Into Digital Arts

homepages.utoledo.edu/jschaup2

    Firstly, I personally have very little experience with typography, which is why I have limited myself to one font type on my website. I have also limited my choices on how I stylize the chosen font in order to avoid any mistakes that would go unnoticed to me. However, after reading an article on how to structure typography, there have been several things that were made clear. In the article How to Structure an Effective Typographic Hierarchy Cameron goes over the best methodology on how to structure the fonts used on a particular page.      I personally never really thought of the importance of typographic hierarchy until I looked at several of Cameron's examples in her article. Typographic hierarchy brings structure to posted information and makes it so much easier to follow and see what a specific group of text will be about. By following four simple steps, one can bring this structure to anything that is typed.     1. Find an anchor font for ...

    In beginning my learning journey into interactive forms of artwork, it is very important to look at other successful works in order to gain an insight into how to create interesting works of art. A very interesting work called Luminarium designed by Alan Parkinson, the founder of Architects of Air. The Luminarium is a very interesting group of works. Each ones is a large inflatable structure that allows people to explore inside of, and discover what it has to offer. Not all interactive works of art have to respond to viewers actions, sometimes they are just a maze that permits open exploration.     When visitors first get a glimpse of this work, the outside does not exactly reflect that which is presented on the inside. The outer structure of this inflatable maze is a cluster of pointed geometric shapes, clustered together to create large domed structures with small connecting tunnels. If visitors are visiting at night, they might just notice that the struc...

        In every level in video games, there are hundreds of tiny details that all work together to shape the players experience. Little details, like the position of an item, or a safe place for a player to move through, can teach the player about the basic mechanics that are built into the game. The safe space, will teach the player what areas can be easily traversed, and how to actually move their character. By positioning an item in a specific place, this encourages the player to move along a specific path, and introduces the player to the fact that the game has an item system. Image Source

    I have just completed my second project utilizing the p5.js library in javascript. For this project, I utilized and improved ideas from my previous project in its implementation. I made an interactive artwork that is about oil and the ocean. After presenting it in class, there are some improvements that can be made.     Firstly, when the user clicks the mouse, a circle appears and this is used to collect the little specs of oil that are floating in the water. It was pointed out that it might be better to use a different shape rather than just a circle, such as a sponge. Also, the white bubbles are kind of covered up by the detail in the background image, so I should go into the background image and make some changes to it, to allow the white bubbles to stand out a bit more.     I have really enjoyed working with p5. Its a great tool that allows users to easily build visual effects and artworks for the web, without having to write an abundant amount of...

    I have been working on an interactive work utilizing the P5 javascript library. I came across a tutorial in the references on the P5 website about how to make a circle move around the screen. What was important was how the tutorial referenced the circle object in order to get it to move. I immediately thought about how when a water balloon is thrown at a wall, it leaves a splat shape on the wall. So I set out to make just that.     In the critique, it was expressed that I should fix the movement of the bubbles as they were a bit too jittery and all of the movement made the overall project a bit too noisy. There were also a number of improvements that were suggested that I would love to implement. One of which is the flow of all of the bubbles in a common direction. Also, it would have been nice if the bubbles moved to the other side of the screen when they went off of the canvas so that there are more bubbles coming from the other direction.     All o...

    Chapter 8 in the book The Art of Game Design  is all about the actual production process that is followed after brainstorming is complete and a team has an idea for what game they will be developing. One of the topics that this chapter focuses on are the ideas of software development, waterfall and a more circular idea designed by Barry Boehm. As a computer science major, I have encountered both of these ideas through my time in college and in the busniss world. Both theories have their positives and negatives, but the idea of "waterfall development" is a much stricter way of approaching software development when compared to Boehm's approach.     With a waterfall approach, this does not leave any room to go back and revisit the original idea and add or remove core features. This approach was used in the development of many old forms of windows, which also coincided with how the software was sold. For example, Microsoft's windows operating systems. Win...

    Processing is a very powerful set of tools that allow artists, and people who are not particularly experienced with coding, to create works of art utilizing code. It is a very strong tool for getting those interested in the visual design, interested in code. Many schools nowadays use this approach when teaching code, even to computer scientists and engineers. In order to effectively teach coding to someone, they must understand the fact that, what may seem to be, a simple action, is made up of a set of simple small actions. This is essentially what computer programming is. A programmer assembles a set of small rules that, all added together, become something more complex. When using a visual support in teaching programming, the student can see a direct result to a line of code that they add to their program. When with traditional teaching, the only feedback that would be given would be a number in a debugger output, which is much more difficult to understand when first beg...

    As a budding game designer, I have very limited resources available to me when developing a game, either this be time or the amount of work one person can accomplish on their own. One of the design philosophies that people like me can follow is one of minimalism. After reading the scholarly article Towards Minimalist Game Design  I have had some ideas on how to make my games more tangible for one developer to create.     An important observation is in minimalist games that are made by indie developers and can claim wide success. One such game is Undertale, created almost entirely by one developer Toby Fox. This game expresses many of the minimalist design philosophies that are described in the scholarly article, which is the focus of this post. Most primarily, we see the lack of macro-mechanics. This is a primary target when designing a minimalist game as it simplifies development while not necessarily sacrificing depth of play or exploration. The main macr...

    We have finally begun working with P5 in javascript. Today was the first day of just messing around with the library and its different capabilities. I just started by messing with colors and different shapes and making them move across the screen. My first drawing will be posted below, it looks like a fun mess. But that's the best way to find ones way around a new program. Source Code: function   setup () {      createCanvas ( 600 ,  600 );   } var   i  =  0 ;  var   a  =  0 ;  //RGB values to start at  var   r  =  25 ;  var   g  =  255 ;  var   b  =  100 ;  var   reverse  =  true ;     function   draw () {      strokeWeight ( 1 );       background ( r , g , b );      fil...

    There were a number of problems that were brought up in the critique of my game Paper's Dream. The biggest and most adamant of the changes that were brought up was the texturing that I used. It looked very flat and basic, with just minor changes in color, changing these to photo based textures would be very beneficial. So I changed the textures of the trees, leaves, and bushes. This resulted in a much better look overall. The other issue was that when the bird collided with a tree, it would sometimes spin off in a random direction, this was caused because of the different colliders that were on each part of the bird. Changing this to one box colliders for the whole bird object, fixed this issue. I look forward to my future projects in this class.

    The Art of Game Design  continues to be an intriguing read that surprises me in new ways with each chapter. Chapter 6 focuses on the importance that theme has on games and how theme should be treated in a game's design. Theme isn't just something that the player learns from the game, it is the thought or idea that the game should try to represent in every possible way it can. This chapter covers two forms of themes, experienced and resonant themes. Experienced themes are just that, the themes that are experienced by the player through the game's story and setting, however resonant themes are a bit different. Resonant themes are the ones that are below the surface and aren't really experienced but have some deep truth that parallels those truths that the player holds. These are the themes that resonate deeply with players and make a story truly meaningful to a player's core.      To people who do not really play video games, they can be easily seen as a...

    Another project has reached its conclusion. For this project, we were to construct a game all about collecting things. My game is called Paper's Dream  and it is about a paper airplane that wishes to be a bird. The object of the game is to guide the airplane to the feathers around the map, without using all of the flights that are available to the player. This was a great project as it really taught me a bunch about Unity and I am looking forward to the upcoming 2D projects. 

    The Garden of Forking Paths is a story about a testament of a German spy about his attempt to send a notification to his contacts about a secret British weapons cache. In his attempt to reach someone who can pass on his message, he comes to the home of Dr. Stephen Albert. Dr. Albert introduces the main character to a garden, whom the main character believes to be his ancestor's created, "the garden of the forking paths." This garden was never actually physically constructed in the sense that one would expect. What he ended up creating was a novel that had several disconnected story lines, which encompass the idea of bifurcation.  In which, whenever a decision is made by a character, all possible outcomes occur. The novel has a different meaning each and every time it is viewed. More specifically, the novel diverged in time, meaning that time would split resolving in two separate timelines whenever a choice comes along. This is somewhat similar to the infinite universe...

      Psychogeography is a term used to describe a type of exploration, one that emphasizes playfulness and a lazy exploration. This links very strongly to the next big project for my graphic design class. The next project is an interactive work of art where viewers should be able to explore to their heart't content. At its heart. the idea of psychogeography brings forward the thought that art and its surroundings should not be separated, and that they are one in the same. This has the ability to cause confusion in the viewers and corrupt's ones ability to identify where "function" ends and "play" begins. This is very interesting as this is meaning that people are able to "play" without realizing it. This is very important for my upcoming project as the basic idea of it is to allow people to explore. If I want people to enjoy what I create, the goal should be that viewers have fun and even better if they don't realize it until after they have f...

      In the last meeting of my Graphic Design 2 class, the website's each of the students had produced were shown and suggestions were given on how these could be improved. As I expected, there were many suggestions about how my site could be improved. The most necessary of the suggestions was about the chosen color style of my site. I had chosen a light blue background for each page on my site, however this color proved to be quite distracting from the actual content of the site. It followed that the other colors on this site did not quite allow for easy viewing of my content. Such as the header backgrounds that I had chosen, which where a lighter blue. These created large horizontal lines across the page that broke up my content, but were too obtrusive for their own good. These obtrusive lines were not the only issue with most of my pages, as the margins for each of the pages was slightly different. This is a big issue as the minor inconsistencies from page to page can...

      A article written by the BBC, discusses the history of the "uncrackable" logic in an old Atri game called Entombed . This game contains a table that an algorithm uses to generate a wall or an open spacein which a player may move through. John Aycock, a computer scientist at the at the University of Calgary, wished to study Entombed  as it had never been studied in great depth due to its lack of commercial success. In his studies, he came across a table who's logic was unknown. Aycock attempted to reverse engineer the table and to deduce the underlying logic that was used to create the table, but this was to no avail. Even after speaking to one of the developers of the game, who stated that the table was produced by another developer while they were drunk, the logic of the table was still unknown and remains such to this day.       One popular guess is that this table was just formed from trial and error until the table produced the desired outpu...

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      With continuing my study into game design, this has lead me back in time to a game that encapsulated my childhood, PAC-MAN. Each of these four ghosts has a fun name, that doesn't really fit their character in English, and a specific algorithm that is used to help guide them toward pac man and ruin a players day. Each of these ghosts have a very specific rule set that states where they can move on the game board. Such as, how the ghosts cannot move beyond the boarders of the board. Finally understanding how these ghosts work make me it clear how professional PAC-MAN players can perform so well. These algorithms work to position each ghost in a different position around the character. For example, the red ghost, Blinky, takes the immediate route to chase down pac man. If a player knows this, they can watch for red and always know where he will be going and can plan to avoid him. There is much more to game design than just what the player sees. What is becoming abundan...

      A paper written by Walter Benjamin titled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction  discusses the impacts on art with the advent of technologies such as the camera. The impacts of these forms of art, like photography and movies, are all from a form of recreation Benjamin dubs Mechanical Reproduction. Any creation of man has always been reproducible, but to varying degrees of difficulty. Before the creation of the camera, works of art would have had to been recreated by hand which took a lot of time and effort and the recreations themselves would be slightly different from the original as is the nature of human error. With technologies like the camera, works of art can be quickly captured and are often presented the mechanically produced copy instead of the original work.Benjamin states that there are many negatives to this method of exhibition of artwork as many things are lost when technology is used to present works of art that are not in...

      A great game to give to someone who has never played a video game before would by Super Mario 64. The object of the game is to save Princess Peach from the evil dragon Bowser. In order to do that, the player must find all of the power stars that have been hidden in the many secret worlds in the castle. Control Mario using the joystick and the A button to jump and B button to punch, with combination controls like Z and A at the same time to get a higher back flipping jump. The worlds are connected to the castle by the magic paintings hanging on the walls in the castle, jump through them to explore the different worlds. The power stars are scattered everywhere, go find them and save the princess!

      Throughout my life I have played a number of games. Games ranging from educational ones, teaching the alphabet, to more complex games that attempt give a new view of the world from a different perspective. There are a few games that stand out among the others, in that they left a profound impact on me that kept me coming back to replay them.       The first game that I played growing up was Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64 was the first three dimensional Mario exploration game. It was released in 1996 for the Nintendo 64. This game was very influential because it was one of the very first three dimensional games. It laid the roadwork for games of the generation. For me, the game was so memorable because I grew up playing the game. I would spend countless hours in front of the TV with my father hunting for stars and the 100 coins required in each level to obtain the hidden star. Each level was very different from the last so every level was a surprise. ...

I am a game designer.       These are the words that lead down the path of exploration into this new field of study for me. These are the words that Jesse Schell, in his book The Art of Game Design , coaches his readers to repeat in order to encourage them to continue on their study for game design. What is most surprising about Schell's approach at teaching his readers about game design is what he chooses to focus on and the path that the studies follow. Schell states that games, other than video games, are as important as studying video games themselves, and the design of these games is the same as design in other forms of entertainment. One must know why one plays in order to design a game that allows players to do just that, to play.       What really surprised me about Schell is that he believes that the most important skill that a game designer needs is the ability to listen. As an example, Shell said that a game designer must be able to listen to...

      A long time video game artist made a blog post about his view on making video games for a living as an indie creator. This blog post is an interesting read as it gives a sight into the mind of a relatively successful game developer. In this post the author discusses what type of games he believes are most successful and allow him to continue making games. These games are those that are built around reaching the widest possible audience with a minimal impact on those who play it. On the other side of the spectrum, the author states that the games that are designed with a specific audience and have a large impact on that audience, are not as successful as the previously discussed form of game.       I do have some things to say in response to this post as I do not quite agree with everything the author has to say. It does make sense that game developers must make games that have the widest appeal in order to reach the largest audience so that they can ...

      An artist portfolio is one of the most important aspects of an artist's professional life, as it displays their work and makes new opportunities available for the artist. A website, being the primary professional online presence for an artist, is very important to be made in a way that attracts viewers attention. If a website is creative and engaging with the user, it will encourage more attention to an artists' work.       As I begin to study the design of different artist portfolio websites, as I prepare to make my own, there are a few websites that I found that really stood out to me. The first of which is the website of a street artist known as Banksy. I really liked his website as it has a very simple design and is simple to navigate. I also really like how the font choice reflects the kind of art Banksy is involved in, as it resembles graffiti.       The second website I came across is probably my favorite on this list, this bei...

Welcome back everyone, and happy Halloween! This is the first part of three posts that I will be making about my project this week. The task for this week involves creating images using ascii characters, which can be easily done using multiple online tools which will generate an image made up of ascii characters directly from some input image. The first of which is glassgiant's ascii generator. This program is basic and pretty easy to use. The image that I fed this program was of a pumpkin on a white background. Using a photo with a white background as the input image is the easiest way to make the subject of the photo easy to see in the resulting image. I did try and put more complicated images through the program, but the results were not similar to the input. The second image was generated using the website text-image.com, this website gives the user much more control over what characters are used and also allows for color in its output image. I found a photo of a cherry...

This is the second post of a series of three about my project this week. This part of the project entailed using the website WordArt. This program generates an image based on a list of words and several user defined variables like color, shape and font. I watched a tutorial video on how to use the website, and in the example, they used the words from Green Eggs and Ham. I wanted to do something like this so I found a .txt file of the first book of harry potter and used these words to generate my image. When going through the different shapes, the one that made me think of harry potter, was an image of a dragon. I really liked the image and I find it really humerus what words the program made prominent.

This is the third part of the three posts I am writing about the project I have been working on this week. For this third portion, I made a number of images using Textorize, Textorize2, and Excoffizer. All three of these programs create images with text based on input photos. I created an image with each program to give them all a try. The first photo I used was a photo of the fall colors around my apartment, and then I used adjectives that describe the fall season. The second image that I made was using Textorize2 and this was made using a photo of cedar point. For the text, I used the wikipedia description of cedar point. The third image was made using Excoffizer. This program overlays wavy lines over the input photo. I used a photo that I took over fall break of Kings Island.