Exercise: Computational typography
Create an interactive type experience. Experiment with animated and interactive approaches to typography, applying computational strategies for animation.Tell a story or make the user create their own story.
Work in groups. Make the result printable. The challenge is to make a static object become alive, transform and move over time. Key goal: Engage – interact – surprise.
Examples: Typographic animation, text scrollers, dynamic letters, emotional typography, automatic layouts, type as pattern, randomized fonts.
Deadline: Presentation Thursday 27.11.
Theory / blogs
Reference projects
14:16 | November 18th, 2008 | marius watz | +del.icio.us | +digg | trackback
Czech Processing hacker Lukas Vojir has come up with a great project to test out your coding skills: Make your very own Processing Monster!
Essentially, these “monsters” are little black and white interactive sketches, in which all manners of strange dark creatures stand ready to react to the user’s poking and prodding. It’s surprisingly effective in its simplicity, once again reminding you that simple narrative devices are often the best.
Lukas is currently soliciting collaborators who want to contribute to the online bestiary, if you have a minute I would definitely recommend giving it a go. Now, if only I had the time to make that scary multi-tentacled squid beast…
For more about Lukas Vojir, take a look at his portfolio site rmx.cz or his Tumblr blog.
19:20 | November 12th, 2008 | marius watz | +del.icio.us | +digg | trackback
Exercise: Computational weather
Create an animated weather system. It can be literal or absurd, but should include multiple elements moving as part of a greater whole. Animate simple shapes so that they give the impression of natural phenomena. Use colors to hint at emotional qualities. The weather should have an interactive element, reacting to user input.
Examples: Snow and rain. Leaves falling. Wind blowing. Dust storms. Tornadoes. Sunshine. Waves at sea.
Deadline: Presentation Monday at 10.00.
11:40 | November 12th, 2008 | marius watz | +del.icio.us | +digg | trackback
This month I am teaching a foundation course in computational aesthetics at AHO together with Hans Gerhard Meier. The topic is computational typography.
Files from the workshop so far can be found here:
http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/workshops/081104_aho
All you need to do is download the ZIP file and unpack it in your Processing sketchbook directory. When restarting Processing there should be an “aho” hierarchy of examples in the Sketchbook menu.
Links & tutorials
The following is a list of some useful Processing resources.
15:07 | November 7th, 2008 | marius watz | +del.icio.us | +digg | trackback
