Author: Elora Trotter

We are what we consume. If you love something enough, it can’t help but spill out of you. One of my favorite movies growing up was Hayao Miyazaki’s Totoro. If you’ve seen it, you’ll recognize this image of Satsuki standing in the rain:
I always wanted to be her in this scene. There’s nothing like waiting for a bus in the rain.

There is an interactive media wiz I follow on Instagram under the handle @hotemogf on Instagram. She posted a little code she made of an umbrella repelling rain. I decided to take a wack at it.

What I came up with was:

You can make the stick figure move by pressing down on your mouse.

I learned how to code the rain by watching a Youtube tutorial, linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFaVK3_mWkM.

Making the stick figure and umbrella was simple enough. But figuring out how to make the stick figure’s arm move and umbrella appear by pressing my mouse down was more difficult. It took asking for my friend’s help (thanks Naz) and constantly checking the reference page. The code I used to make this work is below:

if(mouseIsPressed) {
  stroke(0);
  strokeWeight(0);
  fill(0);
  rect(410,342,147,260);
  }
  
  stroke(255);
  strokeWeight(2);
  fill(0);
  circle(445,400,50);  
  line(445,428,445,523);
  //line(446,442,470,468);
  line(446,441,413,477);
  line(446,522,485,584);
  line(445,522,411,584);
  
  if(mouseIsPressed) {
  arc(490,353,150,120,PI,0,CLOSE);
  line(416,354,462,344);
  line(462,344,489,356);
  line(489,356,517,341);
  line(517,341,565,353);
  line(490,357,490,412);
  line(490,412,501,412);
  line(501,412,502,405);
  }
  
  if(mouseIsPressed){line(446,442,490,420);}
  else{line(446,442,478,477);}

I discovered that it would be too complicated to make the umbrella repel rain like @hotemogf did. But I created the illusion of it happening by coding a black box that appeared behind the stick figure when I pressed my mouse down.

I’m content with how my self-portrait came out. But I want to develop an idiosyncratic style that shines through in all of my interactive media projects. In short, I want what I create to be unequivocally, irrefutably ME. I discovered how difficult that would be given my technical limitations. But someone once told me true love knows no limits. In fact, technical limitations often serve art (think Kurt Cobain or Bob Dylan, or modern day musicians with purposefully harsh production styles). I’ll keep trying to carpe the diem. You learn.