Week 9 Class Notes

Interactive Illustration Quick Critique

• What do you see?

• What can you do?

• What choices are you faced with? What options can you choose from?

• Do the choices have a meaningful impact on the experience?

• Is there a beginning? An end? Should there be?

• What is the piece about?

• How do the visuals support the meaning?

• How does the interaction support the meaning?

• How has the project changed? How do these changes impact the meaning?

• How was the illustration improved?

• How was the interaction improved?

• How do the two states/pages relate to each other?

• How do you activate the second state?

• How do you return to the first state?

Creating a Tool

Computers are versatile powerful tools for artists. Hundreds of commercial apps are targeted at artists and designers. Artists often employ several applications together when creating their work. Many artists have created their own applications to achieve particular effects. Sometimes these tools are used only once, sometimes they become an important part of design culture.

Some examples:

• Pitaru/Paterson Rhonda Forever
• Toby Schachman Recursive Drawing
• Mr. Doob Voxels, Branching, Harmony
• Evil Mad Scientist StippleGen
• Adobe Photoshop
• Analytic bfxr
• Zefrank Scribler, Snowflake
• HPI Protopiper
• Combscript

The “Class Paint” Project

We, as a class, are going to build an drawing tool together. We will do this by each building a tool/brush, and then collecting them together into a single interface.

Topics:

• what is a tool? what makes a “good” tool?
• further exploration of p5
• contributing to a larger coding project
• using Github pull requests
• touching on object oriented programming

The Shell

I have built a quick and dirty shell for the drawing app. The shell handles creating the toolbar the user will use to pick tools. It also provides an interface to let the user pick a color to draw with. There are also a few example tools/brushes.

Lets take a very quick look at the application and how it works.

Creating a “Splatter” Brush

In class demo of creating an empty brush script, adding it to the project, and then coding a particular drawing behavior.

Setting up your own Brush

• Fork and Clone the Assignment_Paint Repo
• Duplicate the Pencil folder.
• Rename the duplicate folder, and files inside.
• Add a script tag to index.html to load your new brush.
• Start experimenting

In class work time

Assignment

Create a new brush/tool for the paint program. Your tool can do almost anything, but try to stick to these guidelines:

• Your tool should be controlled, in some way, by the user.
• Your tool should change the drawing, leaving behind some kind of mark.
• Your tool should not completely clear the exiting drawing.
• Your tool should use the global forecolor variable, but it doesn’t have to use it for color.
• You may make multiple tools if you wish

When writing your code:

• Use clear, clean code.
• Format your code.
• Use comments to explain what your code does and how.
• Include a comment header describing your brush, and including your name.

Next week we will add everyone’s brushes into the app, and review the resulting app. We will have a small crit of each brush, and also discuss the emergent properties of the overall app.

We will also vote on the following awards:

• Most Useful
• Least Useful
• Most Beautful
• Most Interesting
• Most Complicated
• Most Elegant
• Strangest
• Most Unique
• Most Natural
• Least Natural
• Easiest to Use
• Hardest to Use
• Most Fun
• Least Fun
• Best All Around