Tag Archives: creative coder

Entreperneurship, Learning

Marketing Your Product: My Experience So Far

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About a week has gone by since I published “Foot in the Door.” I intended to write a new post last week but there was so much marketing to do that I felt overwhelmed. This online oversaturated world we live in has forced us all to become marketers. We must shout from the digital rooftops in order to be heard above the din. That is usually a necessity for marketing your product, unfortunately.

My original cover, I changed it since then

Selling things has never been my strong suit, in fact I would say it is one of my biggest weaknesses. The only way I have gotten better at it is through slow and painstaking practice. Though I have had a Twitter account for years, I find it difficult to post every day and come up with witty retorts. My biggest successes in the past have always been when I took advantage of a young service or platform and been one of the early adopters.

When the Amazon KDP service was still young and most people thought self-publishing was a terrible idea, I uploaded a few of my short stories for free on the platform. Because there were so few items like that available at the time I received a tremendous number of downloads.

With this book I knew that wasn’t going to be an option. I wanted to work on building a list of subscribers for a newsletter. One where I could share the interesting creative coding content I come across every week. My research indicated that solo-preneurs benefit greatly from having their own email newsletter. Sadly, I had been putting it off for a while.

I also noticed providing free content in a landing page/email subscription being a common strategy across the web. I wanted this book to be accessible to anyone who wanted to learn to code. However, I felt that it would be counterintuitive and unproductive to charge people. Especially because the book is still quite short. I also knew from my past experience that my distribution would be reduced if I charged people for the book.

Though my main lane of distribution would be through my newsletter landing page, I decided a week after launch that it wouldn’t hurt to make a paperback version of my book available through the Amazon store. After all, I could order author copies and organize giveaways. Not to mention, Amazon had far wider reach than me. Might also grow my audience.

Being involved with the Women Make community of creative women in (primarily) tech was immensely helpful. The community helped to support each other during the month long “Just F*cking Ship It” Challenge. It also helped that I had already written a portion of the book a year prior, but lacked the motivation to finish it. Since my marketing skills are less than stellar, having my book included in the final product page when the challenge was over also acted like extra free promotion.

A screenshot from the Just F*cking Ship It Challenge Product Feature Page

Another way I shared my book was on Facebook groups. I found relevant groups related to creative coding, software engineers, learning to code, and women in tech. I wrote a paragraph about the book and shared the link. Then I made sure to tweak that paragraph of text. If it was a group for self-taught programmers, I made sure to mention I was self taught.

There are also several blogging platforms I re-post to, including Dev.to, Medium, and (more recently) Gamasutra. On Medium there are publications like “Code Like a Girl” that I submit to in order to extend my reach. These can be a toss up in terms of how much of the audience ever clicks the link back to my blog and discovers my free book.

Finally I made my first Product Hunt page, which was probably the most nerve wracking part of my marketing process. I love to browse Product Hunt and see all the curious, strange, wacky, and actually really useful and interesting applications makers launch on the platform.

The Product Hunt homepage

I did not end up getting featured on Product Hunt that day. But, I did get more upvotes than I was expecting and even a few followers. Also, Product Hunt gets a lot more visitors per day than my blog. So it’s still a great way to bring more subscribers and have another permanent backlink to book. There is also a search feature on Product Hunt. That means if people are searching for books about learning to code or breaking into the tech industry, they might very well come across mine.

So now for some stats! I believe in sharing data with other makers because that is how we all grow. So far I have 284 subscribers, a number I’m pretty happy with. That’s just 2 weeks after the release of my book. Of those 284, 54% have actually opened and clicked to download my book. I’m less happy with that number. However, I imagine because of filters and robots thats closer to the number of real people wanting to read my book.

A screenshot of my landing page performance from Mailchimp

I’m hoping to raise that number to 500 within the next month. Going to keep posting on social media regularly. Although Facebook gets the most clickbacks, I also share on LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Pinterest. I think so far I underestimated LinkedIn the most. I am happy I decided to give that platform a try.

Hopefully this data will help you as you work on marketing your own product. As makers I believe we should support each other. If you have something interesting to share that you are working on, you should post it in the comments! I look forward to hearing about it. If you want to keep up with what I’m doing, you can follow me on Twitter now @nadyaprimak. If you’re interested in learning more about my book, you can check out an excerpt here.

Career, Game Development

How I Shared My Project with the Indie Game Community

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Last weekend I checked another item off my bucket list: sharing a game at a local development event. The event was District Arcade in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the game was one I talked about in a previous post: Grand Canyon Adventure. It has convinced me that if you are a game developer, you can share your work with the indie game community by submitting your game to local events.

The submission process was easy enough: just fill out a google form with links to some screenshots, a brief explanation of the game, and of course a way to actually download and play the game. So why hadn’t I done it sooner? I had made at least a dozen games, if not more, but I had never taken even the first step to show my game in front of actual human beings.

I think the reason I avoided showing my game was the same reason many of us avoid doing things that involve putting our work out there. We fear rejection, we fear being made a fool of in public, and we fear that we will be faced with terrible truth. That we will never reach our dream. I taught myself to code by making games, but I never had a full time job as a game developer so I didn’t really believe in myself. I identified as a creative coder more than an indie game developer.

There is a choice each of us makes regarding our dreams. We either keep our them in a glass cage and never touch or tamper with it, and admire it like a beautiful statue from afar. Or we take the dream in our hands and carry it with us every day, no matter what dangers it might face out there.

I don’t want to wax too much poetic in here, but I can say I am glad that I took that dream in my hands. Even though I feared the worst, sharing my game at a public event actually turned out a lot better than I could have hoped. But first, let’s talk about the experience itself.

When my game was accepted I was both excited and nervous. I was excited that my game was accepted, but nervous because of all the what if’s in my head. What if nobody played my game? Making things worse, I couldn’t present my VR bowling game because there wasn’t enough space. Which meant I would have to present my other game: an educational one. I didn’t imagine many people wanted to use their brains on the weekend. Especially when there were plenty of mindless games available to play. Finally I was a female indie solo game developer, and I didn’t have any banners or stickers. With no swag to hand out could I still impress our visitors?

The first kid who sat down to play my game ran away blushing when he got his first question (my game includes a quiz about erosion) wrong. That didn’t bode well. Then more people started filtering in, and slowly things started getting better. I arrived at the event around 11 AM and barely had time to blink before it was 2 PM. People of all ages checked out my game, from teenagers to kids to adults and even some elderly folks.

I was taken aback by how respectful everyone was. Also how impressed they were when I mentioned that I made the game myself. When I shared my game online it was a completely difference experience. Under the mask of anonymity people had no fear of criticizing my games and providing very unhelpful negative feedback.

Of course there was still some negative feedback. But with the number of people coming through I could easily filter out the useful from the useless. If I heard the same negative feedback several times I knew it was probably something I should fix. Unlike the negative feedback I received online, the negative feedback in person was not nearly as demotivating. It was just a drop in the bucket compared to the positive. Feedback was also delivered in a much more constructive manner.

Since sharing my game at my local indie game community event I feel much more motivated and confident about my work. I’ve realized game development is a type of creative coding, so I’m not writing myself off anymore. I made connections with other developers. Now I feel like there is an actual community out there that cares about what I am doing. Those of us developers making games on our own really need this. We don’t have a lot of people to share our stuff with. Submitting our games to the local indie game community is the best thing we can possibly do.

I hope you take my advice and submit your game to a local event! If you’re wondering where to start finding local game showcases and events, start by checking out your local chapter of IGDA or searching meetups.com. If you want to read more about the game I featured at the event, there is an older post I wrote on the subject here.

If you enjoyed this article, consider following me on Twitter @nadyaprimak or if you need more tips on breaking into the tech industry, you can read my book “Foot in the Door”.

Career, Game Development, Tech Industry

Being a programmer vs a game developer. How much money is passion worth?

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A week or so ago there was a thread on Twitter that caught my eye. It was a tweet asking people what they would pick: a job making 50K per year that they love or a job making 100K that they hate? Working for money versus passion is often the central question many people face in their career.

It was interesting to see the range of responses. I was expecting it to be a pretty mixed bag, but from scrolling through for a while a lot of people said they would choose making 50K per year at the job they love.

Maybe because I am jaded, or maybe because I live in a big city where programmer salaries start at 80K and the average 1 bedroom apartment costs 2K, but I was surprised at how enthusiastically and unflinchingly people said they would choose the 50K option.

As I mentioned in my last post, I started a new job recently. When I am in this state of transition, I always find myself considering my choices up until now in my career. Especially whether I am still happy with the path I am going down.

Usually what I end up wondering about the most is if I made the right choice avoiding game developer positions. Granted, even if I had applied to them, there was no guarantee I would get them. But I often didn’t even look very hard. It felt like I was almost deliberately denying my dream. Picking the cold and calculating approach to my career that made me feel like something akin to a career grinch. To be fair, I have been making games in my free time (which I talk about here and here), but it is not the same.

One reason I felt like I had to sacrifice my creative dreams was because I was born to immigrant parents who fought tooth and nail for everything they got in the United States. My mom especially ingrained in me a belief that money was really hard to get, and that pursuing my passion might leave me penniless and starving on a street corner.

Following your passion was risky business, and taking risks was dangerous (it didn’t help that I was an only child). To those of you who don’t have immigrant parents (or siblings) this might seem a bit extreme. Thing is, they were born in Soviet Russia where clementines were considered a spectacular Christmas gift. So a little bit of imagination is required.

I did see some that shared my cautious attitude about pursuing my passion in the twitter thread.

https://twitter.com/oscargodson/status/1174503654809731072

So did all these tweets change my mind about whether I made the right decision? Is there an answer to which one wins over in the working for money versus passion debate. Was I right to choose web development instead of game development? I wish I could offer a yes or no answer. Unfortunately, as some people also pointed out in their responses, the question is rarely so black and white. My greatest fear about taking a game development job was that I could end up taking a pay cut and also hating my job.

I wrote about what it is like for women in the game development industry in another post. From sexism to harassment, and even rape, there is a frightening amount of horrors women in the game industry experience. Naturally, I feared facing these same kind of experiences myself. To make things worse, if I didn’t like my game development job and then tried to go back to web development? I might never make the money I was making before.

To be clear, I always was seeking out creative coding opportunities, but those types of jobs were tricky to find and game development felt like the most creative option by a long shot. In my head, a game development job would be the dream. But in reality who knows what it would be really like? It’s hard to say whether a job will be one you love or hate until some time has passed. It’s also hard not to chase your dream when you’ve been raised your whole life to do that exact thing. My parents tried to implant a practical attitude. But I still got the same treatment at school as any other millennial. Teachers encouraged me to dream big and never give up. So naturally, it’s still hard to let go of the idea of being a game developer.

I am certain this is not a dilemma I face alone. Many people go into programming as a career from lower paying fields. I met a woman once at a meetup who wanted to get into coding because she was burnt out as a social service worker. I also have a friend who was a professional artist and became a programmer so they didn’t have to worry about paying their bills. There are many others like her who work in rewarding but taxing jobs that eventually become intolerable. Did they love the job when they started out and begin to hate it later? Maybe they didn’t realize how unpleasant the job might become until later. Or they told themselves they loved helping people, and that helping people should be their passion.

At the end of this post, it seems I don’t really have an answer to the question in my title. It’s almost impossible to put a dollar sign on passion. Not just because thats a good quote to put on an inspirational poster. It’s hard because our imagination is not the same as reality. A job involves more than just doing something you are passionate about. It involves coworkers you may or may not get along with. Benefits that may or may not be good, among other things. Bosses who may or may not see where you’re coming from. And you won’t know all of those things until you take that risk. For now I’ve taken the safer road and worked as a creative coder in my free time, but perhaps in the future I will change my mind.

Would you take the 50K job you love or the 100K job you hate? What does working for money versus passion mean to you as a tech worker? Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts! I also highly recommend checking out the original thread on Twitter, or join in the discussion yourself.

If you enjoyed this article, consider following me on Twitter @nadyaprimak or if you need more tips on breaking into the tech industry, you can read my book “Foot in the Door”.

Creativity, Programming, Tech Industry

How the Tech Industry Discourages Multi-Passionates

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I wrote a post a few weeks ago about how I sometimes regret specializing in a front end development framework. Mainly because I inadvertently pigeonholed myself into work with outdated technology. What I realized I might have been accidentally implying in that post is that the tech industry therefore prefers multi-passionate people. I wanted to correct this implication because it is extremely incorrect, in fact I would argue that it is the opposite. There are not a lot of creative jobs in the tech industry, at least not if you are a developer. This is what makes it especially difficult for multi-passionate folks.

Technical interviews, especially for developers, are grueling. It is not uncommon to have one or two coding tests, sometimes with multiple developers watching you code live and taking notes while they’re at it. I’ve had cognitive assessments, personality tests, multiple choice questions, timed exams, and everything in between. What sucks the most is that almost all of these tests are designed to assess your left brain. That is, how good you are at algorithmic thinking, or logic puzzles, or your depth of understanding a specific programming language.

Coding reports like this discourage people who are looking for creative jobs in the tech industry

It’s a real frustration for someone like me, who has a mixture of skills in user experience, web design, and front end development. I often find when I’m looking at jobs that the ones which list this mixture of skills as “desired” are also the companies which are very small and basically just want to have one developer that doesn’t mind “working under pressure” (sidebar: if a job asks you about how comfortable you are under pressure, you should probably run away). Then the jobs which specifically want a “front end developer” couldn’t give a damn that I know my way around Photoshop, or that I have an online portfolio that showcases my game development, or that I have interests outside of technology at all.

The closest thing I found among creative jobs in the tech industry that I came across was being a UI developer, which crossed the boundary between user experience design and programming to some extent. But it was still a far cry from truly stretching my creative muscles.

Of course I would not write this if I thought I was the only one who experienced this frustration. There is a ton of gate-keeping in the industry, which you can read about here, here, and here. Not expressing enough passion about coding or not being up with the latest frameworks can easily cost you the job. As a result, people in the tech industry often feel pressured to give up their hobbies and their other interests and spend both their time inside and outside the office brushing up on trends, researching new tools, and making side projects to stay fresh.

The gatekeeping is real. Probably from StackOverflow.

This is a huge turn off for most multi-passionate folks. They tend to get bored doing the same thing each and every day. When they first discover a new interest they might become intensely absorbed in it for a while. But eventually that intense interest tapers off and is replaced with something else. Emilie Wapnick discusses this phenomenon in her fantastic TED talk, which I highly recommend.

The tech industry receives so much criticism for excluding people and ideas. Yet it continuously encourages developers to specialize in more and more specific tools. What the industry needs most right now is people who value the the long term happiness of their customers. That includes the user experience, genuine human interaction, and taking privacy seriously. To do this well, employees should be able to put themselves in the shoes of their customers. Hiring people who have diverse experiences and a wide range of interests would certainly help. Hiring people for their single-minded obsession with technology will have the opposite effect. It will continue to fuel the delusion that all problems can be solved with more technology.

The lack of diversity also discourages multipassionate folks

Some might infer from this that I want to do away with all coding tests. No. I am not advocating for an extreme approach. I think currently the industry skews very far in demanding employees to live, breathe, and eat code. That it is not conducive to a collaborative and open minded workforce. Of course it also relates to the bigger problem of toxic work culture. That, unfortunately, is another can of worms I won’t get into in this post.

Hiring in tech is broken. Having a single minded focus on the developers technical skills dehumanizes them. It also makes multi-passionate folks feel like they need to fit a very specific mold. I believe it is also the reason why so many companies don’t invest in good UX researchers and designers. After all, those skill-sets bridge different industries and require a more multi-passionate approach. Many companies seem to not see the value in anything that is not pure code. Basically anything that doesn’t follow the motto of “move fast and break things”.

That motto has NOT aged well.

Part of the reason I started this blog was to have an outlet to talk about all of my interests. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to write about a multitude of topics. While there are not a lot of creative jobs in the tech industry for developers, there are other ways to stretch your creative muscles. I do it by refusing to force myself into a niche that I would get sick of after a few weeks. The tech industry is changing, albeit not as quickly as I would like. I hope this post reaches the people who can spread the message that multi-passionate people in tech should be embraced rather than estranged.

If you enjoyed this article, consider following me on Twitter @nadyaprimak or if you need more tips on breaking into the tech industry, you can read my book “Foot in the Door”.

Game Development, Learning

Making Your First Video Game: 10 Tips

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Over the years I have participated in several game jams, some solo and some with peers. I don’t regret getting involved in any of them, but there were definitely some disappointments and frustrations along the way that I think could have been avoided if I had done a bit more of my own research first. I hope this post will offer some useful tips for making your first video game to help readers to avoid some of the pitfalls that I encountered.

Game jams are one great way for someone to get their feet wet with games, even if they’ve never made a game before. The most important thing to remember is to keep the game simple. It should also be mentioned that there is sometimes a pretty thin line between interactive art and game development. Take for example, Nathalie Lawhead‘s work, which I wrote about here. Don’t let the traditional perception of games as mindless shooters burden you. Make sure you check out games on itch.io to see how diverse games have become.

One tip for game jam success: having a good team makes a big difference
  1. Be extremely cautious of teaming up with strangers on the internet. This may be the most controversial suggestion for some and the most obvious for others. The thing is, I do not have any friends that wanted to work on a game, so I decided to team up with some people I met through a discord group. It all seemed fine at first, and many of the team members delivered. We had a story, music, and graphics for the game. Unfortunately, our game developer disappeared a few days before the project was over and never came back, leaving the game unfinished.
  2. Keep your scope small, ESPECIALLY if developing solo. When I was developing one of my first games, I became excited about all of the cool mechanics and logic I could add to make the game more interesting. What I didn’t think about was how each feature I was adding would affect the actual game play. I ended up play testing the game an insane number of times, and still wasn’t sure if it was winnable at the end.
  3. Make sure your UI is not an afterthought. It’s easy to get so caught up in the mechanics and other features of your game that you can forget about how important it is for players to actually understand HOW to play. This is probably my biggest regret with Education Sim. I assumed that players would look at the instructions before they started playing, which is usually NOT the case. The engine I was using added limitations to how intuitive I could make the UI, and if I had given myself more time to think about those challenges I would have had a better game.
  4. Agree on regular check in’s with your team. There is nothing worse than getting ghosted by a teammate when the project is about complete. You can avoid this happening by agreeing on regular check ins where teammates share their progress. That way, if a teammate does not show up or have any progress to share, you can find someone else. This ensures the game still gets completed on time.
  5. Make a game design document early on. Probably the best way to do this is in google docs, so you can share the document with the team and give them editing rights. You want your team to be on the same page about what you are making and what the major features will be. Until it is written on paper you don’t know what ideas are really in everyone’s head. It’s important to know whether you are all really on the same page. This also goes for solo developers, because it will work as a reference for you and keep you clear on the scope of the project.
  6. Draft a time table/schedule to stay on track. You don’t want to be polishing off your graphics when there’s less than a few hours remaining (if you’re doing a game jam) and you’re missing key features. Use google spreadsheets and map out how long you (roughly) want to spend on each aspect of the game. That will keep you from getting carried away. Make sure to mark the priority items as well.
  7. Be experimental. You don’t have to make a clone of another game. Sites like itch.io are not for professional, polished AAA titles. People want to see the trashy, the bizarre, and the experimental games so let out your inner weirdo.
  8. Stay reasonable with your expectations. Many people dream of making it big in the game industry, but the indie game scene is vast. As a result, it’s unlikely your first game is going to be a huge success. You are more likely to be noticed after growing a portfolio of games, with fans who will come back to see what you make next!
  9. Share your progress on social media. Don’t wait till the game is out to share! Twitter has a strong indie game developer community, with hashtags like #indiedev and #screenshotsaturday. You can also consider streaming your game development on Twitch or Youtube. I haven’t tried this myself, but it seems like a good way to build a following. Beginners enjoy following developers who stream. Make sure to save your past streams and link back to your portfolio/game to keep new players coming.
  10. If something is not working, pivot. If you’re not enjoying making the game (and you know you usually do, otherwise what are you doing???), or something is majorly wrong, the final product will probably not be very good. Don’t be afraid of switching it up! Just be sure to account for having less time and knowing the scope of the new game should be smaller.

I hope you found these tips for game jam success to be helpful! If you did, please let me know in the comments and share your games. What tips helped you the most?

If you enjoyed this article, consider following me on Twitter @nadyaprimak or if you need more tips on breaking into the tech industry, you can read my book “Foot in the Door”.

Learning, Programming, Tech Industry

Cons of Specializing in One Front End Javascript Framework

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Four years ago I got my first job at a start up. It was a very proud day. I called my dad from a Starbucks holding the offer letter in my shaking hand, and already imagined myself taking the metro the following week and walking down to the new shiny office building downtown and feeling like a grown up city woman, finally entering the field I had struggled for two years to be taken seriously by, building up my portfolio bit by bit. I was told many times that specializing in a front end framework was the way to go, and it wasn’t until much later that I learned about front end javascript framework cons.

I still remember it fondly, but what I hadn’t foreseen nor had anyone really warned me about was that it’s a lot harder to stay on the cutting edge of new technologies once you are actually employed. At the time the cool new front end framework was AngularJS, and I embraced the opportunity to master the framework, since a) the job required it and b) it seemed like something that would stick around for a while.

There are a LOT of Javascript front end frameworks

Now I wasn’t exactly wrong about it sticking around, but I didn’t expect that four years later I would still be working with, not just the same framework, but the same VERSION of the framework. For those that don’t know, the newest version of Angular today is Angular 8, and it is VERY different from AngularJS. So different in fact that learning it is practically like learning a new framework entirely. Then there is also React, a framework which has rapidly gained popularity and actually become more widely adopted than Angular. On top of that, there is also Vue, which isn’t as popular but is quickly gaining traction as well.

I hadn’t intended to get pigeonholed into AngularJS, but it happened because for the last three years I’ve worked in a city where there are a lot of government related jobs and a lot of enterprise companies that move slowly and use outdated technologies like AngularJS. I also typically found that by the end of the work day, I didn’t have a lot of juice left to teach myself other frameworks. As a person who doesn’t just live and breathe my day job, if I was going to code outside of work I wanted it to be coding games or working on creative coding projects with Processing or other generative art technologies (if you’re interested in this, I wrote another blog post about it here). I imagine there are other people reading this blog who have that itch to express themselves creatively that feel the same way.

There are a LOT of versions of Angular, and quite a few versions of React as well. Its constantly changing.

Many developers will tell you, its hard to work in this industry and maintain a hobby. But without exercising my creative muscles I feel like part of my soul is missing, and when all is said and done I still have that urge to express myself. To be fair, front end development does allow for some creative expression at times, especially if you are working at the ground level of a startup and get to have a say in the user interface of the application or website. But overall I still had the urge to express myself creatively when the work day was over.

What I didn’t always have is the energy leftover to learn the latest and greatest framework, because coding all day can really suck that out of you. So at that point I felt stuck with this specialty in AngularJS, one that is no longer particularly desirable in a field that is ever changing, but also one that is hard to break out of now that I have four years of experience with it.

I don’t want to end on this pessimistic note, because thankfully my hobby creative coding projects like making games also help to show prospective employers that I have the ability to teach myself other languages and frameworks, even if they are outside the front end tool set. However, I don’t think this issue of getting pigeonholed into a front end javascript framework gets talked about enough.

There are many articles about breaking into tech and getting that first job. It is also true that the next job is always much easier to get than the first. Still, it’s also easy to become complacent once you’ve broken in, because there is a lot less external motivation pushing you to keep learning and breaking new ground. This complacency is hard to guard against, but guard against it you must, because otherwise you may find yourself stagnating professionally, unmotivated and unhappy.

I’m curious to hear comments from other developers if they experienced any cons to specializing in one front end javascript framework. Have you found yourself pigeonholed into a specialty in tech? Front end or back end? Do you wish you had more time to pursue creative coding projects?

If you enjoyed this article, consider following me on Twitter @nadyaprimak or if you need more tips on breaking into the tech industry, you can read my book “Foot in the Door”.

Creativity, Resources

Creative Coding Resources | When Artists Write Code

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This is a follow up to my article reviewing the exhibit at Artechouse DC.

If you’re interested in popular creative coding tools like Processing I suspect the artists behind the Artechouse DC exhibit used, you should absolutely check out some of the links below.

While I certainly can’t guarantee that learning Processing will ever get you selected to exhibit at Artechouse, you will come away with a better understanding of how some of these art exhibits are formed. There’s also tools like Arduino which I am sure were involved at some point.

https://processing.org/

The main Processing website. Lots of examples, documentation, and tutorials for getting started with Processing, even if you’re new to code. Processing uses a very simple language based on Python that is quite easy to learn. There are also examples that allow artists to experiment with to start creating generative art quite quickly.

https://www.openprocessing.org/

A community for Processing developers, where its super easy to share your work and create a portfolio. If you’re looking for inspiration or source code to experiment with to see what sort of changes happen, this is a good place to go.

http://learningprocessing.com/examples/

Tons of examples of Processing in action, with code snippets alongside the result. All the exercises and examples are accessible online for free, with the code displayed alongside. There are also comments in the examples explaining parts of the code. It’s easy enough to copy and paste it into your IDE and make changes if you want to experiment more.

https://openframeworks.cc/

Open Frameworks is a open sourced, C++ based toolkit for creative coding. As they say in the about section, “Our intended audience are folks using computers for creative, artistic expression, and who would like low level access to the data inside of media in order manipulate, analyze or explore.” Might be a little harder to get started if you don’t have any coding background, however.

https://www.sergioalbiac.com/

One of my personal favorite Processing artists, who also experiments with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create amazing images. Although he sometimes uses Processing experiments to inspire his paintings versus the other way around, I find looking at his work always inspires me.

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products

Arduino boards are often used in tandem with Processing, because they allow for users to actually interact with the art. They are like miniature computers that can be setup with whatever inputs and outputs your project needs.

Did you find any of the above links helpful? Did you think the cherry blossom exhibit was better? Are you already exhibiting in spaces like Artechouse, or hope to in the future? I’d love to hear from you about your own experiences with tools like Processing and Arduino, and what you think of where the world of creative expression with technology is going. Leave your comments below!