ICS Assignment 1 -- Your Personal Coat of Arms

Due: Tuesday October 19, 2004 / Wednesday October 20, 2004

To "herald" your introduction to Java, this asignment will allow you to be creative and at the same time to show your understanding of simple Applet programming.   For the assignment, you will invent a coat of arms for either yourself or your family.

The assignment has 2 parts:

  1. Writing an Applet that displays your personal or family coat of arms
  2. Writing an HTML web page that runs the Applet and explains the coat of arms

A coat of arms tells other people about the history, achievements, qualities, etc., of a person.  For the purposes of this assignment, you can create a personal coat of arms for yourself or a persona of yours, to indicate your life history, achievements, qualities, etc., or a coat of arms for your family.  You can find out more about the design, symbolism, and elements of coats of arms, and about the history of heraldry, at http://www.fleurdelis.com/coatofarms.htm.

A coat of arms can be quite complex, both in its number of elements and in the artistic rendering of these elements.  For the purposes of this assignment, however, a coat of arms will consist of, at minimum (you may wish to add additional elements, but these are not required), the following three elements:

  1. A motto (a brief statement of belief, principle, goals, or ideals) in a banner (an example motto is Labor Omnia Vincit, or "Work Conquers All")
  2. A shield divided into at least 4 sections
  3. A name design (your name in a fancy font)
These elements MUST be drawn using the Graphics class' draw/fill methods.  Only for more complex elements (if you wish to include them) like helms, wreaths, crests, etc., may you use image (GIF, JPEG, etc.) files (using, for example, the Graphics class' drawImage() method).

You may wish to base the meanings of the symbols, colors, etc., in your coat of arms on the ancient heraldic tradition (see, for example, http://www.fleurdelis.com/meanings.htm), or you may wish to invent your own symbols and meanings.  The key thing is that you use the HTML web page that displays your coat of arms to explain what the symbols, colors, etc., mean.

Here are a few well known examples of coats of arms (Queen Elizabeth's and Canada's):

Here is a screenshot of a very simple Coat of Arms created with a Java Applet:

The marking scheme for this assignment is as follows:
    1. Three required elements of Coat of Arms complete and present /9
    2. Clear explanatory comments for Applet code /6
    3. Appearance (neatness, style, snazziness, etc.) of Applet and Web Page /6
    4. Use of a variety of HTML tags (<a>, <img>, etc.) /9
    5. Explanation of Coat of Arms in Web Page /6
TOTAL: /36