DES240: Looped States

Chandra Hu
Oct 1, 2021
6 min read

Updated: May 24, 2023

Illustrated Background

Assignment Brief: Deliver a looped infinite state GIF using processing with the same statistic from Assignment 1, distilling a ‘why’ narrative as to how the current status has come to be.

Final Looped Image as MP4*

Statement of Intent

New Zealand waterways work as a variety of catchments funneling water downstream. These streams gather to create a distinct mix of geology, biodiversity, and land uses - including cities, farms, towns, and plantations. It is known that 95 to 99% of NZ rivers running through urban and farming areas carry enough pollution that does not adhere to water quality guidelines (2020). This looping image is meant to convey how our unrestrained reliance on urban and industrial productivity are prioritized over the cumulative effects of waterway pollution.

The looped image illustrates the dominant disruptors and polluters of waterways in New Zealand. The spoons symbolise what we, as a mainstream society 'consume'. Each spoon carries one type of urban or industrial facility – respectively, a dairy farm, the Auckland city settlement, and an industrial factory. They spill streams of contaminated water entering the waterbeds below. The half globe below depicts turbulent murky waters and stained waterbeds, meant to symbolize the worsening status of rivers, lakes, and seas. Ultimately, resulting with detrimental effects on our natural waterways and marine environment.

Research Process

Before beginning ideation sketches for my statistics, I did some research to investigate why waterway pollution currently exists, its evolution throughout history and made assumptions on the prospects of waterway pollution based on it. From sources, I found that in New Zealand, regions with the most dairy farming have the poorest water quality with the worst water contamination. In addition, I also learnt how catchment gathers are a distinct mix of waters from all sorts of climate and land uses, which are reasons as to how land use has an impact on contaminating our waterways. Such include plantations, industrial areas, urban areas, and cities. This is what lead to the insight that waterway pollution in New Zealand is an accumulated result of various industries and settlements combined.

Sketching

After the research, I felt comfortable starting the sketching process using it as a basis of inspiration. First, I created a mood board to help me get a feel of the visual aesthetic I could incorporate for my final piece of work using three ideas in mind – where I take inspiration, what colours I could use, and what art styles I liked.

Next, I created 5 ideas as sketches that could possibly be used to develop a final idea.

I had created requirements for the chosen idea and made sure to get feedback from my peers and tutors.

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The Water Dragon’s Journey: This idea depicts a water dragon that is symbolic of our rivers during the rainy season. The original path is blocked off and the dragon is dispersed and ‘killed’. Our water is filled with life and diversity and can be figuratively interpreted as a whole living creature. I did not choose this idea because it had seemed too difficult for me to code. It also relied on being too ‘animatic’ with many complicated frames/components to consider about.

Bad Water Factory: This was meant to simulate how our society manufactures contaminated water from the excrement of all our urban settlements and industries on a conveyor belt. This is them thrown back into the sea assuming that it will clean itself. We take the same water and use it again. Such an idea quite explicitly conveyed the why factor of my statistic however, I felt there lacked novelty in the idea and the visual style was not one I was going for. Although, based on my peer and tutor feedback, it was a close contender to be my final idea.

Urban Trails: For this, I wanted to use a boat to represent human settlements. As it travels through the lake it is on, it leaves a trail of contaminated water. This idea was not met with many reactions and I felt it was quite uninteresting to further develop. Hence, I did not choose this as my final idea.

Contaminant City: This idea was intended to show the evolution of how contamination of our waters came to be. A natural habitat grows upwards to develop into an industrial boom and lastly the current urban state where our marine life is being affected. I quite liked this style and practices some rough colouring; however, I did not choose this idea because I could not imagine how to make it in processing. I also felt the idea only gave a superficial outlook to the issue.

Ripple of Society: This was the sketch idea I chose to develop off to create my final piece. Three spoons which carry a city, factory and dairy farm which produce contaminated water. The smaller spoons were meant to be the supply of fresh water which still does not supersede the production of contaminated water. The pollutants would then eat the fish in the water. I knew this was quite complicated and like in the previous, felt superficial but I felt that it could be simplified and developed into a piece that would adequately deliver my inspiration and statistics.

Drawing Process

Before I had mentioned that the idea felt superficial. To differ from this, I did some additional research on transformative industries and how the cycle of innovations and technologies has monetary and fundamental impacts. I created my own model based on Maslow/Strye Hierarchy of Disruption (Strye, 2020) to assume the priorities that various industries have. This helped me validate the transformative effects on the environment for the sake of developing businesses and chasing new technologies.

I use this to develop a hierarchical quota in my visual piece, changing three spoons to be at different heights. As I wanted to focus on this aspect, I also simplified the idea to remove the aspect of fish in my piece and received plenty of feedback from tutors and peers.

The half-finished line art, with 1-point perspective used.

I also wanted to change the bottom half of my piece to be more abstract and carry a New Zealand narrative. I found meaningful motifs of Koru patterns (in Maori context, means new life and growth) and waterbeds to represent lakes.

The rest of the drawing process involved photoshop and constant feedback from peers. Ultimately, I was able to play around with colour schemes, composition, and filters to create a background piece that would be visually pleasing and made good use of contrast.

Animation Assets of this GIF:

1 Farm Sludge asset to create waterfalls of the topmost spoon.
1 City Sludge to create a waterfall of the middle right spoon.
1 Factory Sludge to create a waterfall of the bottom left spoon.
Various Cloud assets that loop from left to right to create ambience

Coding Process

The Final Code

There were three main components I wanted to include in my final code:

Using arrays to store locations of assets.
Using if statements to respawn assets to create a loop.
Using the random function to generate a random y position every time the clouds looped.

I made sure to keep things simple as my coding skills were not very high skilled. Although, I did give my best effort by re-watching studio recordings, tutorials and practising with existing code to consolidate my knowledge. In the end, I was able to successfully create the looping animation.

One major thing I learnt was to take things very slowly. Since I was not confident in my coding skills, when it came to creating specific actions such as creating a repeating falling motion in a single spot, I had to start by finding a similar code that works and making small adjustments at a time to create what I wanted in my own. I made sure to ask for help from others when I got really stuck but I also wanted to make sure I learnt new knowledge along the way.

Learning Experiences

The overall experience from this assignment was quite challenging. However, this has given me a greater understanding of my own capabilities and given me a better feel for coding using processing and image assets. I feel that I have gotten better at developing an idea and using my digital skills to bring it to actuality. My greatest grievances were probably figuring out how to code my animation and the issues with exporting. Next time I will create a smaller resolution file and not at 1080x1080px. I also believe that further practice and revision is need for me to get better at making workable coding more productively. Finally, I am quite satisfied with my final work from the fact that I had given my best and that the code is working.