Project One: Reflection and where to next

Project one, our first dsdn 142 project is now complete, and looking back on it, it was quite a learning process. Coming to grips with coding and processing and using them to make something that actually looks beautiful was probably the biggest learning curve and challenge of the project, as I, and probably most people have never done something like that before. Now at the end of the project, I think I'm starting to get the hang of coding a bit better and have got a better understanding of how I have to go about making my visualisation through code.

Whenever I ran into trouble while I was coding (which happened a lot), I always tried to look at what I was trying to make, and try and simplify my coding attempts. Dumb it down and go back to the basics. Or otherwise, go back through my variables and actually read through them again and the places where I used them in my drawing code to try and refresh my understanding of what I did previously in an attempt to see if that could help me get to my next step.

I think in my next project, I'd like to spend more time on processing, do more experimental stuff to get a stronger understand of coding because I felt that my limitations in being able to code well, made it very hard to get to and create the idea that I wanted my wallpapers to look like in my head.

DSDN 142 - The final wallpapers

Below here are my four final wallpapers created in Processing. I didn't end up being able to create the kind of 3D illusion through 2D shapes that I aimed for in my concept sketches, but I was still able to convey the theme/idea of a progression from an ordered grid into a chaotic and misplaced spread. The colours I chose were specifically chosen to highlight this progression, with the starting sky blue being a peaceful and one might think, 'ordered' colour, while the final wallpaper sports a strong red that gives that desired negative connotation of disorder and chaos.

Wallpaper 1 -
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=24603

Wallpaper 2 -
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=24604

Wallpaper 3 -
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=24606

Wallpaper 4 -
http://www.openprocessing.org/visuals/?visualID=24609

Slight iterations..

After realizing that my wallpapers weren't actually very strongly connected thematically, I decided to take the sketch of 'Concept 3', and couple it with the idea in 'Concept 4', which was along the lines of moving from and an ordered setup (shown through the circle based grid) into a break down of uniformity, i.e. chaos, shown through the random connecting lines and the circles. Except I would take this idea and show a gradual progression across my 4 final wallpapers using the 3D illusion, triangular grid style of 'Concept 3', in an attempt to convey the idea of moving from order into chaos, but not in an utterly random way.

My drawn wallpaper concepts

After taking a while to look through and deliberate over my 'inspiring images', I ended coming up with these 4 wallpaper concepts.

Concept 1

Concept 2

Concept 3

Concept 4

Inspirations behind my initial wallpaper concepts

When I was planning out ideas for what my final wallpaper concepts would be, I didn't actually realise that all 4 wallpapers were meant to be connected to each other in a visual and thematic way, so I looked on the web at all sorts of design images for inspiration. In particular, I focused on images that portrayed bright and bold colours, because one of the ways I aimed to make my wallpaper both interesting and striking would be through the use of these powerful colours.

I liked the elegant curves in these 3 above images and in the one directly above, I found the image and form created through just using straight lines to be very interesting.

With these two, I very much admired the ordered chaos that is going on. Particularly through the relationship between the fixed circle grid and the randomly placed circles and connecting lines.

I found the almost hypnotic patterns in these images created through vivid colours and simple but trance inducing shapes to be an interesting concept.

And finally, I found the idea of using straightforward and simple shapes to create interesting and 'coming out of the page' images a cool idea that I thought might be able to work well through coding and turning into an aesthetically appealing wallpaper.