week 2

starting off with little tasks

descriptive

we had our presentation today. it was a quick one - to help andreas figure out where we were on our projects. the way i phrased my presentation was very broad. i should be more specific in my wording. for example, when i said that i was someone who enjoyed figuring things out, i did not specify what types of ‘things’ i liked to figure out. for that, i was given homework. by the end of next week, i was tasked to figure out 5 ways of eating an apple and 5 ways of drawing a circle of p5js. it was important in code to specify what we wanted as clearly as possible. i was also not allowed to use texts in my homework.

as andreas mentioned that some of my classmates should create little booklets to submit their homework, (i was only required to submit a pdf) but i designed my homework with a booklet format in mind as well. i got a little carried away doing this, and accidentally created a little homework series.

i started off with the circles. the apples are probably easier to complete, but i thought that by coding, i would be able to get myself back into school mode (i’m still on holiday mode)

how many ways can there be, to draw circles on p5js? its just circle(); isn’t it? i tried to think out of the box, and instead of focusing on different circle drawing methods with p5js, i thought of the different ways people could draw circles in general.

colouring in the shape of a circle
just the outlines
colouring the background to leave a circle

colouring in the shape of a circle and simply drawing a circle using outlines was quite straightforward. this could be translated into using fill() and stroke() on p5js respectively. i could figure the last point out later.

and then i was kind of stuck with coming up with ways of drawing a circle. i didn’t really want to use chatgpt to help for this assignment. i changed my method of thinking, and i brought p5js into the picture. with p5js, another method was that i could ‘drag’ colours into the shape of a circle, by using lines and motion.

function setup() {
createCanvas(400, 400);
angleMode(DEGREES);
background(247,248,246);
a=0;
}

function draw() {
push()
translate(width/2,height/2);
rotate(a);
line(0,0,60,60);
pop()
a=a+1;
}

without p5js, this would be the same as colouring in a circle, but this experiment gave me a more interesting result. at the rate which the lines rotated, i was able to come up with interesting textures and patterns. i realised that i could use this same method to colour in the background. it was more interesting to continue using textures.

the last one was thought of using p5js as well. i realised i could draw circle in segments, to colour them in segments. this was done using the arc() tool.

analytical

i wanted to experiment with sin() cos() and tan() functions in p5js. mathematically, those should have worked. however, the curves produced on p5js were not perfect ¼ arcs. so sadly it did not work. the other methods of drawing circles were fine.

i definitely could have been more resourceful with looking up ways of drawing circles on p5js. i did try, but google came up with more simplistic answers compared to what i decided on. the results were all using the name circle() function, while using different types of descriptive formats. i thought having the circles look different due to the different ways there were being drawn was more interesting.

reflective

my making process is very self-centred. if i don’t like the results offered to me, i’ll achieve the results that i’ve already had on my mind on my own. it’s something i should reflect on, as this will probably not work very well if i’m aiming to achieve something experimental. in the end, my results often turn out seeming quite mediocre, due to my reluctance to explore and broaden my way of doing things. i do like the way my circles look, but i don’t know if it’s very interesting to others.