Category: 02-LivingWallpaper

Computationally exported gif. Super pixelated 🙁 Loses all the details and subtleties 

Screen Capture (Better quality) 

Sketch

I am not satisfied with what I have, but it is due to my inefficient time management skills this week .. :/ I couldn’t get my smoke to look nicely with the fire. Also, I really felt my lack of basic skills in constructing very foundational shapes. It takes me forever to create a really simple shape.

I used the exponentialInOut, sineIn and sineOut from p5.func to animate the movement of the fire.

CODE

 

 

I wanted to make a transforming tiling pattern that continuously transforms into different shapes. With a little more research I realized it’s actually kind of hard to transform between tiling patterns. I am not very satisfied with the end product because I really don’t like the colors. But this was my best attempt after trying many color palettes so I had to stick with it 🙁

The shapes are described as a series of points, and I used multiple transformation functions to go between shapes and colors, such as exponentialIn, circularInOut, normalizedInverseErf, etc.

The concept behind my design is replicating my current environment and feelings. I’m living by myself and working remotely, so I always feel alone, especially now since school started and the campus reopening. In my original design, I had the speed of the seaweed contrast the speed of my fish because it felt like the seaweed represented my anxiety and the multitude of anxieties I have been feeling recently. The fish’s easing speed represented the change of mood I usually have during the day, with an up and down. I used the “Double-Exponential Sigmoid” easing function for that reason. With my final design, I decided to decrease the number of seaweed and slow down the animation to instead represent how I feel when I’m stuck in my current location/environment. Everything is very still, quiet, and lifeless.

I am very frustrated and disappointed about my work because my original design and code didn’t work as an endless loop of animation no matter how much I tried to tweak it. The animation of the seaweed just didn’t match the animation of the fish so I had to simplify the seaweed animation. Critiquing myself, I find my final design a little too simple.

My original code and design

Final code and design

Sketch

I kept the moving/looping portion of the animation simple so I could focus more on the graphics. To shape the way the red circle in my animation changed size, I used the double Quadratic Sigmoid easing function. The double Quadratic Sigmoid has a swinging, breathing momentum to it and it does not appear distracting or busy. I think that my use of the Scribble library was successful because it added the most character to my project. I also think my piece is more successful as a background on Zoom than as a gif because it becomes very busy as a small gif. My piece is still a bit cartoonish and crude and lacks the emotional weight of my original concept (which was to create a piece that reflects my anxiety and recent emotions).

 

For my living wallpaper, I selected several easing functions because I liked how they made it easy to hide the beginning and end of the loop. I kept the doubleExponentialSigmoid from the starter code and used hermite and hermite2 for the moving dots. I also used the cubicBezier and doubleCubicOgeeSimplified for a few of the groups of planes. (CODE)

I think that I succeeded in creating depth and abstracting the notion of a room and walls. I also think the color palette is particularly satisfying. I think there could have been some better use of the negative space and the layering might have been overdone. Perhaps, I also could have diversified the variety of shapes.

SKETCHES