I’ve been recording my computers errors over the last couple years.

• Impromptu Error
• 
• 
• 

I’d like to do something with this in the future. I’m not sure what, but I like its rawness.

(true… last image is not an error, but what a beautiful moment… haha)

No tags

It animates now, and I can run two at a time. I’m only impeded by the epileptic fits I nearly break into because of the constant flickering. I’ve tried optimising and separating out the method calls so they all have a chance to run without interrupting the rendering… still my head is twitching.

The faded patterns in the middle image work nicely. I’d like to see more layering here even though its diverting from the originally intended path. It would be great to get a third line happening facing the opposite direction, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.

No tags

I didn’t consider how much groundwork I’d have to do to get this beast up and running… It’s taken quite a while. First output.

I’ve created the diagonals manually as images and loaded them all into Impromptu. I knew it was probably possible in Impromptu to create the same result with vector shapes… but considering the time constraints I figured it would be best not to invest too much time on tech. However in retrospect I think it may have taken just as long! oh well… now.. need to get it animating and fill in behind the shapes…

No tags

Ok so its the last weekend and I’ve been postponing the third and final piece. I still haven’t succeeded with the CIShadedMaterial, so I’ll have to move on to a new idea…

I went back to the readings because I remembered some pretty
interesting bold monochrome line work that looked pretty nice. I was going to look for the line work in Logic and design: in art, science and mathematics [1], but the first paper I opened caught my attention. The simple diagonal line work in The Generative Order and the Implicate Order on page 177 looks pretty interesting to me. So I’ve mocked up a quick demo to work out how I want it to animate (for some reason I can only imagine animated and interactive works…). I imagine the two layers moving vertically very slowly, and bouncing back and forth horizontally in a choatic turbulent fashion.

[1] Logic and design : in art, science and mathematics, B. Krome. Design Books, New York. 1980.

[2] The Generative Order and the Implicate Order, B. David & F. David. Routledge, London. 2000.

No tags

Err, I couldn’t help but quickly mock up this little doosey. During the process of making the rotated cells demo I had whipped up some photoshop mockups ([1] [2]) to work out some cool arrangements for the rotations. When I sort of stumbled across the arrangement below. I won’t go into detail, but that is my goal for real time when I come back to restart.

No tags

I’d love to have the time to test the various effects for Reptile. I began prototyping a rotated cells demo. I flipped the pixel paths (well technically they’re not individual pixels cause they’re actually 4×4 pixels wide, but for simplicity I call them pixels) four ways and recorded the generated images to a queue 20 frames long. Unfortunately it began slowing down to unacceptable rates and I decided to let it go and wait for the end of semester to start the code from scratch and build it almost entirely in objective-c. The other two pieces need a lot more work to get them to the same standard, so its probably for the best that my code is hitting the performance wall.

As a consolation, attached are some unadulterated high-res images [1] [2].

If I get a chance I will come back to add some polish to the piece for assessment, ie fade-in fade-out, tone down the flat colour squares etc…

No tags

Thanks to impromptu constructing the beautiful reptile skin was very simple. The reptile skin was not an intended destination, it just happens to be one I’m happy to settle for assessment. Because of its current form, I’ve decided to retrospectively name this project Reptile. Hence all PixelMaker posts have been moved into the Reptile category.

Reptile works by displaying storing the last 20 generated frames and displaying them in the cells according to the cell’s distance from the mouse input. A cell far from the mouse will display a frame many frames old. As you drag the mouse across the canvas, the canvas updates. When you stop moving, it stops generating and those idle frames are recorded as flat colours. When you start moving again the flat colours fill the screen as the canvas begins to draw the last x frames into the cells.

I like the canvas level pattern (the whole image), even with flat colours interspersed in amongst the generated cells, but I don’t like how the current input mechanics encourages you to run through patterns without stopping to appreciate them. In fact you are punished for stopping, because once you start moving again the flat colours fill your screen. I’d like to give more control back to the user so that you can craft the image instead of just watching it. At the moment it almost feels like moving the mouse cranks the projector so you can watch the film.

I’d like to see the mouse having a more obvious effect on the canvas too. I liked the turbulence of the original Photoshop mockup that was created by the randomly selected frames for each cell. In the current version the distance to the mouse is used and so a cell is never more than one frame off its neighbour, creating wave like effects. Both create interesting patterns, and at the moment I am imagining it in full screen with areas of turbulence, wave like forms and other effects from the other Photoshop mockups all controlled with mouse gestures. Hopefully I will have the time to construct this…

Another recording can be found [here]

No tags

I feel this idea holds the most potential to create interesting complex dynamic patterns. So now I am going to implement it.

Mechanics:

• How will cells maintain old frames?
  • the last n generated frames will be maintained in memory.
  • each cell will hold a variable that determines which frame it displays, eg. current frame – 5.
• What frame will a cell display? Either:
  • When the mouse runs through a cell, that cell will display the latest frame. As time passes the cell will begin to decay and show older frames until it hits the last frame and then fade out (or blur out).
  • or use the existing “distances” table as the indices into the frames list (this is the cheapest so it will be prototyped first).
• Notes:
  • next: if the mouse moves through cells quickly, the cells could spin?

No tags

I want to break away from from the grid structure I’ve been using so far and explore some more free-form and dynamic arrangements of the cells. The images below were doctored in Photoshop to demonstrate the various ideas as cheap as possible.

• The cells could be rearranged and dynamically resized, snapping to the nearest cell size multiple. However this exposes the pixelation.
• The cells could be rotated.
• The cells could have some form of permanence so that some frames will stay on screen for a period of time.
• Opacity could be applied to individual cells.
• Or the cells could be blurred.
• or any combination of the above… which I’ll leave to your imagination.

There would also be numerous animated options that I will attempt after this iteration.

No tags

I hooked up the kick to the distance from the coloured circles and it gives a real sense of tension. So I’ve named this piece High Voltage.

I also add a trail to the player’s movement so it gives a greater sense of exploration by showing where you’ve been. Furthermore, it fits the old skool style, tonar! haha

No tags