Generative Art – Week 4

Four weeks ago, I started doing daily generative art Processing sketches – and now I am at the end of this fourth week. I’m glad I held on to the “do one sketch every day” mantra, even when I wasn’t feeling inspired – I made some pretty fun stuff this week. Alright, let’s dive right in!

#022: Tentapus Generator

That’s right – it has 10 legs, not 8! I really like how the legs always look so different. While generating, sometimes it almost looked like it was dancing. I might actually use this in a game one day – it certainly looks like it would be fun to play with.

s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_01      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_02      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_03

s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_04      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_05      s15_03_22_tentapus_generator_06

#023: Thorny Path

A rehash of #022. Looks kind of plant/thorn-like.

s15_03_23_tentacle_frame_01      s15_03_23_tentacle_frame_02      s15_03_23_tentacle_frame_03

#024: Fruity Planets

One of the absurdest things I ever made and definitely the star of this week! It was so much fun generating images and thinking up stories for the different planets. The basic concept of “planet with a radial collage” is taken from the amazing book Generative Design which I cannot recommend highly enough. The original images were dedicated to the Public Domain and are taken from http://creativecommons.photos.

s15_03_24_fruity_planets_01      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_02      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_03

s15_03_24_fruity_planets_04      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_05      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_06

s15_03_24_fruity_planets_07      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_08      s15_03_24_fruity_planets_09

The first of these pictures even recieved a small poem by my friend Marina Bahlke:

With silent steps the tigers try to walk
their applejuicy-drippy paws make stalk-
-ing antelopes way too hard

they sizzle, crackle, slosh and crunch
and before having air as lunch…

…they enjoyed a fine meal in one of the palaces and lived happily ever after.

Thanks a lot! That’s already the second piece of fanfiction I get for making, uh, “art”.

#025: New Emoticons For A New Century

Because the old emoticons were boring, our robot overlords have generated new ones. Rejoice! (What do you mean, you can’t type a reverse F on your keyboard? Get a better one!)

This might not look like it, but of all my generative art dailies, this has taken the most work. I actually revisited it multiple times on following days to add things, like a hat or side decorations. It was fiddly to get right, but I am very pleased with the results!

The font used is FreeSans by GNU FreeFont.

s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_01      s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_02      s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_03

s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_04      s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_05      s15_03_25_new_emoticons_for_a_new_century_06

#026: A Handful Of Characters

The title already alludes to it: What you are seeing there isn’t drawn from simple lines and curves, but composed out of font symbols that aren’t necessilary looking like the normal letters of the alphabet. The resulting images are interesting – and what’s more, it offered me an excuseto use my beloved fonts Mara’s Eye, Mage Script and Were Wolf, haha.

The fonts in the pictures are: Iokharic, Mage Script, Mara’s Eye and Visitor Script by Neale Davidson, Magzetician Regular by GrandChaos9000 and WereWolf by GemFonts.

s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_01      s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_02     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_03

s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_04     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_05     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_06

s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_07     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_08     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_09

s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_10     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_11     s15_03_26_a_handful_of_characters_12

#027: FormWeaver

Another part of the Weaver series (see #09 and #09b), experimenting with drawing faint lines between points. This time, the results look a bit like linen spanned between points and illuminated from behind.

s15_03_27_formweaver_01      s15_03_27_formweaver_02      s15_03_27_formweaver_03

s15_03_27_formweaver_04      s15_03_27_formweaver_05      s15_03_27_formweaver_06

#028: Isles

A shiny sea-with-isles generator. I think it’s a worthy end to my 4-week-daily series!

s15_03_28_isles_01      s15_03_28_isles_02      s15_03_28_isles_03

s15_03_28_isles_04      s15_03_28_isles_05      s15_03_28_isles_06

Download

Windows (32 bit)

Windows (64 bit)

Source Code (GitHub, MIT license)

Instructions:

  • Tentapus Generator:
    • Left-click to refresh.
    • Right-click to refresh, but keep colors.
  • Thorny Path: Left-click to refresh.
  • Fruity Planets: Left-click to refresh.
  • New Emoticons For A New Century:
    • Left-click to refresh.
    • Right-click to lock/unlock a tile.
    • Mouse wheel to change font.
  • A Handful Of Characters:
    • Left-click to refresh.
    • Right-click to switch between modes (mirror, circular).
    • Mouse wheel or +/- to change font.
  • FormWeaver: Left-click to refresh.
  • Isles:
    • Left-click or X to refresh.
    • Right-click or C to refresh, but keep color palette.
    • Middle-click or V to refresh, but switch colors.

If you’re not on Windows, fret not; for some reason I can’t compile for Mac and Linux, but you can just download Processing and open the sketch files. It’s really straightforward. If you need any help doing that, just send me a mail or comment here.

And what does the future hold?

I already mentioned that this marks the end of my series of dailies. It’s not because I’m out of ideas and even less because I’m getting bored of it: Quite the contrary on both accounts! The reason is simply that the dailies eat a lot of time that I would sometimes rather spend researching generative art techniques – and that I have several ideas that don’t fit into the daily format. So from now on, you can expect bigger results. Thanks for reading, and please join me next time too!

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