I collaborated with Mieka Lake to make a version of the Pixel Generator optimised for generating prints (patterns) for her final year collection ‘Destination: Infinity’. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of the final image we made, but you can clearly see it repeated in the red and black prints in the style shots below . Here are some of the final products:

From the collection ‘Destination: Infinity’ by Mieka Lake (2008)

ULTRA MAGNUS /w BLADE CATSUIT

VORTEX pants

ULTRA MAGNUS /w BLADE CATSUIT

some of the collection...

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New Pixel Generator for the Flamingo Crash myspace http://www.myspace.com/flamingocrash.

Move your mouse like you just don’t care! Click, click, click. and… Combine the two, click and drag!

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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.

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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…

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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]

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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?

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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.

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The order of today’s version greatly improves upon randomness of yesterday’s wander.

• Sinusoidal movement was applied to the red and green components of the primary complimentary set.
• The secondary complimentary continued to tag along randomly within a range, greatly exposing the randomness against the beautiful sinusoidal movement of the primary set, so I gave the secondary set sinusoidal movement about the primary set.

Next:

• Apply sinusoidal movement to the secondary set – so that it tags along gracefully.
• Consider how three works could fit together as a triptych;
  1. the first piece as an exploration of colours and shapes (sinusoidal movement – flowing and pleasant) – might drop out in sections where little is happening (all colours the same), consider arranging the grid in a more interesting pattern, such as a fractal like arrangment.
  2. a second using persistence to show participant’s effect (empowers participant with a magical touch) (effects of time like blurring, fading etc)
  3. and a final piece that gives direct control (exposes its mechanics).

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This short experiment has shown that I will need to spend quite some time exploring colour morphing (changing the colours over time) and animation effects (by playing with the colour table):

• I’ve implemented the double complimentary colour selection method.
• first complimentary set has 60% chance of being selected (30% each colour), while other set has 20%, as do b&w.
• i’ve set the primary complimentary set to wander over time, and the secondary set to tag along.
• The colour table maintains the same order and the colours change. Because the colour table doesn’t change, it still looks a little static as the same patterns get generated quite often.
• Furthermore the random walk produces the problem of colour flickering where the colour is randomly wandering backwards and forwards.
• I didn’t actually prevent it from choosing black and white, but it doesn’t seem to be necessary, although it is very possible, it is unlikely. I am more concerned about it choosing several greys, or repeating the same colour multiple times in the colour table.

Next:

• Next I want to try sinusoidal movement, perhaps with an offset wave on each component (r, g ,b).
• And I want to try shifting the order of the colour table.

Video to come.

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I am looking for colour selection methods for pixelbliss (working title):

• http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-schemes.html – Firstly I will try double complimentary in combination with b&w. I’ll need to make sure the 4 chosen colours aren’t b&w as well, and initially I won’t allow more than two greys.

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