More cheese

So what I ended up with at the end was perhaps not very experimental as much as calculated and methodically planned out. I was always thinking about what I could add on rather than just playing around. Regardless, what I came up with was a simple game. Content with my interaction between the mouse and the player, I integrate more of an aim for the player vs. the aim of the program.

Whenever the mouse reached the edge of the screen, the image of a cheese would be replaced with another image of the same cheese but with a chunk missing, progressively getting smaller with every success of the mouse. This was done with the method of creating an animation, with each frame triggered by the x value of the mouse. I introduced counters which added the successful hits of the mouse and total hits which I was intending to set up as a percentage score of how accurate the player was.

The game then seemed too basic so I introduced the element of the random. Triggered by a timer, a segment of cheese would appear at a random position which, when clicked upon, triggered a random number. Each random number changed an element of the game which would be reset if another segment was clicked on. These elements included manipulation of the speed of the mouse, the remaining amount of cheese, invert the colour of the screen, make the mouse change y coordinates randomly, generate a distracting back ground and generate a second mouse. This was how I approached the idea of changing elements of the program whilst incorporating them into my original sketch. Other elements I would've also like to play with would've been changing the orientation of the screen or other colour manipulations.


This last part I actually found surprisingly easy to program, and throughout the process it was always the things I thought to be more simple which proved to be more complicated. I personally found when I approached Processing with logic and rational thinking, especially the more mathematical aspects. Though it was difficult program to get the hang of, especially not having dealt with any programming language before, it was an approachable challenge I enjoyed and think would come in useful in future studio projects and enable me to grasp more of what is potentially possible with it.

Whack-a-mouse

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.

Say cheeese.

New half a semester, new paper, new project - new piece of software to sink my teeth into! The concept of programming with processing seemed a little daunting at first but walked through in baby steps definitely made it a lot more feasible. At the same time it was rather frustrating in that it seemed like an overly complicated way to create an overly simplistic image - one which could have been created in the simplest of imaging programs in maybe five minutes - but it is important to keep the bigger picture in mind.

From learning basics such as creating basic colours, shapes, lines and curves, opacity and placing them on a x y coordinate window, the possibilities began to expand rapidly as we introduced movement and other variables. Always we were shown examples of what is possible with processing, hence we are only splashing in the puddles. I found it relatively easy to keep up with it all and keep adding onto my creation, content with the relative basics and only minor frustrations which will eventually enable me to tap into the greater potential of the software in the endless varieties of combinations of numbers and characters.

Day 1 I was not content with creating some simplistic image composed of a few mere shapes and colours so trawled through my collection of art history images for inspiration which was found in the genius of Roy Lichtenstein. A well known name and body of works, synonymous with the pop art era, consisting of cartoon like images made up from repeated circles applied with a toothbrush through a perforated screen to create patterns, background and shading. Images were often appropriated and the scale and methods related to ideas of mass production to simulate the effect of commercial printing, like a magazine or newspaper image blown up to reveal the method of printing with dots. I chose to use an image of cheese as it was relatively simple to construct and had possibilities to expand upon. With the new techniques we learnt, I developed animated 'stink lines', flies which moved when the mouse came near it, and a mouse which followed the cursor, set against and detailed with a series of bende dots.

My biggest source of frustration so far has been trying to work out a mathematical formula to make the animated lines reverse direction - something I still haven't figured out and I'm sure there's some terribly simple way to do it I've managed to overlook. Besides from that, I've enjoyed using processing so far as it works on concepts of logic, such as mathematical equations. In that sense I find it easier to use than MAX/MSP because it is more easily laid out exactly what is controlling what and points out more simplistically where your errors are coming from. At this point, errors are still very frequent.


Image: Untitled (Paper Plate) 1969
Image: M-maybe 1979
Image: Close up of bende / benday dots