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Mental health and wellbeing is an important aspect for everyone, yet we don't always see, understand or know if someone is having a hard time.

The first assignment given to us for DES240 is 'A sequence of primitives'. It was an assignment that allowed you to find a statistic within Aotearoa that you felt needed to be heard and seen through the use of geometric means.

Statement of intent:

The SDG I wanted to focus on was SDG 3 - Good health and well-being. Because of this Goal I wanted to find a statistic that looked into mental-health and well-being for the context of New Zealand.

From the readings and information I gathered, the statistic I wanted to portray was that '1 in 7 (New Zealander's) will experience depression at some time in their life.'

As many New Zealander's suffer with mental-health and their well-being, I wanted to bring this statistic to life and to peoples attention through my outcome.

I aimed to produce a simple yet powerful outcome that the audience can then become aware with the problem and aim to help or guide those that may suffer from mental-health issues, and even ask the people they know if they are okay.

Week 1:

The first week I dedicated a lot of time to producing different concepts based on my chosen statistic. I created quick simple sketch's with annotation to help portray my idea. However, although I had these 'simple' ideas, I had to learn much more outside of class as my coding skills were non-existent.

Week 1-3: Getting some coding in

As stated above I had to put in a bit more time and effort in to get a bit of a better understanding on coding. In these three weeks, I spent quite abit of time looking at tutorials and forums breaking down aspects when it came to coding. By no means am I a master coder, I still have much to learn, but with the more time I spent learning and practicing, I started to get a bit better.

I had a try at trying to make my own 'Pong' game, and that took me a while even though it was simple. However, it helped me get a better understanding on certain phrases and what to write.

Week 4: Home stretch

During week 4, I had 3 ideas that I narrowed to one as I felt this one worked best. From the three I chose to go with the 2nd proto gif. Proto gif 2 consisted of 6 dots growing while the 7th decreases in size and is a different colour.

Proto gf 1

Proto 2 gif

Proto gif 3

From here, I developed further ideas that implied the same idea as Proto gif 2, to which I came to my end outcome.

Above is the sketched out idea of my final concept. So the concept is similar to the previous design however, this time it will begin with 6 white dots (circles) in a black frame.

Once the gif commences, the 6 dots will begin to grow, as they grow the black background begins to get lost in the gaps left by the dots. As the dots get bigger the screen will begin to become white due to the growing circles.

Through one of the final black gaps, a black circle will begin to grow, but stop at a certain size.

Once the screen has been covered by all the white of the circles with the black circle left on top. The frame will invert in colour. Resulting in a white circle by itself on a black frame.

End commentary:

Throughout this assignment, I found myself in a constant loop of learning and improvement bit by bit. Although I found this to be a hard process, the assignment and coding, I'm glad that I was able to take this as it was something new. I was able to learn basic coding mechanisms, yet also create a valid approach on the chosen statistic I wanted to portray. In addition to this, I would like to thank the lecturers that helped me throughout this assignment as it was all completely new to me, with me picking up a new hobby in coding.

To look at my entire assignment process, click > https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_l5HFm2w=/

My code I constructed to create my final outcome.

int current_size = 100;

int special_size = 0;

int count = 0;

void setup() {

size(1000, 1000);

fill(255);

}

void draw() {

background(0);

current_size = (current_size+1);

fill(255);

stroke(255);

ellipse(100, 200, current_size, current_size); // 1st circle

ellipse(450, 20, current_size, current_size); // 2nd circle

ellipse(200, 665, current_size, current_size); // 3rd circle

ellipse(620, 440, current_size, current_size); // 4th circle

ellipse(880, 200, current_size, current_size); // 5ht circle

ellipse(600, 834, current_size, current_size); // 6th circle

if (current_size > 280) {

noStroke();

fill(0);

ellipse(375, 290, special_size, special_size); // 7th cirlce - with this one i want it to decrease

if (current_size > 380) {

}

}

if (current_size < 300) {

special_size ++;

} else if (current_size < 700) {

special_size -= 1;

} else {

special_size += 0;

}

if (current_size >= 870) {

background(0);

noStroke();

fill(255);

ellipse(375, 290, special_size, special_size); // 7th cirlce - with this one i want it to decrease ;

}

//String imageSuffix = nf(count, 5);

//saveFrame("/Data/iteration_1/ani"+imageSuffix+".png");

//count++;

println("current size is : "+current_size);

}

Final gif:

'1 in 7 (New Zealander's) will experience depression at some time in their life.'