kander – Clock
My first idea, which is probably the one that came closest to actually transpiring, was three cups. Each time a new hour, minute, or second happened, a ball would drop into the cup. When the unit of time rolled over, the balls would drop out.
Although my final result is much simpler than the original idea from which it was drawn, I’m not upset that I wasn’t able to implement all of my original plans.
The gradual chaos built up to the point when the screen contains however many hours balls, 59 minutes balls and 59 seconds balls is, and then its release when the time rolls over and the balls disappear reminds me of the fresh start that each new hour seems to bring. I would like to see my clock somehow implemented mechanically, with a bunch of actual balls being shot out of different compartments. The balls are sized and their alpha value is adjusted according to their “importance” in telling time. I tried to balance the focus the viewer would place on each element of the clock — the seconds were tinier, so they moved much faster than the hours, for example. It would be an interesting modification to reverse the attributes — for example, the seconds are huge and slow moving, while the hours zoom around the canvas — and see if it still reads as a clock.
Some of my other ideas:
My second idea had to do with coloring the background
Another idea was centipede, which gave characteristics to little bugs on the screen according to time
My final idea was a light up grid, where the units of time were represented by different areas, and the areas flashed according to how many hours, minutes, or seconds there were.