1. Using polar coordinates makes the maths a lot cleaner than using Cartesian coordinates. However you then either need to explain polar coordinates, or you assume people remember polar coordinates from high school which is often not the case in my experience.
2. I think the positioning of the points is a little bit opaque. I was expecting to see (r * cos theta, r * sin theta) and it took me by surprise to see an addition in there. Either just noting that stupid computer graphics libraries don't put the origin at the center, or adding that translation later (which is a chance to talk about function composition) might be beneficial.
(I've written my own take on this same topic, starting at http://www.creativescala.org/creative-scala/polygons/ It will take a little bit more than 5 minutes to get through it :-) It's really fun and you can do a huge amount with parametric curves.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_basic_principles_of_a...
I jotted down some thoughts on how I think about (simple) animations and how to create them with some programming (in Python). I'd love to hear your thoughts on my write up and also what directions you suggest I take these personal explorations in.
What would be "first principles in animation", in your opinion?
This is about how to do animations with primitive shapes, that knowledge would probably translate to many other environments. You could even follow the tutorial with pen and paper if you are into that.
mathspp.com will help with making an animation programmatically. The video I linked will help the animation be more compelling for the viewer.
