Project #4: Exquisite Corpse

Description

Pull the slider to reveal a surprise :)

Design Elements

I worked with Nikita and Piper for this assignment. All three of our corpse drawings were so different, both in drawing style and in form type, that it took me a while to come up with a combination that I was satisfied with. I ended up creating an almost new sketch, with elements from all three drawings.

Nikita

I had Nikita's middle, so I ended up using the body of his figure (minus the head) as the base of the sketch.

Piper

I had Piper's head. I changed the head of the my sketch's figure to an adapted version of the long-haired creature's head in Piper's sketch. The falling leaves are also inspired by this sketch.

Isha

This distorted body was my sketch. I had my lower body. Instead of awkwardly fitting in a stomach and bare feet into the others' full-body figures, I decided to take the concept of the internal organs and place a hidden layer of body parts underneath my sketch's figure.

Design Process

I was able to figure out how to manipulate the figure and the slider reveal without much difficulty. The point where I got stuck was when I started drawing the leaves, and decided I wanted them to fall and loop back at different speeds. I differentiated the parameter for the speed of the leaves every time I called the leaf function, but every time, all the leaves would fall together at whatever the highest speed of any leaf was. I spent a couple hours troubleshooting different solutions, but no luck - they simply refused to fall at different speeds.

I ended up asking for help from a cousin, who helped me figure out that I needed to define a seperate variable that moved the position of the leaves, independent from the leaf position and the leaf speed - before, I was only working with the leaf speed to change the rate of falling. After I corrected it, the leaves were falling on their own, independent of the leaf speed, and I could use the leaf speed variable solely to control the speed of the leaves and not the movement itself.

Reflection

I found it pretty cool that the sketch turned out sort of Halloween-themed, even though that was not my intention!

This project was challenging in unexpected ways - I assumed I'd have more difficulty buildign the corpse on p5 and making it interactive, but that part was quick to come together. I had more trouble figuring out a way to combine all three - very different - sketches, and figuing out the business with the leaves. The leaves, in particular, I assumed would come together faster, but they ended up taking me the longest.

Especially because of the last bit of difficulty, this ended up being in interesting project just for figuring out small details that made the sketch do what I wanted it to. It was frustrating for a while, but equally rewarding once I finally got it to work.