Assignment 1: Self Portrait (Orange Cat)

Concept

I love cats. I don’t have one but I would love to have one in the future. One of my favorite type of cats are orange cats; they’re silly and funny to me. Hence, I decided to create a silly orange cat with their tongue out making a silly face. The cat is also seen to be waving their paw as if to say hello!

Process

I started making the head using a circle and planned on using triangles for the ears, but soon found it difficult to make it look neat so I opted for a long rectangle pointing from one side of the circle to the other to act as ears. This way the ears are more symmetrical.

Highlight

I particularly liked how I made the mouth section where I used different sizes and orientations of ellipses and combining them with layering in mind to form the shape of the cat’s snout.

// mouth
fill('rgb(255,114,38)')
ellipse(200, 270, 15, 30)
fill('rgb(255,182,49)')
ellipse(190, 250, 35, 30)
ellipse(210, 250, 35, 30)
fill('#FF9700')
ellipse(200, 240, 20, 15)

Sketch

function setup() {
  createCanvas(400, 400);
}

function draw() {
  
  background('rgb(178,223,250)');
  
  // body
  fill('orange')
  rect(90, 260, 220, 400, 100)
  fill('rgb(255,182,49)')
  rect(115, 290, 170, 400, 100)
  fill('rgb(255,151,0)')
  
  // arm
  rect(115, 310, 50, 400, 100)
  fill('#FF9700')
  circle(140, 340, 55)
  fill('rgb(255,182,49)')
  circle(140, 340, 35)
  stroke('orange')
  circle(125, 339, 15)
  circle(133, 327, 15)
  circle(147, 327, 15)
  circle(155, 340, 15)
  
  // head
  noStroke()
  fill('orange')
  ellipse(200, 220, 200, 180)
  rect(100, 140, 200, 80)
  
  // streaks
  fill('#FF9700')
  rect(192.5, 130, 15, 50, 10)
  rect(170, 132, 15, 40, 10)
  rect(215, 132, 15, 40, 10)
  
  // ears
  fill('rgb(255,182,49)')
  ellipse(115, 170, 15, 50)
  ellipse(285, 170, 15, 50)
  
  // eyes
  fill('black')
  circle(155, 220, 25)
  circle(245, 220, 25)
  
  fill('white')
  circle(160, 215, 10)
  circle(250, 215, 10)
  
  // blush
  fill('rgb(255,116,44)')
  ellipse(125, 250, 50, 20)
  ellipse(275, 250, 50, 20)  
  
  // mouth
  fill('rgb(255,114,38)')
  ellipse(200, 270, 15, 30)
  fill('rgb(255,182,49)')
  ellipse(190, 250, 35, 30)
  ellipse(210, 250, 35, 30)
  fill('#FF9700')
  ellipse(200, 240, 20, 15)
  
}

Reflection

Though I did use a variety of shapes, my sketch is still very simple. So in the future, I’d like to incorporate more shapes and learn how to animate them as well to make it more interactive and lively; like maybe make the cat’s paw move!