Concept
It’s really hot outside, and I can’t help but think about relaxing in a pool, resting on a floatie with a popsicle in my hand. That, and my love for ducks, inspired the rubber ducky floaties popping around, with the background color representing a swimming pool.
Highlighted code
// beak fill(255, 115, 25); triangle((this.x - 195), (this.y - 140), (this.x - 130), (this.y - 180), (this.x - 105), (this.y - 140)); triangle((this.x - 195), (this.y - 140), (this.x - 130), (this.y - 125), (this.x - 105), (this.y - 140));
While the shape of the duck looks simple, there are actually a lot of different shapes that make up the object. When it comes to creating a shape that moves, it becomes difficult to make sure all the shapes have the correct coordinates so that they look like they are “stuck” together instead of floating around, because then it would no longer look like a duck. That is why I am most proud of this part of the code. It required a lot of time to figure out what to add or subtract from the x and y variables in order to keep the whole object together as it moves.
How this was made
I used what we learnt in class and the p5.js reference to create this project. I first started off with creating shape of the rubber duck floatie and then proceeded to add the shadows to add some more depth to it. I also made sure to picks specific colors to add another layer of realism, that background color was picked to simulate a pool and I used this color guide to pick it.
Reflection
I am happy with what I was able to achieve. However, in the future I would like to learn how to create an actual hole in the shape rather than filling it in with the background color, so I can create a more realistic floatie.
However, I faced a small step back when I realized that the floatie was too big and one floatie took up the whole canvas. Instead of going back and trying to scale down every coordinate manually, I used the reference to learn how to use the scale()function. It was a bit challenging to understand at first, but once I experimented with different values and learned how to stop the function from repeating with the use of the resestMatrix() function, I was able to scale the floatie down only once.
Reading Reflection
I found it very interesting when Crawford talked about how in a conversation you need to apply all three steps (listening, thinking, and speaking) in order to have a successful interaction. What stood out to me was the idea that if one of these is missing, doing well in the other two does not really make up for it. As Crawford explains it “is like a weak link in a chain. The chain breaks regardless of the strength of the rest of the links.” I liked this comparison because it makes the idea very simple and easy to understand.
I also really liked the way he describes the difference between interaction and reaction. He uses the idioms “apples and oranges, horses of different colors, tigers of different stripes,” which I thought was a very interesting and memorable way of showing that the two are completely different things.