Reflection — How computation applies to my interests?
I remember working as a research assistant for a researcher right after my undergrad, and one of the first thing I had to do was data entry for a research work. That was when I was exposed to the power of spreadsheets, where we can use custom functions to help compute, organized and sort the different data which made the work so much easier! And honestly it was quite challenging and fun figuring out ways to use the different functions and once that worked, I feel like I accomplished something.
I was thinking about the moment when I transitioned to my professional career as a digital producer - about how computation applied here and I was stuck for a minute. But if I look at it from a macro point of view, the different applications that I was also some form of computation. For example, the usage of Adobe suites like Premiere Pro. The idea of importing a footage, creating a timeline, cutting and trimming the clips, color grading, exporting of the final cut — these are all possible due to computation. Someone had to actually build this software from scratch and I take it for granted that it is readily available for me.
Now that I’m in this where I learn about the basics of code, I do want to explore how I can use them in the medium I’m familiar with — video. I would like to explore how I can create interaction with the audience as they watch the videos — will I be able to create prompts throughout the video clips for audience to choose? Or could there be interaction of the things they see in the frame? I think with this class, it opens up to the possibilities of what can be done.
Reflection — Self Portrait on P5.js
Overall, I felt like I’m doing a math class where I had to use these numbers to create shape. The one thing that I felt was missing was a graph paper.
First I began by drawing the basic elements by using basic shapes — head, body, arms and glasses
https://editor.p5js.org/Chris-ITP/full/m7tfaycam
Then I think about what other elements I can include — like a smile (which took me a long time to create because I had no idea how to deal with the arc() code)
Note to self: arc(200, 195, 20, 20, 0, PI); arc (x , y , w , h, start, stop, mode) x, y = location of center w, h = width and height of arc start & stop = angle where the arc starts and stops (in radians) mode = OPEN (semi circle), CHORD (closed semi circle), PIE (closed pie)
I had so much difficulty figuring out how to use the start & stop function, until I realized it was referring to the angle where the arc starts & stops in radians. This helped me to create the smile as well as the cap.
Another difficulty I had was figuring out how to draw ‘hair’. Initially I had an idea of using 2 semicircles to create the impression of a hair parting but I think I didn’t like that look.
Here was the result of creating hair:
//Hair
arc(210, 110, 120, 85, 3.5, 0.28, CHORD);
arc(201, 120, 130, 130, PI, 5.78, CHORD);
Experimented with hair
Then I decided to just go with the cap look
Went with cap instead
After settling with the initial image, then I decided to experiment with the colors. The colors were hard to do cause I had to guess the combinations of R,G,B - which was a test to my color theory (which isn’t very good) so I had to do trial and error and see which one works. Decided with orange for the cap because of I like this color, and blue for the shirt because it’s my favorite color. Eyes and mouth were the typical black and red. On hindsight as I’m writing this post, I could have created details with the eyes with simple ellipse.
Coloring the image
Then I decided to color the background as my final step. Wanted to replicate the idea of blue grass and green grass. I think the next step I could experiment with using shapes to draw clouds, or even grass.