Week 3 - Jesse Pinkman Clock

The theme of my project is a merch clock portraying a character, Jesse Pinkman, from my favorite TV show Breaking Bad. Jesse has a unique iconic speaking style and fun, unique catchphrases. While watching the show, you fall in love with how he speaks. Pinkman has a hipster and innocent way of saying things at the exact times. He loves to say "Bitch!" after each sentence. The actor Aron Paul, who portrays Pinkman, received an Emmy for his performance in the Breaking Bad role.

Ideation

I wanted to go nuts when brainstorming ideas about the clock. A few of them were very tiresome and labor intensive to make and would have been too hard to make in week extended deadline, given that I had work from other classes. So I chose the one which was realistically possible to make.

Here are a few ideas that I thought of creating:

I wanted to go nuts when brainstorming ideas about the clock. A few of them were very tiresome and labor intensive to make and would have been too hard to make in week extended deadline, given that I had work from other classes. So I chose the one which was realistically possible to make.

Here are a few ideas that I thought of creating:

Countdown to Andromeda-Milky Way Collision: Yes, you heard it right, the Andromeda-Milky Way collision is set to happen in the next 4.5 billion years. But don't worry, the planets and stars are so far apart that the crash won't affect our solar system. So, I wanted to design a countdown to display the time remaining until the collision.

Wemdinger Zeitpyramid: The Zeitpyramide is a work of public art by Manfred Laber under construction in Wemding, Germany. The pyramid began in 1993, on the 1,200th anniversary of Wemding. A new block is added every ten years. So only three blocks have been added yet. The pyramid will be finished in the year 3183.

Jesse Pinkman Clock: The basic idea was to take a text-to-speech approach where, when clicked, the time would be announced using a voiceover. So I wanted to spice it up and take a character's voice. Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad has a distinct style of speaking, including hipster slang, so I chose him.

Process

I began by creating a digital clock. Once I achieved that, I made graphics on Illustrator and added a visual layer to the code.

There's a website called UberDuck.ai where one can get the voice of their favorite character generated from custom text. The website has hundreds of characters to choose from.

I downloaded a voiceover for each hour and exported twelve mp3 files. Using conditionals, my code announced the time when the canvas was clicked.

I finally added some finishing touches, like the cursor displaying instructions and Jesse's head wiggling when the audio is being played.

Reflection

The outcome turned out to be good. I wish I had more time, so I could also code to announce minutes and seconds. Overall, it was an excellent entertaining project to work on, and I like that it puts a smile on people's faces.