Practice & Assignments

In lesson 1 we started to learn the basic of drawing and colour with Processing.

I've uploaded some of my practice sketches to Open Processing, please see below...

This example the circle follows and stay with mouse movement, when the mouse is pressed the circle turns black, when unpressed it goes white again...

We made Alien type characters. I have added a random colour on the eyes and he takes off from the bottom of the screen... Although doesn't seem to come back!

Our first assignment was to create a character who's eye react to the mouse in some way. In my sketch I have added movement of the eyes with the mouse and when the mouse is pressed the eyes blink...

I found the first week confusing but after practising the simple exercises I began to understand the basics, although it was quite tedious, going back and forth back and forth. Also after seeing what can be achieved with Processing in my research I didn't find it too rewarding.

Unfortunately I missed the whole second week due to having bad tonsilitus. This was a big problem as I was finding the code hard to understand to begin with, missing a huge chunk of the middle of Sebs lessons didn't help at all.

On my return as I had missed so much I tried to catch up by using the Processing book. Going over the same as we learnt in the first week and trying to figure out the code the others learnt last week by myself. I struggled with this! Below are some examples of some of my sketches...

Some clickable buttons (an assignment from week 2)

The buttons move randomly and when clicked change colour...

Practising movement, colour and shapes...

Practising with scale, shape, colour and movement...

Particles and arrays...

For our final assignment we had to create a basic game. I have created a very basic pong game with a hit and miss scoring system. Having missed so much of Seb's teaching I really struggled with this... Its not great but it kind of works!

I tried to get a game over function but couldn't figure it out at all. I think I have managed the basics but that is where it ends with me and processing!
Although Processing isn't for me I'm still glad I have tried it and have a basic understanding of how it all works for future projects if needed.

Processing cont...

I've been scouring the Open Processing website where Seb will be leaving us our assignments and examples. There are some great examples from other peoples work. You can also view the source code to try and make sense of a bit more...

The below piece really grabbed my attention, its something different, I haven't come across much imagery used in Processing yet. I think this works well although it would have been amazing if the eyes binked! If that is even possible...

The above example reminds me of Brushes for ipad. As you move the mouse it leaves a really lovely textured brushstroke affect. I like the feature of changing the colour (by pressing 'c')

Processing cont...

After further research into what Processing can achieve I have found more examples of amazing visuals that I never thought would have been made with Processing.

At White Night in Brighton, there were many visuals projected onto buildings, for example one was made for The Pepper Pot at Queens Park showing what locals thought about the history of the building and what it could be used for in the future.

A similar idea was for Marlborough House celebrating its 200th year. A group of animators got together and produced various stories/comic books strips etc that were projected onto the building.

Our tutor for this module Seb Lee Delisle's job was to fill the gaps in between the animations, for this he used Processing.

Viewers tweeted in their dreams and these were projected around the edge of the building. He also created Victorian style clocks which counted down the minutes until the next show.

Processing

Our new project is to learn Processing... Processing is an open source programming language, it can be described as 'creative coding'.

We will be learning the basics and completing small assignments set by Seb.

Obviously it takes A LOT of practice to create visuals with Processing like the below examples, but it was interesting researching what is possible...

A sound reactive visual built with Processing. The visuals beautifully fit with the sound. I find this mesmerising and would love to find out how something like this works....

Heres another example of sound reactive visuals built with Processing for the same composer as above. It uses Particle effects. Each particle represents a frequency which affects the state of each particle.

Below is an example of some interactive processing. Processing creates virtual ribbons with the movement of an object in front of a web cam...

The below video is an example of processing used in an exhibition. The movement of the 'paintbrush' allows the user to 'paint like pollock'

This visual is beautiful, it just sits perfectly with the audio. Its very organic, it really reminds me of some of the visuals in the 2011 film 'Tree Of Life' (Visual Effects - Tree Of Life) - which were mainly made by using glass, water and paint!

Solar from flight404 on Vimeo.