Prompt 4: At the beginning of the game, I just tried to draw right away to see what would happen – nothing happened. After selecting brush, I again tried to draw, and nothing happened. I selected a color to draw with, and my creativity started to flow. However, I was uncertain what each tool would do and how they would interact with the buttons on the screen. However, the option that surprised me the most were the + and – buttons. At first, I was on the “dots” option, and nothing seemed to change when drawing them; however, once I started using the brush, I was shocked at what happened. I did not expect the brush size to continuously grow, but it was a lot of fun to play with! The visual feedback was the most helpful feedback to me as the player as to what each button did on the screen. At first, I tried to create an expanding rainbow ball, but I didn’t realize how big the brush was going to get, so my entire canvas was filled with a solid rainbow color. I then had to change over to a brush of a different color, to set my background back to the color I wanted it to be. I wouldn’t say there were any physical skills involved with made the outcome uncertain, rather the tools themselves caught me off guard and I didn’t realize what was going to happen. There wasn’t much randomization, only with the dots brush, but I didn’t know how to control the color there, so that could be hidden from the player on purpose. Other than that, after playing the game for a bit, I was able to figure everything out.
4. At the start of playing this, I pretty much just clicked on as many buttons as I could and scribbled with them to see what is possible within the game. I was very surprised when I clicked the plus button and began to draw. At the time I also had the rainbow color selected, so what I saw was a circle that was quickly changing between the colors of the rainbow and gradually increasing in size until it covered the entire screen. This was a very unexpected result, so I began to experiment with it. My favorite result came from starting with the +/- brush as the size of the screen, and then clicking minus and simply holding the cursor in the center of the screen. This resulted in overlapping rainbow circles that gradually got smaller, creating a series of rainbow colored concentric circles filling the screen. Such an elaborate image created by simply holding the cursor in one place was very cool. It required no artistic skill, just the willingness to explore what the different tools of the game were capable of. This concept also gave me more ideas for what I could have done in my game. Specifically I thought about a brush that moves from thin to thick, but when it reaches a certain limit would get gradually thinner again. This would be the same concept as the one in this game but with a smaller range and less control by the player. The +/- tools in this game really interested me, so after I discovered them, they were all i wanted to play with.
What drew me to Budget MS Paint was at first the title, because having used MS paint is I think a shared experience by a number of people. But what struck me even more when I got to playing is that it is also very reminiscent of PictoChat featured on the Nintendo DS. Its this familiarity that to me made the experience feel like I was playing rather than using a piece of software to draw. Although you have to bring your own creativity to really enjoy the game, this is what makes it fun. Like with PictoChat, I found myself mindlessly coloring in the whole canvas with color and testing the limits of the provided brushes. Exploring, I found that the color of the dots could not be controlled, similar to the rainbow brush, but I think that this ultimately made the brush more fun to doodle with. I can see myself creating some fun art with this program, because even though the color options and brush size are limited, I know that creating can be even more fun when you have those limits. It reminds me of art challenges I see all the time where artists only use around 3 or5 colors to create a piece. While I was playing, I didn’t so much tell myself a story but rather thought about what I could create with the very saturated colors and dots that could be a serious work of art. Which, is a difficult task to do with colors and brushes that don’t let you adjust their saturation without making a final drawing hard on the eyes.
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Prompt 4: At the beginning of the game, I just tried to draw right away to see what would happen – nothing happened. After selecting brush, I again tried to draw, and nothing happened. I selected a color to draw with, and my creativity started to flow. However, I was uncertain what each tool would do and how they would interact with the buttons on the screen. However, the option that surprised me the most were the + and – buttons. At first, I was on the “dots” option, and nothing seemed to change when drawing them; however, once I started using the brush, I was shocked at what happened. I did not expect the brush size to continuously grow, but it was a lot of fun to play with! The visual feedback was the most helpful feedback to me as the player as to what each button did on the screen. At first, I tried to create an expanding rainbow ball, but I didn’t realize how big the brush was going to get, so my entire canvas was filled with a solid rainbow color. I then had to change over to a brush of a different color, to set my background back to the color I wanted it to be. I wouldn’t say there were any physical skills involved with made the outcome uncertain, rather the tools themselves caught me off guard and I didn’t realize what was going to happen. There wasn’t much randomization, only with the dots brush, but I didn’t know how to control the color there, so that could be hidden from the player on purpose. Other than that, after playing the game for a bit, I was able to figure everything out.
4. At the start of playing this, I pretty much just clicked on as many buttons as I could and scribbled with them to see what is possible within the game. I was very surprised when I clicked the plus button and began to draw. At the time I also had the rainbow color selected, so what I saw was a circle that was quickly changing between the colors of the rainbow and gradually increasing in size until it covered the entire screen. This was a very unexpected result, so I began to experiment with it. My favorite result came from starting with the +/- brush as the size of the screen, and then clicking minus and simply holding the cursor in the center of the screen. This resulted in overlapping rainbow circles that gradually got smaller, creating a series of rainbow colored concentric circles filling the screen. Such an elaborate image created by simply holding the cursor in one place was very cool. It required no artistic skill, just the willingness to explore what the different tools of the game were capable of. This concept also gave me more ideas for what I could have done in my game. Specifically I thought about a brush that moves from thin to thick, but when it reaches a certain limit would get gradually thinner again. This would be the same concept as the one in this game but with a smaller range and less control by the player. The +/- tools in this game really interested me, so after I discovered them, they were all i wanted to play with.
What drew me to Budget MS Paint was at first the title, because having used MS paint is I think a shared experience by a number of people. But what struck me even more when I got to playing is that it is also very reminiscent of PictoChat featured on the Nintendo DS. Its this familiarity that to me made the experience feel like I was playing rather than using a piece of software to draw. Although you have to bring your own creativity to really enjoy the game, this is what makes it fun. Like with PictoChat, I found myself mindlessly coloring in the whole canvas with color and testing the limits of the provided brushes. Exploring, I found that the color of the dots could not be controlled, similar to the rainbow brush, but I think that this ultimately made the brush more fun to doodle with. I can see myself creating some fun art with this program, because even though the color options and brush size are limited, I know that creating can be even more fun when you have those limits. It reminds me of art challenges I see all the time where artists only use around 3 or5 colors to create a piece. While I was playing, I didn’t so much tell myself a story but rather thought about what I could create with the very saturated colors and dots that could be a serious work of art. Which, is a difficult task to do with colors and brushes that don’t let you adjust their saturation without making a final drawing hard on the eyes.