2021, A year of learning
My favorite saying that describes the essence of the butterfly effect is this:
“The things that really change the world, according to Chaos Theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.”
— Neil Gaiman
This idea is what I tried to encapsulate in Flap, a web application that allows its users to navigate through an animated storyline where every choice they make has some magnitude of effect on the rest of their story.
I came into Shift not knowing how to do anything. And by this, I truly mean nothing. I didn’t know how to get started with web development. I didn’t know how to make animations. I didn’t know how to design a website, or how to make things look good in general.
So, I started with the basics and did what any beginner in any skill would do, I went straight to YouTube. I followed a YouTube tutorial and made a Rock Paper Scissors web app. I followed another YouTube tutorial and made my very first animation using Adobe Animate.
Once I was relatively comfortable with actually creating web apps and animations, I found out that I didn’t know what to create. Every color and design that looked beautiful and appealing in my head looked the complete opposite when I actually implemented it. So back to YouTube I went. I spent a good chunk of time watching videos about color theory and what ‘good’ design meant and followed it up with readings that were highly recommended by my very talented artist friends.
After making a general skeleton for the website using basic HTML, CSS, and JS, I learned how to use Adobe XD, using, duh, more YouTube videos, and came up with a basic design idea. I also came up with a general color scheme for the website and the animations to make sure everything looked relatively cohesive.
I made the storyline of the game, deciding that it would make most sense and be most attainable to have the timeline of the game be a single day. As expected, this part of the project took a lot of planning and a lot of scrap paper. Something as insignificant as choosing a red sweater over an orange one or something as significant as choosing to or choosing not to help out someone in need all had some level of impact on the rest of the story, and ultimately, the rest of the choices.
Currently, I have the landing page and the starting screen of the application fully completed. I blame this slow-ish progress on two things:
- Animations take a long time to create, at least for me. Although I love the creative process, I find it takes me a long time to make creative decisions about things as simple as choosing colors.
- This year was more of a “learning” year than it was a “creating” year. I spent a majority of my time learning how to use different applications and how to create things compared to actually being able to create something concrete that I could show and complete.
That being said, now that I’ve gained this plethora of knowledge, I do intend to complete Flap this summer. There’s obviously still a lot of learning to be done, but I think I’m well on my way to knocking off the animations one-by-one and finally being able to show something concrete that’s representative of all the things I’ve learned this year.
Esha is a student studying computer science at the University of Michigan. Aside from contemplating changing her major every couple of weeks to mechanical engineering, Esha loves travelling and making deformed snowmen!
