Given new brief, we were to expand upon and experiment with our sketches created in Processing last aweek. We were directed to just take risks and have a play in approaching this, to just change number, manipulate and modify to see what we get. I have found this a difficult way of working as my style is more deliberate, methodical and calculated - I have to think about and approach logically what I am doing so for the first day on the brief was quite frustrated.
First day on the brief, I thought about the connotations and meanings behind each individual element - which I then realized was perhaps getting too conceptual about it, as is, my usual method of working. Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the individual elements in my sketch, I figured I'd start by taking the individual elements and manipulating them, before eventually bringing them all together again in a final sketch.
So I then decided to start with making my bende dots a bit more dynamic and tried to make them bounce around the screen. About five hours, three or four examples and a lot of frustration later, I had one red ball bouncing around the screen.
I ended up getting bogged down with the complexity of the examples I was trying to adapt as they had some more complex bits of programming I am not yet familiar with. Therein I do understand where Kim was coming from in his recommended approach that it is better to experiment and see what happens rather than coming up with an idea of what you want to do which may be beyond your capabilities. As an example, he gave us a simple sketch consisting of a loop which filled the screen with identical, organized, uniformly spaced squares. I admit I thought this was very basic as I was familiar with the loop and what each part of it controlled but after a bit more encouragement from Kim, I ended up with a pulsating mass of coloured circles which keep changing colour, creating a shimmering curtain. Still a very simple sketch.
From there I decided to start a bit simpler first with the cheese instead, heading in the direction of a game like interplay between the mouse and the cheese. In a short while, I had created sketch which created a randomly sized and coloured hole on a yellow background - Make Your Own Cheese! Until I figure out the proper way to upload the sketch, you can copy and paste it from here.
Upon learning how to import images and sounds, the scope of possibility widened again so by the end of the day, I had a mouse running horizontally across the screen, reappearing at a different Y-Coordinate each time it disappeared offscreen. An image of a mallet is attached to the cursor which upon clicking, swings the mallet down. If the mallet successfully hits the mouse, Roy Lictensteins 'Whaam' appears on the end of it - a bit of a joke following on from my adaptation of his use of bende dots. By the end of today, it had developed into a game as such, where by successfully hitting the mouse, it's position was reset to the left of the screen but it's speed would increase with each successful hit. If the mouse reached the opposite end of the screen, it would come up with a game over.
After getting away from Processing for a bit and thinking it over and even discussing my ideas with people not directly involved in year 1 BCT over a coffee, they were quick to offer more suggestions on making it more interactive as well as how to bring back the cheese. So from here, I'm continuing on trying to make it more of a game with more of a complex objective and with counters though need to keep trying to incorporate a bit more creative play and experimentation.
First day on the brief, I thought about the connotations and meanings behind each individual element - which I then realized was perhaps getting too conceptual about it, as is, my usual method of working. Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the individual elements in my sketch, I figured I'd start by taking the individual elements and manipulating them, before eventually bringing them all together again in a final sketch.
So I then decided to start with making my bende dots a bit more dynamic and tried to make them bounce around the screen. About five hours, three or four examples and a lot of frustration later, I had one red ball bouncing around the screen.
I ended up getting bogged down with the complexity of the examples I was trying to adapt as they had some more complex bits of programming I am not yet familiar with. Therein I do understand where Kim was coming from in his recommended approach that it is better to experiment and see what happens rather than coming up with an idea of what you want to do which may be beyond your capabilities. As an example, he gave us a simple sketch consisting of a loop which filled the screen with identical, organized, uniformly spaced squares. I admit I thought this was very basic as I was familiar with the loop and what each part of it controlled but after a bit more encouragement from Kim, I ended up with a pulsating mass of coloured circles which keep changing colour, creating a shimmering curtain. Still a very simple sketch.
From there I decided to start a bit simpler first with the cheese instead, heading in the direction of a game like interplay between the mouse and the cheese. In a short while, I had created sketch which created a randomly sized and coloured hole on a yellow background - Make Your Own Cheese! Until I figure out the proper way to upload the sketch, you can copy and paste it from here.
Upon learning how to import images and sounds, the scope of possibility widened again so by the end of the day, I had a mouse running horizontally across the screen, reappearing at a different Y-Coordinate each time it disappeared offscreen. An image of a mallet is attached to the cursor which upon clicking, swings the mallet down. If the mallet successfully hits the mouse, Roy Lictensteins 'Whaam' appears on the end of it - a bit of a joke following on from my adaptation of his use of bende dots. By the end of today, it had developed into a game as such, where by successfully hitting the mouse, it's position was reset to the left of the screen but it's speed would increase with each successful hit. If the mouse reached the opposite end of the screen, it would come up with a game over.
After getting away from Processing for a bit and thinking it over and even discussing my ideas with people not directly involved in year 1 BCT over a coffee, they were quick to offer more suggestions on making it more interactive as well as how to bring back the cheese. So from here, I'm continuing on trying to make it more of a game with more of a complex objective and with counters though need to keep trying to incorporate a bit more creative play and experimentation.
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