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.