As I was short on time for my fourth assignment I decided to utilise it as an opportunity to experiment with several different ideas.
The first of these ideas was an attempt to replicate the playfulness of the Pixar opening animation. For me (and I’m sure many others in the class) this opening sequence featuring Pixar’s familiar serif typography and iconic lamp character is incredibly nostalgic. I specifically remember how satisfying the movements of the lamp and the reaction to the letter was to me as a child. I attempted to replicate the most notable movement from this reference in my sketch by focusing on the element of bouncing.
I did this by enabling the individual letters of the word ‘jump’ to jump and bounce once they reach their starting point. I am happy with the jumping and bouncing effect as I feel that is smooth and encapsulates the playfulness I was going for. However, as I was unfamiliar with how to go about it I used ChatGPT as a reference and, while it did give me a good starting point for my desired effect, it also produced a noise-like shaking which I could not figure out how to remove. I am still proud of this piece of code which enables the jumping and bouncing effect onto the individual letters.
isMouseOver() {
let letterWidth = textWidth(this.char);
let letterHeight = this.size;
return mouseX > this.x - letterWidth / 2 && mouseX < this.x + letterWidth / 2 &&
mouseY > this.y - letterHeight / 2 && mouseY < this.y + letterHeight / 2;
}
}
Using ChatGPT was a result of my limited time and, had I given myself enough time, I would have avoided the other main problem in my code which is that it became difficult to read after adding my second word – “zoom” – which moves across the screen when pressed. As I was attempting to do many different things (with the help of AI) in a short amount of time, things became overlapped and the “jump” function became used for both words.
Despite this, I feel that I have a better understanding of physics, classes and arrays after producing this work and will look to incorporate them more in my upcoming projects.