MDDN 242: The ABC Project

So, I know I haven't done anything blog-wise for this class really, so I thought I'd do a final blog post for Project 2, just to give a total run down of my process. Initially we were given a letter to work with and then ideate on.

For the project, what we actually had to make was a letter than would be animated to be fully formed when the mouse was at the centre of the screen. The letter I was given was "J" (uppercase). My game for this course is "simple is best", and for this project, I really wanted to do something that was made up on many smaller parts.

Initially I looked at working with curving lines, but then I decided on something more linear. I decided that I could have a multitude of crosses make up my form. They would be scattered across the screen, and then come together to form my letter. My first challenge was to make the J actually something the computer program could actually recognise and work with. The computer doesn't actually know what a "J" is, so initially I had to make the J out of an array of points, that I would then have the Xs gravitate towards.

Making the array of Xs was slightly easier, as the location of all of them is randomly decided, rather than having to be specifically plotted. The Xs have 11 variables each, most of which are slightly randomly decided, ensuring that the wash of Xs isn't too linear. Another element that I got to play around with was the speed at which the Xs pulse. That's right, I got them to pulse. Cool or what? I got the Xs to pulse at different speeds as well as different interpolations. So they move at different rates at different times. That makes it much more interesting to look at.

Another aspect that I initially scrapped, but then re-considered was having something in the background going on at the same time. The reason I reconsidered it was because when the J was fully formed, the surrounding area on the canvas was and felt very empty. This was something I wanted to rectify, so I decided to have the background morph with the transition into the letter. I worked with extremely faded crosses for when the Xs are dispersed, while when the Xs come in to form the J, the background Xs would shift to a much darker and more imposing background that filled the surrounding space well.

One thing that I decided to change my mind on at the last minute was my colour scheme. Initially, I was working with a set of blue hues, but then I read the brief, where it stated that the colour scheme of the project should echo the Alphabet Book we initially looked at to start off the project. The colour scheme for that was red, black, and white, so I adjusted my work just a little bit to exemplify that.

Here is a little .gif for how the transition works, but it really doesn't show how the Xs all pulse. However, it does show the movements of the Xs from their initial points to their final locations, which is a big part of actually creating the letter. 

Fortunately, after a bit of research, I found a way of getting my sketch online. Sadly I can't get it onto my blog without breaking it, but you can view it over at Open Processing. Check it out!