mattlo_project3_final

Project 3 - 3R: Kings of Soccer
//Final is located in the Project 3 dropbox//



Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronaldinho http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronaldo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinho http://www.processing.org/learning/index.html

Vision and Rationale
For this project, I decided to focus my explorations on the careers goals of the top 3 Brazilian soccer players in the world, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, and Robinho. My initial idea was just to focus on Ronaldinho's career goals, depicted by circles that would move around, bouncing off each other moving at different speeds. By rolling over each circle you would be able to see the date of the goal scored as well as who it was against etc. These circles representing the goals would be continuously moving on the page creating reactions when hitting each other, meaning nothing but collisions and showing physics which was relevant in ways in how soccer balls move in the game. This showing of the goals presented an interesting, exciting setup of information which was fun and interactive, and visually stimulating. And in many ways, the way the information was shown along with the actual idea of soccer, they seem to merge well with each other and have relevance.

With this idea, being a good start, still presented conflicts. In terms of information, I was on the right track, but there wasn't really enough information to show some type of interaction or differentiating or comparing of information. So then I had to look further into investigation into more information to include. I stayed within the career goals realm, but expanded it by adding 2 more players, relating them in a way by their origin of country. I soon focused my information of career goals on 3 Brazilian soccer players, comparing their goals to each other over their careers. This idea was good because they all play somewhat the same position presenting them with the chances of goal scoring, so the information of goals that I was able to collect was of good amount. This way, the info was related in a way by their similarities, and also this idea created unity in the project of the subject and information.

What I did was, to show the information of the goals, I used circles to represent each goal, and colour coding to shown the relevance of the goals to each player. With this I chose to represent each player with the colours of Brazil using blue, green and yellow. The circles would all be moving and colliding with each other and the walls within a surrounded area. Each circle with information of when the goal was scored and against who. The relevance of time scored was shown by the size of the circles and the speed at which the circles were moving. The bigger and faster the circles moved, the more recent the goal, the smaller and slower the circles moved, the older the goal. So I was relating and comparing the information based on subject, colour and speed of information. The information could also be separated by time frames in which you could choose between years, choosing a span of years, a single year or the player's whole career. Also, the information could also be separated by choosing which player's information to show or which comparison of player's to show. By having this function, the information had purpose in what it was showing because it was comparing to other information, rather than just showing "statistics on the page," this way you could show it comparitively, making it more meaningful.

Overall I felt that the idea and project was interesting because it made me think in a different way than I am used to, mainly on a way to present information in different ways, instead of always presenting it in static form. This way I had to think about how the information would show its meaning and relevance to other information, and also the topic as well. And the way the information interacted had to relate to the subject. The whole look and feel was different, and had to be unified in some way with each other (info and visual). I felt that the sketching was really something new and interesting, yet very hard to understand and learn. It's even harder when my html and css skills aren't the best, but it's for sure something to continue investigating and exploring since it is very different. It's also fun at the same time being able to see those sketches come alive.