Youhou, you wouldn't believe how glad I am you're here :D And you don't even have to imagine you can ask me right away.
Anyway, a lot to tackle today, but one important lesson: nothing is essential (but you). Let's be honest, plug a TV, dance in front and call it digital art and you're done. If you want to dig a bit deeper, well, this workshop is there for you. But the point is creativity. To free yourself through this medium. We don't give you roads to follow, tools to use. We give you piece of woods, and we're hoping you'll use them in a way not expected by any of us.
Alas, time is not infinite. So as much as I wish I could say this course is done, it's not. It's merely a structure, code abstract and bullet points. But we have a secret ingredient: people. All around. And then some. They're here for you, and they'll be your best ressource today. Use them. Abuse us. Ask us question. Ask us how we're doing. Ask us why the sky is blue. Ask us how we could make it pink.
There are many things to feed. While soul is clearly one, the tummy is definitely a true contender too. Why food & code? Because we want messy things. Mess is almost the opposite of taboo. Anything goes when you're messy. While this is an aphorism (and hence open to contradictions), the point is that we want to get back the openness of cooking, and the uncaring of unprofessional cooking. Explore, try, taste. And adore your new goddess: Use food as an inspiration, and while forcing is barely ever a good idea, try to put food in the result too somewhere.
Mad skillz. You won't get them today. You won't need them today. We need your creativity and we'll do our best to show you how little you need to express it. Think of it as a puzzle. The fun kind.
DO NOT READ: we have a secret agenda. We've been lying to you, we don't care about code, we don't care about food. What we care about is you, and what can be done in a day. The point of this event is twofold. To use the medium of digital art and the fun of food to realise how much one (you) can do in a day. And then to let you apply that to what you would want to do/be in your life. Praise the day, and awaken. This may sounds like bullshit (aaaaaand it might be), but it's our aim, as cliché as it sounds. You can do wonderful things. And it's a sad thing, until you do them. Let's do it.
And now for something completely different. Some fundamental advices. Seriously.
- Get your hands dirty. You'll only learn if you write and run some code. Each piece of code shared has some meaning, would that be for educational purpose, or just to show some neat visualisation. Run them all, and don't hesitate to tweak them, push them forward and explore both your sensibility and what you can do with it.
- Understand what you're doing. You need to understand each line of your code, especially in this workshop since we'll probably reuse them and make you modify them short after. If you're not 100% you understand, reread the course. Maybe try the next paragraph. Ask a fellow student, a coach, search online... Anything, but don't continue if you don't understand.
- Understand what you're doing! It's fundamental to understand the grammar of your lines of code, but it's as important to understand its meaning, and place in your code. You're coding your line at a specific place, it has a specific role. Understand that role. Not only of your line but also of your group of lines so that a structure of your code emerge. Sometimes you'll be asked to replace some code, it'll be up to you to understand what to replace.
- Don't copy paste. While it might seem as a quick way to advance the material, you will learn less. The more you will write, the more you will remember. And even better, whenever there are number used, try to tweak them, modify them a bit, see what happens.
- Regularly clean your code. It's easy to get lost, even more when you're discovering something new. Cleaning your code means getting rid (or commenting) unused part of the code, so you don't surcharge your code and wonder where is that specific part you're looking for. It means too organising it, so you can infer better meaning from it. And last, the graphic structure. Don't forget to indent (put space at the start of the line) when you enter a new block of code, it eases both the reading and the spotting of bugs.
- Learn how to search out the answer when you're stuck. You are part of a group during the workshop, you can always ask the other students, or the coaches but it's a good reflex to always try to find out by yourself why there is an issue and how to solve it. You can search the Processing reference page, tutorials, forums or even post a question online yourself (knowing how to post a good question would need its own tutorial too...).
Now that we get to know each other, let's dive into the course itself.