Into Digital Arts

    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...