Project #1 Lost & Found: A Pocket Watch

link to code

Description

My name: Joy Juyeon Kim

My partner’s name: Ruoyun Dai

The object description I received:

“It was one day after I came back from primary school. I saw there is a tiny glass ball on my father’s desk. It is shining under the sunset. I walked close to it. I found that it was a pocket watch! I was surprised the shape of this watch is so unique. I grabbed it and looked at it carefully. It was a glass ball. The half of the sphere is covered by golden metal, and the white dial plate is in the middle of the sphere. The numbers and hands on the dial plate are black. The whole sphere is connected to a metal chain. Girls always love crystal things. I can’t put it down on this watch. “I bought it in a flea market, it is very cheap.” my dad said, if you like it, I can just give it to you.” I was excited and always took it when I hanged out with friends. I thought having a pocket watch in the pocket is the coolest thing that I’ve ever done. However, I lost it when I went on a field trip. I guess it might be fallen down when I was jumping and running. I feel desperate until now. I extremely regretted that I even haven’t taken a photo of this watch before I lost it.”

Design Process

Based on the description I received, I started from the circle panel and chains. And then I added clock hands and scales. Lastly, I put colorful hearts on top of these things. The process was sequential putting a layer on top of another layer. I combined two 2D primitive objects to make the shape I want. For example, the heart is composed of two circles and one triangle.

Reflection

My partner called the watch 'a shiny crystal ball' half-covered with gold. And the watch is connected to gold chain. I could imagine how instantly she fell in love with this pretty little thing and how happy she was when her father gave this to her. Carrying this in her pocket was one of her happy memories from childhood. I selected black backgroud because this little watch usually was in her pocket and try to express shiny crystals by using the gray ellipses. The chain is slightly fluctuating to show it is in motion with her. For gold chains, I used the circles with no fill and strokes. The location and rotation of the strokes were facilitated by 'mouse X mouse Y' code. For the scales, I rotated the short lines by 30 degree for the thinner and 90 degree for the bold.The hands of the clock is a combinataion two triangles and they were rotated together. In addition, I put lovely hearts of icecream colors here and there by using blendmode to create happy childhood mood. She first found this pocket watch when she got home after school, so I guess it was around three or four o'clock. So I purposely set the clock at 4 PM to bring back the wonderful moment for her. In my sketch, I tried to retrieve not only the object lost but also the happy shiny memories and stories associated with it.

Credits

This project was created based on the Sound Interactive tutorial by Ari Melenciano (@AriCiano) and it remixes never by Everest Pipkin (@everestpipkin), licensed under MIT License 2018.