Coding for beginners: learn coding by creating art
What you'll learn
- You will realize that you're not limited to design tools that other people have created for you
- You will be able to create visuals, both animated and still, by writing code
- You will create small interactive applications (called 'sketches' in Processing)
- You will realize how creative coding can complement and enhance your current design processes
- You will start understanding some major programming concepts like variables, functions and conditionals
Requirements
- Curiosity, imagination and a bit of endurance. it will be worth it!
- A free software called Processing (you can download and install it already if you want but we'll cover than in the course)
Description
[update: August 12th 2015: the default download on the Processing page is Processing 3 beta now, for this course we need the stable Processing 2.2.1 though, you can still download it if you scroll down the download page a little ]
[update: August 9th 2015: all videos have subtitles now!]
Are you an artist who's been thinking about integrating coding into your artistic workflow but you've not yet dared to dip your feet into the vast ocean of bits and bytes? Then you've come to the right place! This course will allow you to get a sense of it all and to then decide if you want to go further down that road or not.
Have you been bored to death by traditional programming courses, either in school or online, yet you are still interested in programming because you think this stuff is still kinda important to know and could, maybe, even, actually be fun after all? Well, in that case you've come to the right place as well as I'm going to try to give you a fresh view on programming!
And just to be clear: this introductory course requires NO previous programming knowledge at all. It starts from zero. And there are no stupid questions so ask them in the course forum and I'll address them there.
Who this course is for:
- Artists with no prior programming experience but with an interest in using code to create art
- People who like instant (visual) gratification: Processing, unlike other programming languages, makes it very easy to get visual output almost immediately. this is very satisfying and highly motivating.
- Total programming beginners in general who want to get a basic understanding of programming in a fun and creative way
- Students of all ages who have been bored and turned off by traditional programming courses and who are looking for a fun way to make programming more exciting
- Beware though: this introductory course is definitely NOT for people who already know what operators, datatypes, loops and functions are. Except if they're interested in how Processing can be used to create visual output.
Instructor
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 196 Reviews
- 2,446 Students
- 2 Courses
Having been involved with IT for 20 years, but with a deep yearning for more art and design in my life, I've discovered creative coding, by chance, a couple of years ago. That was a revelation to me! I had finally found my tool for creating, what I think is, beautiful stuff. I had finally found a way to turn the ideas in my head into something visible on a screen!
I immediately then started a Tumblr with the results (and often the source code) of my coding experiments. Its follower size has steadily increased over time and stands at 13'000+ right now. Recently I have also launched an ello page and it has 2000+ followers, which is not bad for ello standards ;)
Very recently I've also been an online 'creative coding' mentor working for the Australian Monash University.
I hope I can share my passion here and inspire some of you to start creating art by code as well. Also, let's keep in touch after the course! I'm interested in seeing what you'll do with your new knowledge :)