Been geeking away on more functions for Truchet.
now we have..
> much improved spray paint effect with better colour sampling from the image
> new ability for transparency and layering of effects
> pixelization effect
> stripes effect
> ability for the image to attempt to regenerate itself
> lots of animation controls
Been adding more painterly effects to Truchet++
This starting to look closer to some of my traditional painting techniques. Im hoping to add more effects soon to make things look more organic.
For this year’s Bigman Christmas card I decided to use our Truchet++ program (see earlier post). To get the effect I wanted, I added functions for how randomized or true to the original image the colours were, and a small chance of the grid size doubling.
I’ve been having tons of fun with this so keen to develop it further, next on the list is a whole heap of animation parameters for making ‘tangram-ized’ video.
As a kid, when my ZX spectrum used to frustratingly crash mid game I used to find some consolation in the beautiful colourful images it would generate if you so much as looked at the joystick interface.
Ive been getting more and more obsessed with the use of digital artifacts as an artform in their own right
Wired Magazine have a good article on it.
Wikipedia have a few bits
Youtube has lots of cool stuff including the original data moshing trilogy
Heres an out-take from one of my 3D scenes.
Ive just ordered this cool looking book from Mark Batty publishers, cant wait to read it
Its a shame to see you go Airside, but nice that you are going out on a high
Elph, from Edinburgh writes a fantastic blog.
Great to see such passion and still innovating after many years in the game.
I heart datamoshing!
Ive been getting really inspired by procedural artwork for a while now, and I have been itching to have a try myself. After reading some great books like Form and Code & The Blind Watchmaker (see my earlier post) I decided to get stuck into some Processing. Processing was written by Ben Fry and Casey Reas at MIT with the goal of making code more accessable to artists.
As my company, (Bigman) uses tangrams extensively in its brand identity I thought it would be a fun first challenge to try and build a program that can generate patterns of tangram shapes automatically.
The solution seemed to be out of my reach until I managed to break down the problem into a few simple steps. The initial inspiration came from Sebastien Truchet
1. This is exactly like how Mr Truchet did it all those years ago. randomly oriently square tiles.
2. To break it up abit I added bigger ones every now and then
3. Things get a little more interesting when the small shapes are allowed to join into bigger shapes.
4. Adding a few more rules for how the small shapes can join together, and giving each a unique colour gives a nice broken pattern.
5. As this is coded rather than created by hand we can do cool things like huge canvas sizes.
6. By placing an image underneath our pattern and taking the colour from that pattern for each triangle, its possible to ‘filter’ an image into a tangram pattern similar to how a Photoshop filter might work
7. I have this working for animation sequences now, will be adding more features soon to make this into a fully fledged video effect.
Love these digital paintings. Created algorithmically, and printed digitally it means that 10,000 unique designs were printed. Great collab between GFsmith , Sea Design, and Field.
Ever since Ive read the excellent Form and Code Ive been itching to do something like this.
Found these whilst researching new printing techiques for our new business cards. Pure Print are now printing in a groundbreaking white ink, which looks very tasty on black card.
I’ve just finished reading Richard Dawkin’s classic book on Evolution, The Blind Watchmaker. I was stunned by the program ‘Biomorph’ that he wrote for the book, very ahead of its time for the mid 80′s.
Mark Jones of Cambridge Uni has written up a version of the original algorithm that you can play:
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/mirror/biomorph/
Life starts as just a single pixel and just as on early Earth, it takes a while to get going. Each generation will show 12 mutant offspring of the generation before it, essentially copying the ‘random’ mutation that occurs in nature.
Biomorph allows you to ‘play’ god, or if you prefer, the role of natural selection.
As you choose forms that appeal from each generation, the forms become increasingly complex.
I hope I can find time at some point next year to work on an experimental animation and try some of these techniques in contemporary 3D. MEL script in Maya would work pretty well to create some cool looking visuals.
