My concept
- There were two main components that I wanted to explore with this project: creating a background and creating the figure. I drew a rough sketch of what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a background of the night sky, and in the foreground I wanted the figure of a cat/woman. My end product became very different from this preliminary sketch, but I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted to create myself as my spirit animal, by blending my physical features with that of a cat. The choice of placing myself in space is because I simply love the idea of staring into the night sky and seeing the moon and stars, and to surround myself with these objects would be symbolic of the way I enjoy wondering, imagining, and dreaming.
Reflection
- I began with the background, the sky’s color, and the moon and stars. Then, I changed my mind and wanted my catwoman to be in space, so I created her planet and other planets around her. This was more time consuming than I originally thought it would be. I had to place the stars, I had to choose where to position the other planets, and I had to create the details of the main planet (the holes), which I later had to adjust because I put the catwoman on top and wanted the placement of these objects around her to look ideal.
- After finishing the background, I jumped into creating my catwoman. I started with her head, neck, and body. I started becoming worried, because I wasn’t sure about their orientation. But then, I started adding the details: eyes, mouth, nose, hair. This proved particularly difficult, with each component taking longer than the last. I didn’t like how my piece looked, but continued adding details: the cat ears, whiskers, eyebrows, shirt, blush, necklace, astronaut helmet. In the end, I came up with my finished product that I have grown to like. I realized that the more time and more details to put into it, the more it begins looking like something worthwhile, and I realized that slowly the piece will start to come together. It won’t be as I imagined, but will be what I was able to make given what I have learned as well as what I had researched.
Sketch
Code I’m proud of
Creating the hair for my portrait took me a while. I had to layer it and I had to think about where I was able to write the code for the different layers, I had to copy-paste it into later sections so the stars/ears did not overlap. I used a circle to create the first layer of the hair. I then wanted the hair to look like a bob-cut, so I created a rectangular cut-off with the color of the planet behind the figure so that it would blend. I then added the bangs. In a later line of code, I framed the face of the figure, by creating two rectangles and placing it on the sides of the face to look as if the hair is over her face.
//hair
fill('#471706');
noStroke();
ellipse(145,277,150,150);
fill('#A3A3A3');
rect(90,330,110,30);
//head
noStroke();
fill('rgb(201,139,76)');
circle(145,270,98);
//hair bangs
fill('#471706');
noStroke();
ellipse(125,230,50,40);
ellipse(167,230,50,40);
//hair to frame face
fill('#471706');
noStroke();
rect(94.25,242,10,70)
rect(186,240,10,70)
Ideas for future work/Improvements
- I would really love to add animation to this work. I wasn’t sure how to do it so I looked at videos and articles online, but I did not completely understand the code for it, so I decided to leave it out for this assignment, but I look forward to implementing it in future projects. I wanted the background to not be so static, possibly with the moon phases and shooting stars, and possibly the rotation of the planets in the background. Regarding the catwoman, I’d want her to possibly wiggle her tail and move her ears. I feel like those animations would add to the portrait, by enhancing the background of outer space and the choice of a cat as my spirit animal.