Explosions, Puppetry and Ripples

Before class today I worked on my fireworks program a bit more and managed to create a randomly coloured firework blast that originated where the mouse was clicked with the right button.

While the effect of this was entertaining, it was quick to understand and was limited to having only one explosion on-screen at any time, any new click overriding the old one. It didn't take long lose interest in this aspect of the program but overall it added to the diversity within it, especially since the sparkler could be run at the same time. This showed me a point that was brought up in class; while simple effects are easy to lose interest in on their own, when they are combined with others it generates a whole new field for users to explore. A way I would take this further if I chose to would be to make an explosion influence the direction the sparks move in by pushing them away from the explosion's centre.
During the actual tutorial we ran an exercise that required us to pair off and develop a person to person interface. My partner Ben and I based ours on puppetry; the way the user moved affected the 'puppet' in different ways. Some people used gestures to measure the strength or level of output. Others made their input verbal; different words having different effects. In this exercise we had a look at what ones were entertaining for the longest and how one input could lead to multiple effects or multiple inputs to one effect. The most interesting interactions were the one that had multiple inputs with interwoven effects so the user had more to explore.
This inspired a new take on my current 142 project that would still use the spark physics I've developed but in a new way. I have yet to figure how to code this but it's on its way, as is a storyboard to explain my new idea. As for right now here is a cool way of indicating where the mouse was last clicked that I developed;

Yay.