jacobmake

I’m learning to draw with code. A lot of what I’ve seen out there in the interwebs is based on mathematical theories named after dudes from the sixties and seventies. I’m inspired by all that, but I’m also interested in recreating systems in nature through generative art. Here is a simple nest I drew with AS3, it’s based on some basic circle math I picked up here.

The twigs are all positioned and sized w/ code. The eggs shape was made by hand, but positioned w/ code. In the future I plan to further randomize the shape, color and characteristic of each twig.

Behold, my very first generative comp. The image of a neon hot pink, scribbled, slightly-rotated square popped into my head one day. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Justice. Made w/ Actionscript 3 and the Bezier curve fitting function built into Tweener.

Fit my curve!

In the same masochistic way I let a ping-pong sorting algorithim rule my life, I’ve been obsessing on how to draw elegant fluid curves in AS3 via Flash’s drawing API. This mostly started from being inspired by Erik Natzke’s work.

I started with the Flash drawing APIs generic “CurveTo” method, but it left “kink”s in the curves that passed through more than 2 points. Then I played with AS3’s built-in “BezierSegment” in the fl.motion package which produces a cubic bezier, which are similar to the curves in Illustrator.

I scoured the interwebs for the best curve fitting functions. Dug through old presentations of Rober Penner, The Father of Curves in Flash. Most of the math is way over my head but I did come across a few interesting ones:

• http://mike.teczno.com/notes/splines.html (AS2);
• http://www.paultondeur.com/2008/03/09/drawing-a-cubic-bezier-curve-using-actionscript-3/
• http://erikloyer.com/index.php/blog/cardinal_splines_in_actionscript/

These helped me better understand the differnt kinds of curves but ultimately what I wanted was a nice bezier curve fitting function. I wanted to say, “Here are 20 points, class. Now plot me a beautiful bezier curve based on them!”… And it was right under my nose the whole time. Tweener, which I use every day, has a built in Bezier curve fitting function that I somehow overlooked. Yowza!

In typical jacobmake fashion, I’ve spent an exuberent amount of time researching process without a pixel to show for it. Hopefully, I be able to present some rough generative sketches soon now that I’ve licked this curve addiction.

I was playing around with the topography generation I mentioned in my last post and made a few animal friends.

I think the owl is my favorite.

The last few days I’ve immersed myself in Math. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to generate lines that mimic topography with the ActionScript 3 Drawing API. I studied the math that goes into bezier cubic and quadratic curves, and investigated a little bit in Sin waves. All I ended up with was a headache. I built some line generators but they didn’t really FEEL like topography.

Then I had a eureka moment.

“I’ll use the bitmapData class, blur me some bitmap data. Then I could loop through and select pixel groups by value and trace out the groups!”

Then I had another eureka moment. (Two in one day, it was amazing.)

“Someone already did this, it’s called Live Trace and it lives in Adobe Illustrator.”

So here is what I did. I took this image. Then I killed the saturation, blurred it out and tweaked the contrast to get this;

Then I ran it through Live Trace with a grayscale setting and colors set to about 25. And it came out looking a lot like a topo map.

I think I could still do something siimilar in AS with the Bitmap data class, and maybe I will just to prove it to myself I can.

A co-worker and I were recently drooling over some of Jonathan Harris’s more recent work. It made me realize that the projects I talk about here (and occasionally engage in) are very disconnected and hobby-ish. They do NOT form one cohesive body of work. They are more about the journey of trying different things almost like a hobby journal. I’m finding that because I’m engaging in things I don’t have a lot of experience in  (music and painting for example) much of what I produce reeks of amateurish craftsmanship and execution.

So, how does someone have the commitment to create a masterpiece? You would have to be an expert in your medium, and have the longevity to work on something (and like it) for an extended period of time. It’s easy to struggle with commitment when working on projects. There are so many reasons to quit. Good ideas are hard enough to find. Most, when realized are less impressive than when conceived. Others surprise you, and turn into something different than originally planned. I am in awe of people, like Harris, who are this committed to their work. It’s not easy to do something amazing, even if you are uber-talented.

Random Math + color, line & shape continue to be my muse. I aspire to create things like Robert Hodgin. Perhaps it’s time to return to what I know best. To switch drawing tools… to put down the pen or brush and return to the keyboard. My hope is that I won’t spend too much time waffling about medium.

I’ve been doodling a bit, so I thought I’d post some sketches. These were made with Micron pens in a small watercolor book.

These sketches along with this Etsy artist, has given me some inspiration to tackle some acrylic paintings on wood panels. So… stay tuned for that.

I’ve been working how to get models from Google Sketchup to Papervision. They currently are working on Collada parsers specific to Sketchup. That should make textures a tad bit easier. Until then;

Here is a link to the source code and a working example.

Here is a new version of the circles, it’s pretty much a matrix of the previous version. In the future I plan on exploring custom stroke patterns and a way to represent the breakdown of the soft outer shell of the walnut that leaves the hard dark brown center exposed.

Here is my first version of the random circle project. I might add a deep brown element, I’m also thinking about how to string these together in a pattern on a canvas.