design process statement

I design the Santa Generator mainly because I love how excel can carry the perfect sense of pixel art. It’s no exaggeration to say that the cells are made for pixeled images, except the drawing part is not that enjoyable: filling each cell with numbers, clicking and dragging the small cross-shaped button. Seems there might be some easier way to facilitate the process, which I haven’t found yet.

At first, I drew the outline of Santa Claus using another app and made it transparent as a reference image using the “background” in Page Layout. Then I set up ten rules in conditional formatting to fill cells with color. (Each number represents a unique color) I sketched Santa’s outline by inserting numbers into the cells. After that, I split the Santa into four parts and put them into separate worksheet tabs so each sheet would have some different designs to choose from. I made the top area to be the display window(red rectangle) showing the result from that tab. After having at least one design in those tabs, I put all the selected results into the outline sketch by referencing each sheet.

I met some challenges during this project. Initially, I couldn’t figure out how to manipulate the display window using which function/or button. And I wasn’t sure about making it a “choose your own Santa” or a “Santa Generator.” After searching functions online, I found these two functions, “ADDRESS” and “INDIRECT” could work together to reflect the cells I filled out previously. I spent some time playing with the address function to understand better what was the most suitable way to display Santa within the top area. After a while, I figured out that I could refer to the cells below by changing the heights. And the height’s number could be random, so the players would see more Santa combinations easily–by pressing F9.

Through this project, I mainly focus on drawing pixel art Santa and learning how to use function combos. I remember we did some function combo exercises in class which were extremely useful, but I forgot most of them. Consequently, I realize that I should practice more to memorize to understand each function better.