Windy Leaves

Todd and I are competing once again - this time the topic was "wind". I haven't seen Todd's entry yet, but I'm fairly certain mine is much windier than his. If not, hopefully at least my blog post will be.

For "wind", I had trouble coming up with an idea, but finally settled on an online app that showed leaves blowing in the wind. Leaves are a really easy way to show "wind". I played with a few mathematical formulas using cosine and varying constant values until it started looking correct. Once I had the leaves floating convincingly across the screen, I added a barren tree and some background noise to lend a windier atmosphere. The end result seems a bit like a frame from a comic strip.

So, try catching some leaves:


I will also note that, unlike all my other JavaScript apps, I tried adding a little sound to this one and, thanks to Scott Schiller's Sound Manager, implementing sound was rather straightforward.