Description

Exquisite Corpse: The Ghost Plumber Partners: Malik Pierre-Davis, ZiJia Chen
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/mlinhle617/sketches/0kLJZZ-X8
This project is inspired by the map project that I’m working on, which is about sea level rise’s effect on the Mekong River Delta. It is projected that at one-meter sea level rise, almost half of the delta will be inundated. There are many other regions that will be heavily flooded. Poor communities are among the most vulnerable groups in this scenario.
This exquisite corpse consists of the ghost head that I designed, a part of Mario and a part of Doraemon from my partners. Mario is a plumber in New York and Doraemon is a robot from the future. With these 3 parts, I created a new character who is a ghost possessing the body of a plumber with bionic legs from the future. They are from a distant future where humans live on spaceships orbiting what is left of Earth. As a member of a task force who is trying to stop the Earth’s destruction by time travelling to the past, they accidentally travelled back to the exact moment when a flashflood hit a city, tried to escape but failed and died (again).

Design Process

Here are the designs and stories that I received from my partners.

Mario's Background Story: In the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros., Mario and his younger brother Luigi are portrayed as Italian-American plumbers who have to defeat creatures that have been coming from the sewers below New York City.

Doraemon's Background Story: Doraemon, a cat robot from the 22nd century, is sent to help Nobita Nobi, a young boy, who scores poor grades and is frequently bullied by his two classmates, Takeshi Goda (nicknamed "Gian") and Suneo Honekawa (Gian's sidekick). Doraemon has a four-dimensional pouch in which he stores unexpected gadgets that help improve his life. He has many gadgets, which he gets from The Future Departmental Store, such as Bamboo-Copter, a small piece of headgear that can allow its users to fly; Anywhere Door, a pink-colored door that allows people to travel according to the thoughts of the person who turns the knob; Time Kerchief, a handkerchief that can turn an object new or old or a person young or old; Translator Tool, a cuboid jelly that can allow people to converse in any language across the universe; Designer Camera, a camera that produces dresses; and many more.

After I receive the following designs from my partners, I started to think about how the three characters’ body parts and stories can be combined to create a new narrative. After trying several variations of the character on paper, I finally decided on this design, with the head of my ghost, the body of Mario, and the legs of Doraemon.

Next, I use a function for each of the body parts. For Mario’s body, I wanted to keep the pixel look, so I used a function to draw blocks then place them side by side. I wanted to create rain but could not find a way to do it with what I currently know. I remembered that in Python there is a way to generate objects from a template using class and wondered if the same way exists in p5.js. After a bit of searching on p5.js's reference and examples pages, I found a piece of code that I think is very close to what I’m trying to do. However, I didn’t understand the syntax being used so I didn’t know how to change it to fit my design. After watching YouTube tutorials on classes, constructor arguments, and while and for loops to understand the logic behind the piece of code that I found, I was able to play around with it and create the rain effect that I wanted.

Reflection

I’ve learned a great deal from this project. The external tutorials from the class website were extremely helpful, especially Coding Train. I think I’m gradually becoming more proactive in learning new things and finding solutions to the problems I run into.