I AM IN LOVE WITH VARIABLES.
I am. I’m just putting it out there. I went to the Saturday workshop with Moon and saw how he used variables for everything. It seemed weird at first, but it is such a lifesaver! I was getting lost with all the numbers and declaring variables has made the process so much easier/better. It’s still complicated and brain frying, but it’s at least manageable now. I feel I can do much much more, which gives me hope for future projects.
Let’s go back to the beginning though, for this homework we had to build a sketch with three parameters
- One element controlled by the mouse.
- One element that changes over time, independently of the mouse.
- One element that is different every time you run the sketch.
I started with trying to build something simple that would encompass the three requirements, and after fidgeting around with the editor during class and the help session I came up with something pretty simple, but pretty cool–I think!
I still wanted to do something more though, and I wanted to figure out how to expand on concepts learned. After the end of the help session on Friday (?) I got the idea of doing a fortune teller, so I threw myself on the deep end of the pool and said “screw it, let’s try.”
I came on Saturday to Moon’s workshop, and I honestly think that if it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. It just helped me get more organized, and the little tricks we’ve been learning so far (using width, or height for example) have made a world of a difference.
From there, I’ve been working on this fortune teller sketch and typing away. I wanted to have the crystal ball be the random part of the sketch, while the iris of the eyes be the part that changes every time you open/refresh. It took me a while to figure it out (and of course, Mathura helped), but I just realized to put it up on the setup block instead of the draw block so that it would be continuously refreshing. d’oh!
Drawing the rest was time consuming, but I think I got a pretty good grasp on it. Here’s a bit of the step-by-step:
I had a bit of an issue with the If/else statement with the “mouseIsPressed” function because in the reference site you’re only supposed write them and have them work (which is exactly what I did in the overlapping circle one and it worked), but for some reason on this one, I needed to add the curly brackets to it. It worked, but I’m not sure why.
Another problem I encountered was the front part of the hood. I wanted it to curve so that the forehead wouldn’t look so cut off, but after asking second years and residents, nobody was able to give me an answer that would work. I tried using arc and bezier but they didn’t work. Someone suggested using the “beginShape” command (?) but I just didn’t have time to try. I’ll try for next week, and this week the fortune teller will just have a janky hood.
Two questions: I wonder if there’s a way to create a quad or polygon with a curved side? and, is there a way to switch the fill side of objects?