Concept
For this assignment, I made a random walker to explore motion in a very basic but visual way. The walker moves around the canvas using randomness, but not in a totally chaotic way. Most of its steps are small, with occasional larger jumps, because the step size comes from a Gaussian distribution.
Half of the time, the walker is influenced by the mouse position, and the other half of the time it moves randomly. I liked this balance because it feels like a mix of control and letting go. On top of that, the walker also moves through color. As it travels, its color changes based on how much it moves, so motion is shown not just by position, but also through hue.
Code Highlight
This line is one of my favorite parts of the sketch:
What I like about it is how simple it is, but how much it does. The color changes depending on how far the walker moves. Small movements create small color shifts, and bigger movements create more noticeable changes. It helped me understand how motion can be translated into something visual without making the code complicated.
Embedded Sketch
Reflection and Future Ideas
This project helped me better understand how randomness works in code, especially the difference between regular random values and Gaussian randomness. The movement felt much more natural and less jittery when I used randomGaussian(). I also realized how much small visual choices, like opacity, line weight, and color mode, affect how the sketch feels overall.
If I continue working on this, I would like to experiment with multiple walkers instead of just one, and see how they interact visually. I’m also interested in adding noise to make the movement smoother over time, or applying the same motion logic to something other than color, like scale or sound.