The More I Smile, The Less I See – A Self Portrait

For my project, I decided to present myself from the perspectives of my closest friends. As in, I gathered all the descriptive words and little jokes they’re made about my appearance. Ever since I changed my hair and got bangs, I’ve been called “Dora The Explorer”, hence my avatar is inspired the character from the childhood show. Moreover, I can’t hide my expression, so if I’m feeling something, my whole face contorts to a completely different person, almost. I was told I “look a different race” when I laugh the hardest, with my eyes closed shut and teeth bared out, hence the title.

let currentView; 
//defining a variable, which is going to decide what is going to be displayed 

function setup() {
  createCanvas(570, 400); //making a landscape scene
  currentView = noLaugh(); //the initial view is set to my resting face, variable is defined to a value 

} 
                  
function mousePressed() //when the mouse is clicked 
{ 
  if (mouseX > 212 && mouseX < 350 && mouseY > 285 && mouseY < 400) //setting limits to where you can click to make the view change 
  { 
    currentView = meLaugh(); //initial view changes because the variable is defined to another value 
  }
} 
function mouseReleased() //when the mouse is released 
{ 
  currentView = noLaugh(); //view changes to initial setting 
}

In my work, the snippet that I found the hardest to figure out and code is the angle and rotation of “waves”, nose and basically all the features of my face. But a piece of code that I’m incredibly proud of is making my sketch somewhat dynamic. After watching some youtube videos, I had it down. Since I’m ticklish, I added that element into my avatar, where if you click the mouse in certain parts of my body, the display changes to me laughing, from the usual death stare.

Although creating this project was fairly simple, I’d like to work more on limiting the “mousePressed” coordinate to specific areas, using a nested function if possible, rather than just putting coordinates of a regular rectangle. I would also like to work more on making smoother shapes with shading, instead of blocks of shapes on top of the other.