Sugar Skull

Move around and click to explore! Swipe left or up to reset.

You can view my code here🙂

Description
While brainstorming for this assignment, I had a few ideas that I wanted to explore: an abstract rainbow face inspired by retro wallpaper with concentric circles, a leaf changing shape and colour, a sun that went from being sharp, pointed and angry to becoming cute and friendly.

However, the idea that I was most excited about was a sugar skull or Calavera inspired by the Disney film Coco and the artist Frida Kahlo. I decided to go ahead with this! A calavera is a decorated representation of a human skull usually made of sugar or clay, prepared for the Mexican celebration of Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead.

Design Process & Reflection
Similar to the earlier exercise, I broke down the complex forms into simple 2D primitives using like rect(), quad(), triangle(), ellipse(), circle(), arc() and line(). Using a tutorial, I learnt how to create my own function for the star in the eyes. Though I’d initially planned to keep the base shape of the skull constant throughout the sketch by varying only the size, I decided to make the dimensions of the face depend on the mouseX and mouseY positions.When the cursor moves across the sketch, lines in the background also move accordingly. When the mouse is pressed, the background colour changes and when the mouse is swiped left or top, the background colour resets to the original.When then the face is at its smallest proportions, the skull is more geometric, reduced to mere shapes with some facial features appearing outside. As the cursor position changes i.e mouseX and mouseY co-ordinates increase, the full skull is formed with a few added features. I quite like the end result because we see variation in two ways: the face/skull itself with its shape, colour and features, as well as a gradual transformation from abstraction to a naturalism.

Credits
This project was created based on the tutorials provided on the Critical Computation website, and The Coding Train videos on Youtube.