Concept
For the first assignment, I decided to make a random walker using the Levy Flight algorithm. Additionally, I tweaked the motion so that the walker has a small chance of making a huge leap instead of always making small leaps, just to make it a bit different. It reminds me of how fast moving objects seem to us (such as how the Flash or Quicksilver seem to move in movies). I also mapped movement to scale, where the distance of the jump determines the thickness of the walker’s line and the size of the line’s head. Just to make it visually more appealing, I also decided to change the color of the head based on where it is on the sketch, such that it creates a nice looking color gradient.
Sketch:
Highlight
Even though it’s pretty simple, I was proud of how I decided between small and big leaps using a probability threshold. Here is the code:
let r = random(1);
if (r < 0.05) {
step.mult(random(25, 100)); // Big leap 5% of the times
} else {
step.mult(2); // Small leap otherwise
}
Reflection (Milestones, Challenges, Ideas)
An important milestone was successfully implementing the map() function to link two different mediums: spatial distance and visual scale. One challenge was figuring out the right reset interaction, before I settled on simply using a mouse click to leave it up to the viewer.
This sketch could be expanded on by maybe only changing the head’s color when a big leap is made, to signify the walker moving into a new “environment”, like stages of its life, or seasons of a show. It could also be made more visually appealing, but I’m not your guy for that (not yet, at least).