Wooden Doll

An object I lost some time ago

The object has a white circle with a silver outline. The diameter of the circle is one inch. There are two lines (one shorter 1/4 in and one longer 3/8 in) radiating from the center of the white circle. There are silver tick marks, 1/16 in each, at 30 degree increments near the edge of the white circle, close to the silver outline. Connected to the top and bottom of the silver outline are two long skinny black rectangles 6 in in length, 1/2 in width each.

An object Bolor lost some time ago that I coded (sketch above)

Red. Body resembles two shapes - sphere and a cone. Sphere is at the top and it is attached to the cone. Sphere and cone are red. The sphere diameter 1:8 in relation to the height of the cone is 1:8. The diameter of the base of the cone is equal to the diameter of the sphere. The cone is inserted into the sphere from the apex, halfway through the sphere. The surface is rough with a specific pattern that resembles a leopard print. The pattern looks as though it's been engraved onto this object. The object is made of wood. At the center back of the cone, right in the middle horizontally and vertically, there is a small cavity, where you are able to place another small object that resembles a round cell battery. The ratio of size of the cell battery size to the object is 1:12. The majority of this entire object is red, but the print engravement has this marroon shade.

Reflection

My partner, Bolor, used mathematical language to describe her object, such as ratios and geometry. I found it difficult to understand what she was describing. I could not name the object if you asked me to. What I imagined the object to be changed throughout her description. At first, for example, I thought she was describing an ice cream cone, (imagine the sphere intersecting with the cone as an ice cream cone would look) But then she changed my understanding by telling me that the interection of the sphere and cone were different from what an ice cream cone would look like. What is striking about this is that I would have had come up with a compeletely different orientation and object if I had not asked her to clarify this point. Coding is sometimes concrete and unforgiving. There are so many things that could go wrong.

Engineers at my work always think through edge cases and think through possible errors. I felt as though I could have made so many errors in this experience, and there is no way to make this object look perfectly the way she described it.

A cone and a sphere are 3D objects, and we aren't thinking about 3D objects yet in this class, as we are just starting. I could have read on and figured out how to make 3D objects, but I don't think that's really the point of the exercise. The anxiety and finally letting go of that anxiety knowing that the coded object can't be exactly like the physical object is part of the experience.

I realized I had to use push/pop and blendmode for the assignment, so I had to think of what to use those for in my design. I investigated several blends modes and none of them looked nice in this context. So I just chose one to looked ok.

I also couldn't think of a good way to make a leopard print engraving that was marroon. I looked up some shapes that could fit, but I have to resign myself to realizing that I wouldn't be able to do all the things I want to do with code while still learning basics in languages I am not familiar with. So I used an ellipse shape and then used push /pop to shift and copy it over and over again in various spots until I got bored of doing that. Next time I will try to use a for loop or while loop, and will learn how to make it stay within the boundaries of the shape. Exploring is part of the fun, and also the frustration.