[WIP] Movement & Response

Since this project involves quite a lot more than my creations before it, I thought I'd upload my current work in progress!

The goal of this project is utilizing some of the mouse variables present in Processing to create movement.  While I've still got a long ways to go in that regard, I do have one thing I am proud of; movement of the Boy in Blue.

My goal for this project is to have the Boy in Blue - a custom object I created - follow the user's mouse horizontally, looking up in awe at what the user is (or rather, will be) creating.  My current ideas include the ability for the user to draw clouds in a bright sky, or stars in the night sky.  When the left mouse button is pressed, the user can draw clouds or stars, and when the right mouse button is pressed, they can erase what they've drawn.

I have tried putting in one "if" statement to achieve this (as a test) but did not keep it for long; if I want the clouds or stars to stay present on the screen, so, too, will the shadow of the Boy in Blue! What I want is the sky to redraw itself infinitely behind the Boy in Blue so he doesn't leave a trail, but I don't want the sky to redraw itself where the clouds or stars will be drawn. I think what I will try to do to remedy this is have a gradient background behind the Boy in Blue, and the static background higher up in the sky. This solution isn't perfect, but I think it will have to do for now.

I myself am still wondering how this one will turn out.  I'm trying to keep other elements relatively simple in design, so the movement is what I get the most practice with; more complicated designs will come in the future, when I am more comfortable with the basics!

One last thing I want to mention is the frame rate for this sketch.  It seems to be quite a bit slower running online in Javascript than offline in Java.  For future projects I hope to streamline things so frame rate remains as high as possible.

♪ Paige