INITIAL RESEARCH DOCUMENT
PAST
+ It used to be liquid, stable, but not that much.
+ Felt emprisonned by the cup, but it did not care much as it was with friends.
+ Somehow, it used to be some sort of very motivated type with a strong feeling of power because it was on the surface of the coffee cup and was trying to get higher and higher.
+ It felt independant from its fellow molecules.
+ It liked its coffee cup environment but felt there was more to it.
+ Willing to take the chance of seeing what else there is out there.

PRESENT
+ Now that it is steaming, it feels free from the packed environment of the cup.
+ It's happy to be able to move freely in space.
+ The feeling of independance is great but it realizes that it's good to keep contact with other molecules that took the journey with it.
+ It feels some sort of attraction with thoses molecules.
+ It's starting to be scared as to what is going to happen.
+ It feels less confident and is very aprehensive.
+ Still, it wants to enjoy every moment of life and be active in the party.

FUTURE
+ It is very aprehensive about its new life, but is also very serene about it.
+ It knows it now has no power on its destiny.
+ Its dreams of liberty are still very strong.

INTERACTION
+ The user will be able to interact with the steam by moving the mouse pointer in space.
+ The reaction of the steam will be a change in the fluid motion of every particle in it.
+ Clicking the mouse wont affect the system.
+ It will react to pure motion of the mouse pointer: calm/aggressive, fast/slow, stable/unstable, etc.

STORYBOARD

DESIGN/IMPLEMENTATION
+ I will use Flash actionscript for the project.
+ I will get the input from the mouse object.
+ The steam will consist of many instances of one object: h2o
+ Attributes of h2o: xposition, yposition, speed, age, transparency
+ Member functions of h2o: spawn(), die(), move()

PLAN
+ I will first implement the particle system and tweak it so that the reactions are somehow predictable.
+ Then I will work on the "look" of the final piece.