Hi,
When presented with a large onion skin for sketches, I noticed kids tend to treat it like a large sheet of paper and draw whole pictures instead of drawing small objects and assembling them into widgets. The skin distorts the colors of objects already in the world, so kids shuffle it around when using color picker.
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Regards .. Subbu
On Sep 28, 2007, at 10:58 , subbukk wrote:
Hi,
When presented with a large onion skin for sketches, I noticed kids tend to treat it like a large sheet of paper and draw whole pictures instead of drawing small objects and assembling them into widgets. The skin distorts the colors of objects already in the world, so kids shuffle it around when using color picker.
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Interesting thought, in particular since we still have the full- screen drawing capability for the background (the World's paint halo- handle).
- Bert -
Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On Sep 28, 2007, at 10:58 , subbukk wrote:
Hi,
When presented with a large onion skin for sketches, I noticed kids tend to treat it like a large sheet of paper and draw whole pictures instead of drawing small objects and assembling them into widgets. The skin distorts the colors of objects already in the world, so kids shuffle it around when using color picker.
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Interesting thought, in particular since we still have the full- screen drawing capability for the background (the World's paint halo- handle).
- Bert -
Kids tend to make a drawing of the whole scenario in one sketch and then they want to make the pieces move. To draw the pieces one by one is counter intuitive for beginners and a hurdle that could be avoided. It could be something like a handle with a scissor to cut a sketch up into individual pieces. Karl
On Saturday 29 September 2007 6:44 pm, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Interesting thought, in particular since we still have the full- screen drawing capability for the background (the World's paint halo- handle).
The onion skin is resizable so advanced squeakers can adapt it to their needs. It is just that a large skin encourages beginners to use Etoys like a painting program. The skin should act as a mould ("build a new part") and not a canvas.
Unfortunately, the Etoy demo reinforces the canvas metaphor by painting wheels separately on the car :-(. Instead, a wheel could have been painted once and made into a stamp, and then stamped four times around the car.
Regards .. Subbu
Yet knowing that the kids usually paints the entire drawing in one piece, I think that making the onion skin smaller would not solve the problem. It also must be considered that the XO display is very small and the students usually draws using the touchpad, which makes precise moves difficult. Having a smaller onion skin would make even more difficult to draw in the XO. But, the idea of creating a tool where children can cut parts of a drawing and transform them in objects sounds very interesting. This would make possible to the child to paint an entire scene, and after that decide what is an object and what is background.
subbukk escreveu:
On Saturday 29 September 2007 6:44 pm, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
Since Etoys is all about encouraging kids to assemble widgets, shouldn't the default size be reduced? I tried various sizes and found 320x300 to be a nice default. It leaves enough of the screen estate visible (for picking colors) while giving enough area to draw small objects.
defaultPaintingExtent ^320 @ 300
Interesting thought, in particular since we still have the full- screen drawing capability for the background (the World's paint halo- handle).
The onion skin is resizable so advanced squeakers can adapt it to their needs. It is just that a large skin encourages beginners to use Etoys like a painting program. The skin should act as a mould ("build a new part") and not a canvas.
Unfortunately, the Etoy demo reinforces the canvas metaphor by painting wheels separately on the car :-(. Instead, a wheel could have been painted once and made into a stamp, and then stamped four times around the car.
Regards .. Subbu _______________________________________________ Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
On Sep 30, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Juliano Bittencourt wrote:
... But, the idea of creating a tool where children can cutparts of a drawing and transform them in objects sounds very interesting. This would make possible to the child to paint an entire scene, and after that decide what is an object and what is background.
It bears mentioning that the "lasso" and the "grab patch" tools (found in the Graphics category of the Objects catalog) allow the user to designate areas on the screen to be "grabbed"; the result of such a grab is the creation of a new "sketch", just as if the area designated had just been painted.
These provide a way that multiple smaller objects can be derived from a single initial painting without having to redo the artwork.
Cheers,
-- Scott
On Oct 1, 2007, at 6:40 , Scott Wallace wrote:
On Sep 30, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Juliano Bittencourt wrote:
... But, the idea of creating a tool where children can cutparts of a drawing and transform them in objects sounds very interesting. This would make possible to the child to paint an entire scene, and after that decide what is an object and what is background.
It bears mentioning that the "lasso" and the "grab patch" tools (found in the Graphics category of the Objects catalog) allow the user to designate areas on the screen to be "grabbed"; the result of such a grab is the creation of a new "sketch", just as if the area designated had just been painted.
These provide a way that multiple smaller objects can be derived from a single initial painting without having to redo the artwork.
I always wondered how these "tools" could be made more discoverable ... I know many people who used etoys for a long time but never discovered and used them.
Maybe it was simpler when we still had two flaps, the "tools" and the "supplies" flap. Sigh, screen real estate again ...
- Bert -
On Monday 01 October 2007 1:32 pm, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
I always wondered how these "tools" could be made more discoverable ... I know many people who used etoys for a long time but never discovered and used them.
Just watch kids explaining Etoys to other kids :-). Many terms used in Etoys are techno-centric and does not reflect a kid's view of the world.
For example, "lasso" is not understood widely around the world. "Scissors" with the scissor+string icon and a scissor cursor will make the purpose clear. "Grab" has a negative connotation with young children ("Request politely, don't grab"). "Cutter" with a scissors+rectangle icon and a rubber-band rectangle (like in shift-drag) would be better suited for Grab Patch(*). The word object in "object catalog" is superfluous. I liked the way the cursor behaved in Randy Smith's ARK.
Some of the dissonances are bugs which can be fixed, but many others are design issues that needs to be debated and validated.
Regards .. Subbu * Yes, real-world scissors cut, while Etoys scissor doesn't leave a hole. That's because "it is a magic scissor" :-).
Bert,
Several versions ago Etoys had "supplies" and "widgets" in attempt to do exactly that. However, after some time of use we learned people forgot what was where and opted to "simplify" and locate all in one place....
Kim
On Oct 1, 2007, at 1:02 AM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
On Oct 1, 2007, at 6:40 , Scott Wallace wrote:
On Sep 30, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Juliano Bittencourt wrote:
... But, the idea of creating a tool where children can cutparts of a drawing and transform them in objects sounds very interesting. This would make possible to the child to paint an entire scene, and after that decide what is an object and what is background.
It bears mentioning that the "lasso" and the "grab patch" tools (found in the Graphics category of the Objects catalog) allow the user to designate areas on the screen to be "grabbed"; the result of such a grab is the creation of a new "sketch", just as if the area designated had just been painted.
These provide a way that multiple smaller objects can be derived from a single initial painting without having to redo the artwork.
I always wondered how these "tools" could be made more discoverable ... I know many people who used etoys for a long time but never discovered and used them.
Maybe it was simpler when we still had two flaps, the "tools" and the "supplies" flap. Sigh, screen real estate again ...
- Bert -
Etoys mailing list Etoys@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/etoys
Scott Wallace wrote:
On Sep 30, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Juliano Bittencourt wrote:
... But, the idea of creating a tool where children can cutparts of a drawing and transform them in objects sounds very interesting. This would make possible to the child to paint an entire scene, and after that decide what is an object and what is background.
It bears mentioning that the "lasso" and the "grab patch" tools (found in the Graphics category of the Objects catalog) allow the user to designate areas on the screen to be "grabbed"; the result of such a grab is the creation of a new "sketch", just as if the area designated had just been painted.
These provide a way that multiple smaller objects can be derived from a single initial painting without having to redo the artwork.
Both of these grab the background as well as the drawing. Karl
etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org
-
Bert Freudenberg -
Juliano Bittencourt -
karl -
Karl
-
Kim Rose -
Scott Wallace -
subbukk