Melting Point
Melting Point is an interactive game that simulates the plight of the polar bear. Through the use of a virtual camera, the player can navigate a polar bear through the arctic waters, in order to find an iceberg. The iceberg randomly generates to a point on the map with each play. The three levels increase in difficulty, as the map increases in size. The goal of the game is to bring awareness to the decline of polar bears as global warming, oil drilling, and pollution threaten their habitat. At the end of the game, players have the opportunity to learn more about polar bears and donate to a fund dedicated to polar bear conservation.
Sleepy Hollow
"Sleep Hollow" is a digital, interactive story based on the classic tale "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The website utilizes CSS and HTML to create a folder structure that will lead the user through the story. There are three directions to take the story, but only one follows the original plot. Several of the visuals are animated GIFs and are accompanied by a scroll box of text from the original manuscript. Each page offers various actions for the user to select and progress the story in a unique direction. These options include loops, conditional statements, and boolean statements.
The setup of the website begins with the "start page" (index), which gives you the option of either beginning the story or reading the postscript. There is also a link to trigger a music player to play as the user navigates the story. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is rather long, so to lessen the number of pages, I compressed the exposition into one page. The user begins the story at a party that occurs about halfway through the manuscript, just before the main character encounters The Headless Horseman, the villain of the story. The user then makes decisions for the main character and determines whether he meets the horseman and, if so, how he maneuvers his escape.
Improv
IMPROV is a collection of three animated canvases, created using P5.js. Each canvas explores an element of change while engaging the user through an interactive component. The catalyst for change comes through the use of sound, specifically jazz.
The use of a modern blend of jazz and hip hop, is intentional, intended to illustrate a genre in which the music is constantly in flux, being written into the air, as the song is simultaneously played and composed. Jazz is a perfect representation of change within our culture, finding itself reinvented with each generation, just as it reinvents the movement of each canvas.