Project #1 Lost and Found / The Necklace

Description

My partner's name: Unnati Shukla. Unnati's description: Last year, my brother’s mother-in-law had given me the most thoughtful gift: a dainty necklace with my name, “Unnati,” (उन्नति) written in Sanskrit. The entire necklace was gold. The letters were small, about half an inch tall. They were flat and connected — all hammered out from one thin piece of gold. The chain was delicate and hit just below my collarbone with a small clasp in the back. I particularly loved it because my name is quite uncommon, and it felt nice to have a custom piece. As a kid, I was disheartened each time I couldn’t locate my identity on the keychains at a gift shop. The necklace paid homage to my South Asian roots and was light enough to wear everyday. While I was moving from Seattle back to Texas this past year, it got lost in the shuffle, and I haven’t been able to locate this representation of my name, my identity, since.

Design Process

First of all, I imagined Unnati's description and thought about how should it better to be represented. Then I sketch on the paper. After that, I tried to redraw the sketch with geometric shapes, so I can create similar shapes in p5.js. I started to create simple shapes like rectangles and ellipses. Also, I tried to use comments to note where I pasted every object. I created the necklace first, but it seemed simple shaped, so I decided to add a human shape on the background. Also, it was very interesting to add a small text, the name on the necklace.

The grid system in p5 is still challenging for me as I tried to move objects by selecting random numbers at first. I guess, after more practice, I can memorize the approximate location of the coordinate points. I think it would be very helpful If p5 has something like a ruler or grid system as some graphic programs do. Grids which could be the basic grids in the canvas, but also which users can customize by different needs.

Reflection

Unnati used plain story language to describe the object. It was easy to understand. I interpret the image by my vision in sketch and p5. I hope I created something similar to Unnati's necklace that she lost in the past, which was significant to her. It is challenging to imagine the object from somebody's story and also make it similar in p5 from the hand drawing. But because of these small tasks, we can learn the logic of basic things in code.