This year’s theme was “Waves”, and I found myself in a team where I didn’t know a single person – which is always challenging, but also fun! The development went nearly without any hitches and I’m really content with our result:

In the game, you are a bat flying through a cave looking for its bat pups so you can go hunting. The cave is dark and the pups are tiny, so you use your echolocation to see and hope the pups answer. You steer with the gamepad – but to use the echolocation, you have to whistle into a microphone! (Like the title suggests, this is definitely the latest in bat simulation technology.)

Here’s a video of our presentation after the GGJ (starts at 0:29):

And a small trailer video Emily and Caroline made:

The game and its source code is available at its Global Game Jam entry page.

Before I talk a little more about the development, here’s the team:

• Caroline Clark (@lineyjane): Programming
• Emily Claudet: Game Design, Sound Design
• Frederik Lindemann: Level Design, Game Design
• Miranda Tung: 2D Art/3D Art
• Tobias Wehrum: Team Lead, Lead Programming

We also used some assets:

• Dark Forest font by dcoxy – Greg Medina
• Universal Sound FX by Imphenzia AB
• 3D Particles by Unluck Software

Okay, on to the development! This time (and very atypical for me), the concept was rather simple. A single player game with no really hard development challenges – well, that leaves more room for polish, and sounds just right for 48 hours!

This was also one of the few times where the game design didn’t change much over the course of the weekend. Everything just worked. In the end, we actually finished the game with all the features we wanted! We even removed some features we already implemented because they made the game less accessible and weren’t as much fun as we had imagined: Dizzyness when the bat crashed into a wall, and not being able to call out to children when there’s a wall in the way. We also wanted to add monsters that follow sound, but in the end the game turned out to be plenty fun without the added complications, so we decided not to go that route.

The microphone implementation was incredibly easy, more so because this isn’t my first microphone controlled game. I just had to sample the input volume and detects peaks.

First I wanted to do the echolocation waves via shaders, but that that would’ve taken some time. Then I remembered something I learnt about in a Pluralsight video tutorial just a few weeks ago: Light Cookies, which allow you to put shadow masks on Unity3D lights. The final echolocation waves are just multiple spotlights with a circular light cookie mask shining from above, and the angle gets progressively bigger. That way it “runs” across obstacles and scales walls and stalagmites instead of just looking like it’s two-dimensional shape projected from above. The effect is a bit hard to describe, but you can see it quite often in the videos linked above.

I am really happy with our result! Thanks a lot to my team for being the best team – and to the location organizers and the Global Game Jam team who made it possible for us to jam without worrying too much about such mundane things as work space or food!

#043: Das Kollektiv

This is the first time one of my artworks is inspired by music! The song in question is Das Kollektiv by ASP. I’m taking a fairly literal interpretation of a swarm of little entities in between the walls, sucking out the essence of the “guests”. The images are pretty dark; you might need high contrast settings.

#044: Into Oblivion

This next one isn’t just inspired by music, but directly driven by it! There is already a post about it, so I’ll just post the visuals here.

Here is a video using a shortened version of Push Every Button by Lapfox:

#045: Canada’s Marvelous Singing & Dancing Animals

The next one is an animation driven by music – less a visualizer, because it needed to be heavily parameterized and the song isn’t as exchangeable. It’s also, uh, slightly more silly than the previous one.

The song is Python by Rolemusic and the images used are all public domain/CC0.

(Oh, and if you wonder why you can’t find this in the repository: It was made with Unity3D, not Processing.)

#046: A Slice of π

When making Into Oblivion, I was a bit frustrated that it was rather hard to gain good information from the FFT analysis and that it was utterly impossible to find which instrument was playing. I found both in MOD files.

If you want to learn more about it, head over to this blog post.

The song used are, in order:

• Rivendell by radix
• phantasmagoria by 4mat
• rsectro by 4mat
• zapped_out by 4mat

#047: Fractal Flames

After finding out about fractal flames in Apophysis 7x and discovering in the fractal flames paper by Scott Draves that the algorithm that creates those beautiful images is (for the most part) actually pretty straightforward, I just had to implement this myself in Processing. So yeah, nothing original here, but I had a lot of fun with this.

What fascinates me most is that the algorithm is based on an extremely simple concept: Pick a random position, transform it with a formula, draw a dot, transform it again, draw a dot, repeat. Throw in a few parameters and coloring based on how often a dot is visited. Then layer multiple of these formulas together. Nothing arcane here, yet the resulting images look both pleasing and complex!

#048: A Stroke of Color

The next one isn’t original either: I tried to recreate something similar to the stunning Composition #72 by Patrick Gunderson.

#049: Burrowers

And the last one for this batch. Just a few agents, running around, drawing lines, carving a nest for themselves in the digital earth.

As always, the source code for most of these can be found at the GitHub repository, open sourced under the MIT License.

If you want to run the sketches yourself, you just need to download Processing and open the PDE files. Sometimes you need to add a library, but mostly it’s really straightforward. If you need any help doing that, just send me a mail or comment here.

Unlike audio files like mp3, module files aren’t rendered down to just the audio information. Simplified, they have two elements: A collection of distinct audio samples and tracker information when to play which sample and how to modify its pitch, volume and other properties. So that means if your visualizer is a MOD player, you have all this juicy information available at your fingertips!

So there were a few things I needed:

• MOD files: I got those from ModArchive.org. I chose:
  • chiptune, phantasmagoria, rsectro and zapped_out by 4mat
  • Rivendell by radix
• A MOD tracker to analyze the MOD files: OpenMPT filled that spot quite nicely and was easy to get into even for a total beginner like me.
• A MOD processing library – of which I only found one! Luckily, PortaMod has (nearly) everything I needed, and the creator Brendan Ratliff was most helpful on Twitter.

Since this was my first foray into MOD music visualization and I wasn’t cooperating with a musician, I wanted to keep the visualizer as general as possible; any file that it could play should work. I also wanted to use as much information as possible. In the end, I chose a rotating circular representation divided into slices. Each slice is a MOD channel and each MOD sample was assigned a color. Pitch modifications made the radius go bigger, and everything is pulsating according to the output amplitude.

Downloads:

Executable for Windows
GitHub Repository (MIT License)

And now there’s been enough talk – have a preview video and a few screenshots!

The song used are, in order:

• Rivendell by radix
• phantasmagoria by 4mat
• rsectro by 4mat
• zapped_out by 4mat

GitHub repository

Class Documentation

Overview

• Countdown: Useful for things like cooldowns or spawn delays. It is also helpful for tweening things by using the PercentElapsed property.
• EditorHelper: Gets the [Tooltip] attribute content of fields for editor classes. Might get more helper methods in the future.
• LINQExtensions: A collection of extension methods for IEnumerable, List and arrays.
• MathHelper: Helper methods for time-independent eased lerping, mapping and angles.
• MeshCreator: Makes it more convenient to create meshes via code.
• NoiseOutputValue: Enter a range and a speed in the editor, get an output value that fluctuates over time using Perlin Noise.
• RandomBag: A RandomBag gives you random items from a group while ensuring that in a certain interval every item was given back the same number of times.
• Range: Editable data types that take an int/float range. Used for things like “Spawn 2 to 4 enemies.”
• RollingArray: Collection that keeps the last x elements that are added to it.
• Singleton: Allows easy and convenient creation of a Singleton. Optionally makes a Singleton persist between scenes while ensuring that only one exists.
• UnityHelper: Contains a plethora of useful extensions and helpers for Transform, GameObject, Vector2/3/4, Rect and more.
• XmlHelper: Serializes data to XML strings and makes accessing optional element content and attributes in general XMLs easier.

Usage

To use the scripts, just drop them into the Assets folder of your projects. Or better yet, make an “Assets/Extensions/TobisUnityUtitilites” folder and drop them there. Hurray for proper organisation.

You can also just use selected scripts, but you should check the “Dependencies” section in the respective folder to make sure you copy everything you need.

#029: Plasma Blob

This one isn’t terribly impressive, but it was made in a few minutes to demonstrate Processing to a colleague and is reasonably nice to look at.

#030: Mara’s Ocean

A typographic variation of #028: Isles using the Mara’s Eye font.

#031: Chimera Maker: What Has Science Done?!

The sillyness levels go through the roof with this one. For executables for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android and for more pictures, check out it’s own blog post!

#032: Grass Tree

Another ad-hoc Processing tutorial I gave for a ground of friends. This one was a bit more involved than #029: Plasma Blob and looks pretty nice!

#033: Dance of the Fireflies

An experiment with boids/flocking. Unfortunately a little dark-ish, so it’s best observed at night – just like real fireflies!

#034: Living Constellations

Stars float around and form constellations with nearby other stars.

#035: Smoky Silk

Yet another silk variation.

Download

Windows (32 bit)

Windows (64 bit)

Source Code (GitHub, MIT license)

Instructions:

• Plasma Blob: Left-click to refresh.
• Maras Ocean:
  • 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.
• Grass Trees:
  • Left-click to refresh.
  • Right-click to instantly finish growing.
• Dance of the Fireflies
  • Left-click to refresh.
  • Middle-click to take 1000 steps and pause.
  • Right-click to pause/unpause.
  • A to refresh and finish 1000 steps with same color.
  • S to refresh and finish 1000 steps with changed color.
• Living Constellations
  • Left-click to refresh.
  • Right-click to pause/unpause.
• Smoky Silk
  • Left-click to refresh.
  • Middle-click to take 1000 steps and pause.
  • Right-click to pause/unpause.

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. Sometimes you need to add a library, but mostly it’s really straightforward. If you need any help doing that, just send me a mail or comment here.

The Greater Book of Transmutation is mainly based on a free association database that I found here. It’s about making things, using materials that are commonly associated with them – e.g., a cat might be made from “being feline”, “claws”, “meows” and “being graceful” and “tail”. Throw in a system of tools with actions that use/transform materials, a bit of word classification, a markov chain latin words generator, a lot of silliness and bit LaTeX, and you get:

You can find the resulting PDF here.

The source code (MIT license) written in Python is also available.

An example:

How to make a book in 12 easy steps:

Materials:

• 10 hymns
• 178 readings
• 10 clear concepts of poem
• 4 clear concepts of guide

Tools:

• bucket with water
• vessel
• pet unicorn
• ballpoint pen

Instructions:

1. Let vessel cool down.
2. Heat vessel.
3. Dip 10 clear concepts of poem into the bucket with water.
4. Feed 10 clear concepts of wet poem to your pet unicorn.
5. Let your pet unicorn lick 10 hymns.
6. Pet your pet unicorn.
7. Wait for a long time.
8. Wait until your pet unicorn poops. Receive 124.89 ounces of a very dirty pile of “wet poem”
9. Draw a magic circle on the floor using the ballpoint pen.
10. Draw a cross into the circle and place 10 licked hymns, 178 readings, 4 clear concepts of guide and 124.89 ounces of a very dirty pile of “wet poem” on each corner.
11. Whisper the following spell: “Alchemia implacabilis! Meio clystermitto clodigo condocefaciencia, millibi! Verca bisellatrocinium! Creditor circumbrans!”
12. Reluctantly, a book will appear inside the circle.

That might also help those that are struggling to make a book. And if you are missing one of the materials or tools, maybe another entry in The Greater Book of Transmutation could help you make it!

Used data sources:

• Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (1998). The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms
• English Club: Uncountable Nouns List
• LATIN-ENGLISH DICTIONARY WORDLIST Version 1.97FC by William Whitaker

#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.

#023: Thorny Path

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

#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.

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.

#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.

#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.

#028: Isles

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

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!

#015: Probably a Metaphor for Something

On the other hand, maybe it isn’t. Let’s… let’s just skip this one, okay? I guess it’s safe to say that it didn’t go where I wanted it to go.

#016: Hypnotic Eye

This one didn’t really go where I wanted it to go either, but luckily, sometimes cool things happen while you’re experimenting. The video recording didn’t have a high enough frame rate to show how it smooth it really looks, but I recommend downloading the processing sketch or an executable – it feels pretty hypnotic full screen and with a high frame rate.

#017: Circuits

This one is inspired by a chapter of Generative Design about stitching together simple SVG shapes in a grid to form more complex patterns. I wanted to try making circuit-like images, so I designed my own shapes in Inkscape. Fun, but man, this took some time doing for the first time – the sketch uses 36 shapes, and everything had to correctly align. I like the results though, some parts look really interesting!

#018: Cloudy Tunnel

Another one in the category “I thought this would look better”. It’s kind of like a more boring version of #013 (Fissures). Oh, and it serves as a reminder for me – I wanted to go somewhere entirely else with that, but I forgot my goal along the way because I didn’t keep switching back to my reference.

#019: Insect Generator

Ha, this one is fun! Originally I just experimented with using perlin noise on circle drawing, but then I realized that the results look kind of like insects with the right parameters. While I experimented further, I discovered that a certain parameter makes them look very alien and glitchy. That parameter is part of the sketch now, slowly escalating on each result, leading to a tour from normal earth insects to otherworldly abominations.

#020: Forest of Lights

One of the few sketches where I have a concrete inspiration – this time from the manga Soul Eater. The trees with the light balls on top of it fascinated me, so I tried my hand on generating something similar. It was a bit hard to get something decent looking despite using 2D graphics without cool premade lighting effects and shaders, but in the end a bit of cheating (the tree shading is totally randomized and even though they are reminiscent of low-poly models, they are fully 2D, haha) got me close enough to where I wanted to go!

#021: Gradient Skyline

And the last of the pack! This one uses palettes again to create interesting color combinations, but this time I’ve learnt my lesson and picked them by hand. Also, for the first time: Gradients. And pixel line shifting.

The following palettes are used (and highly recommended): Thought Provoking by Miss_Anthropy, cheer up emo kid by electrikmonk, Ocean Five by DESIGNJUNKEE, fresh cut day by electrikmonk, (◕〝◕) by sugar, Dance To Forget by joy_of_summer, Storming Psychedelia by Bionic Blender, Gamebookers by plamenj, A Dream in Color by madmod001, Hymn For My Soul by faded jeans, Koi Carp and 400 Lovers by Tzadkiel, it’s raining love by tvr, vivacious by plch, antidesign by death—of—design, mai by lovelyrita and Pop Is Everything by jen_savage.

Download

Windows (32 bit)

Windows (64 bit)

Source Code (GitHub, MIT license)

Instructions:

• Probably a Metaphor for Something: Watch. Contemplate. Close. Move on and try something else.
• Hypnotic Eye: Left-click to restart.
• Circuits: Left-click to refresh.
• Cloudy Tunnel: Left-click to refresh.
• Insect Generator:
  • Left-click to refresh (and increase alien glitch)
  • Right-click to refresh (and reset alien glitch)
  • Mouse-wheel or +/-: Cycle through coloring options
• Forest of Lights: Left-click to refresh.
• Gradient Skyline:
  • Left-click to refresh.
  • Right-click to refresh, but keep palette.

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 now, once more into the fray! I’ll do a fourth week of dailies, and then I’ll change the format a bit. I’ve got some experience with smaller sketches now, but I wonder what I could do with more time – so instead of daily sketches, it’ll be one or two bigger sketches a week. But for now, you can look forward to the next and last round-up of dailies next Sunday. See you then!

#008 – Silky Smoke

A variant of #006 (CircleTrails), inspired by this video where Casey Reas talks about the circle collision thing that #006 also uses, but with drawing lines between them. Silky Smoke works in a similar way, but isn’t about drawing a persistent picture and more about the movement created. It looks okay, but I have to admit that I was hoping for more.

#009 – SilkWeaver

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the star of this week: SilkWeaver! It’s not self-praise if I’m praising the results of a program I coincidentally, right? Either way: Aesthetically, I these are the best pictures I’ve created so far. And the complex patterns are created quite simply actually: It’s another variant of #006, but this time, there are lots of little circles wandering and some bigger circles called “weavers”. When a weaver intersects with a circle, it draws a line from the center between the two to the center of the little circle. That’s all the magic!

#009b – LightWeaver

My friend increpare noted that the images made by SilkWeaver are too dark, and yeah – he’s right. So I looked up how to use the additive mode in Processing. Turns out, that’s just a single line – and now my SilkWeaver is a LightWeaver. When you start the sketch, that’s the standard mode – with “m” you can switch to the SilkWeaver mode. You know, if you like Silk more than Light.

#010 – Homage to Mondrian

I guess the inspiration here is quite clear. The variation with the zig-zag lines also looks fine and more interesting than I thought it would.

Before #010 I’ve just randomly generated colors, but I thought that this calls for a few handselected palettes. Luckily, the ever-wonderful ColourLovers has API access! I tried to make it call the API on runtime, but sometimes the call timed out because the site was taking so long to load – so now I’m just using a downloaded version of the result XML.

While I’m content with the result in general, when it came to taking screenshots I wished that I had handpicked the palettes instead of choosing randomly from the ColourLovers top list. Some are really interesting, but others simply don’t have enough contrast. Well, lesson learnt I guess.

(I’m sorry that I don’t have any idea whose palettes I’m using here – they are randomly selected from the top 100. If I’m using your palette, please tell me and I’ll credit your here!)

#011 – Stormy Weather

This one had a long way behind it. Lots of circles attached to other circles, in turn attached to other circles, every rotating. At first it was constantly drawing and resulting in a thing that kind of looked like an ugly ball of wool. Changing it to motion blur led to the results below – much more dynamic-looking!

#012 – Calibrating, Please Wait

“Calibrating, Please Wait” got its name because it reminded me of how zooming/targeting display are sometimes displayed on TV – as if it was trying to get the right settings, but they are never quite right.

#013 – Fissures

Again, lots of little lines, rotating and moving, with additive blending. I guess I’ll have to experiment further with that technique as it always seems to have interesting results. In this case, it kind of looks like a very old scratched glass panel (or shard of ice) with fissures and light shining from the other side.

#014 – Noisy Forms

Last one! Polygons with 3 to 8 points and a random rotation determined with perlin noise according to the polygon radius. Not the most glorious way to finish the week, but I guess there are good and bad days, eh?

Download

Windows (32 bit)

Windows (64 bit)

Source Code (GitHub, MIT license)

Instructions:

• Silky Smoke: Left-click to refresh. Right-click to switch between white/color modes. +/- keys or mouse wheel to change hue.
• SilkWeaver: Left-click to refresh. Right-click to pause/resume. “m” to change blending mode (Lightweaver [default] or SilkWeaver)
• Homage to Mondrian: Left-click to refresh. +/- to change speed. 1 to 9: Set scale. i: Switch between drawing or instant. s: Switch between straight or zig-zag.
• Stormy Weather: Left-click to refresh. Right-click to pause/resume.
• Calibrating, please wait: Left-click to refresh. +/- to change speed.
• Fissures: Left-click to refresh. Right-click to refresh and draw instantly.
• Noisy Forms: Left-click to refresh.

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 that’s it for the second week. Considering how small the results look, it’s surprising how taxing it can be to actually do a sketch a day (and to make videos, pick screenshots and do all the other things needed to publish the results). But I’ll keep at it at least for four weeks in total – some days where I felt particularely uninspired, like on the days I made Stormy Weather or Fissures, still had great results. The “I have to sit down and make something” now is a great if somewhat uncomfortable cure to “I feel uninspired”, apparently. Either way: See you next week!

#001 – ShardSphere

First one in my daily series! Mostly inspired by Generative Art Chapter 5. I really like the beginning when it comes to life out of nowhere.

#002 – ShardCircle

A rehash of #001. I was wondering how it would look in 2D. Turns out: Pretty good. Even more as in #001 I like the how it appears with a swoosh like a swarm of little shards.

#003 – TriangleChain

Things don’t always look like I envisioned them, and #003 is a very good example of this. So along the way I thought if it doesn’t want to look like I want it to, I’ll just add silly perlin noise motion to it and call it a day. (Perlin noise is SOOOO good.) You might notice that it has much clearer colors than #001 and #002 – here I discovered the joys of the HSB color mode.

#004 – CubeSphere

Originally inspired by this crazy thing. To keep the color scheme interesting but also fluent and consistent, I have 4 different functions: “noise(sin(angle t))”, “noise(cos(angle t))”, “noise(cos(angle t) + sin(angle t))” and “noise(sin(angle s)) * noise(cos(angle t). I generate 4 random weights at the beginning to set how each of those functions contributes to the color at the angle t and s. Voila: Different patterns and colors, but consistent and flowing into each other.

#005 – Fireflies

This is the one that strayed furthest from its inspiration, and all the better for it. Because gosh, does it look good, and it looks even better in motion. And it’s fun to play with too!

Originally, I was inspired by a scene in the Rule-of-Cool-anime Campione: Lots of flying swords acquiring a target at the same time and then flying towards it. Turns out that looks really boring in 2D without great graphics and sound effects, but the trails looked nice. And it looked even more interesting with colors and just as little glowing dots.

And so, one by one, I arrived at some sort of space fireflies harvesting white orbs for light, always flying, piercing, glowing and looking out for the next one.

#006 – CircleTrails

This one started out as me rewriting an example from Generative Art Chapter 6 without reading the code and only reading the description. It looked delightfully different, and with the addition of different modes (black, greyscale and color) even more so.

The chapter’s title is “Emergence” – having complex forms and behaviour emerge from much simpler behavior. And so, in CircleTrails, there are lots of invisible circles just flying around and bouncing off the borders. Those aren’t the circles that you can see in the images – those are drawn whenever two invisible circles intersect with the center point as the circle center and the distance as the circle radius.

#007 – Blobs

Last one of the first pack: A collection of blobs, fighting for dominance. It’s not working out very well for them, but more so for us as we get to enjoy the results. Over time, the images feel a lot deeper and richer textured and get an oily look.

Download

Windows (32 bit)

Windows (64 bit)

Source Code (GitHub, MIT license)

Instructions:

• ShardSphere: Left-click to refresh.
• ShardCircle: Left-click to refresh.
• TriangleChain: Left-click to refresh. Space to show UI.
• CubeSphere: Left-click to refresh.
• Fireflies: Left-click to spawn a sphere and to deactivate auto-spawn-mode. Right-click to refresh.
• CircleTrails: Left-click to refresh. Right-click to change mode. +/- keys to speed up/slow down.
• Blobs: Left-click to refresh.

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 that’s been it for the first week. See you next Sunday for the second one!