilion; the most recent record by Animal Collective. I've mainly been playing with my patterns with not too much intention, but at this point I think I'm ready to start planning things out more, and I would really like to make a pattern similar to this, one that messes with perception or seems like it's moving.

First Patterns

These are my first three patterns:

                               The open processing links can be found here, here and here.


The first was just playing around with shape, color and fill and is probably my most beautiful (but beautiful is a little bit of stretch) just because of its repetition.. For my second pattern, I tried to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing and attempted to learn bezier curves. I really like the teardrop shape I made for the sketch (I combined a square and triangle) but it was hard to calculate how to move the two together as a whole shape. I think the colors probably make it the fanciest. The third was based off of the sketch done in class. The sketch reminds me of the stairs in super mario brothers. I thought it would be really cool to have a brick background like in the actual game, but didn't completely understand the directions on how to upload background images.