My first sketches were very simple. They were mainly about learning how to create a shape, how to add fill and stroke, and how to make something transparent. It was a basic start, but it forced me to think in code. You can’t just “draw a shape” the way you do in design software; you have to construct it. In chapter two I learned how to draw with the mouse. The mouse could place circles where the cursor was, and that immediately made Processing feel more interactive and playful. It also made ideas pop up about how you could apply this as a tool-like interaction. After that I learned how to draw with a line, and the difference between a normal mouse position and pmouse. This was hard to understand at first, but once I actually put the code into Processing and compared them visually, I could see what was happening. That was true for a lot of things this week: I didn’t fully understand them until I made my own sketches and saw, “okay, if I fill this in instead of that, this is what happens.” That’s when it started to click. Then I learned about randomness. I made sketches where random circles constantly appeared at different positions, and then I experimented with different random values, like width and height, and also color values. This was the first time I felt something like an identity starting to appear, because I limited the colors. For example, I set the colors so they had to stay between RGB values like 200 and 255. That kept it within a palette, which already feels more like something that could belong to an identity instead of pure chaos. Another important topic was the difference between setup and draw. In setup, things are drawn only once; in draw, they repeat constantly, which is where animation happens. I tested the difference by putting the background in setup instead of draw, and you can really see what happens visually. I also have a visual example of this. The next chapter was about if-statements. I applied the logic from the tutorial by dividing my screen into different areas: when the mouse lands in a certain area, that area fills with a color. That helped me understand how interaction can be built from simple logic. At that point I had learned about built-in variables like the mouse variables, but you can also make your own variables in Processing. This makes it easier to control a specific object. One example was making a circle variable, and if you keep updating that variable, you get animation because the circle starts moving. You can see this again in the bouncing ball animation. After that I learned how to make a bouncing ball by checking when the circle hits the edge and then reversing the speed so it moves back to the other side, and then reversing it again. I think I understand this function, but if I had to explain it perfectly step-by-step, I’d still struggle a bit. So I want to practice this more next week, because there’s a lot of logic involved and I sometimes lost the thread. I also learned about the boolean function and what you can do with it. One example was triggering movement by clicking the mouse, but then you couldn’t “unclick” it again, and that’s where booleans come in. It’s basically an on/off switch. This part was still a bit vague to me, but I think it will become clearer once I actually use it in a sketch where I need that behavior. Finally, I made a grid with loops. Instead of manually drawing every line, I drew one line and let it repeat across the screen, which creates the grid. What’s also fun is that you can adjust the spacing with randomness (or other variables), and then it becomes a strange animation again. Everything is still very beginner-stage, and I’m not overflowing with final ideas yet, but I do see progress. I can feel that things are starting to make sense, and that’s motivating.