Work Completed: June 21–22, 2025
This entry covers Steps 8 and 9 of my snowman sketch, and includes a few important lessons I learned while updating older animations too.
I added a left stick arm to the snowman so he wouldn’t look like he was about to tip over. I positioned it using the line() function and made sure it extended naturally from the side of the snowman’s middle body. It took a few tries to get the angle just right.
For this step, I gave the snowman some festive buttons down the center of his torso. I alternated the button colors — red, then gold, then red, then gold — using the fill() function to set the color before each ellipse(). I love the way the pattern added a playful pop to the snowman’s design.
While working on these updates, I decided to go back and add a title label to each of my major sketches — “Robot”, “Waving Snowman”, and “Snowman”. I used the text() function with textAlign(CENTER) and placed it near the top of the canvas.
At first, the text wasn’t showing up at all. It would flash for a second, then disappear. I got stuck trying to figure out why — until I realized I had written the text() line before the background() call inside draw(). That meant every time draw() ran (which is every frame), the background was covering up the text.
🔹 Lesson learned:
I’m starting to notice how each step reinforces the importance of code order and breaking problems down into manageable parts. Even something small like a missing fill() or incorrect shape order can change everything. It’s kind of empowering to figure this stuff out as I go.