Midterm – Pride Dragon Generator
Inspired by the simple yet compelling cartoons of @dinosaurcouch, and the fun and customizability of avatar designing websites such as Picrew, I set out to make a “Pride Dragon Generator” in which users can select a LGBTQ+ identity and receive a dragon with spike colors of the corresponding pride flag. I wanted to incorporate an educational element as well, and what came to mind was using the generator to teach people LGBTQ+ terms in Chinese. When the user hovers their mouse over each of the buttons, an audio will play pronouncing the Chinese term. When they click on a button, they will get a picture of a dragon with, for example, lesbian flag spike colors. They can then save this image to their device.
Dinosaurcouch comic, featuring dinosaurs with lesbian and bi flag color spikes
One of the many customizable avatars in Picrew image maker
Most Frightening Part & Risk Reduction
The most frightening parts of this midterm are 1) the underlying logic of the “hover over button” interactions how users will go forward and go back to the homepage, 2) the sound playing and image saving functionalities, and 3) the complexities of drawing a dragon.
To address risk #1, I first tried to make interactive buttons on my own, and then went to IM Lab hours. With help from Coding Train and Zion, the IM lab assistant, I now have the basic logic of my program, and buttons that enlarge when you hover over them. The next steps are adding the sound and customization options.
To address risk #3, I went to this website to try to better understand bezierVertex, and played around with it a bit to get the hang of which numbers control which aspects of the shape.