In the introductory sessions of the course we were shown some basic elements of coding in Java, and I produced three simplistic yet functional examples of the language, each with their own distinctive characteristics and features.

Piece one is a pop-art creator which had several iterations. My original idea was to allow the user to draw an image with the mouse and have a shape copy the movements using basic commands. I was happy to find this retrospectively easy objective fairly easy to complete, and finding out my limits with the language really helped me to progress the program and my ability overall.

Version 2.0: I drew inspiration for the striking colour palate for the background and the shape from prominent pop-art artists such as Yitzchok Moully and Andy Warhol. Realising the greater potential for this particular program, and also fully infatuated with the idea of making it more original, I wanted to see if I could alter the shape to something more cutting and bold, so I altered the size of the square, gave it different coloured borders, but ultimately settled on a quadrilateral shape with points bound to:

quad (mouseX-38, mouseY-31, mouseX+86, mouseY+20, mouseX+69, mouseY+63, mouseX+30, mouseY+76);

Until I was finally satisfied with my user response, this shape tested much more positively and granted a greater time of entertainment for most subjects.

Version 2.1: This was a key patch, the introduction of a timer feature which randomized the colour of the quad every second, which decreased feelings of repetition and added another element of engagement for the user. I used the code:

if (myNow < millis()- 1000)
{
myCol= random(255);
myNow=millis();
}

to achieve this. The important part of this was to limit the randomisation to a colour range that doesn't clash with the background, as maintaining an attractive appearance is the entire point of the small program.

The other two pieces of code were based around mouse positioning, with this one utilising vectors and an interesting 'if' function:
if (distance > 100)
randomize colour

I used basic loc=mol commands with this product, at this point I was first experimenting with the language and trying to nail down how to make the shape changed based on mouse position with the integers seen at the top of the code

Click on the images to see the code being executed

Click on the images to see the code being executed

Click on the images to see the code being executed