My lovely mate David and I run a local generative art and creative coding meetup. We like to see it as a knitting circle for nerds, somewhere where people can come along and tinker on things and chat with like minded folks, eat crisps and pet the occasional dog.
All the covid business got in the way of meeting up a little, but we threw an actual real life one again yesterday. 🥳
Proof of life!
Anyway, a while back I saw this absolutely glorious tweet.
Made up a set of rules and rolled some dice to decide how this plant would grow. I never did get that five of a kind, as expected, but I was still hopeful! 🌱🍀🌿 pic.twitter.com/J0XrqGdO7i
— Ayliean (@Ayliean) November 17, 2019
It really struck a chord with me, as sometimes after a long day of coding, I don't really feel like more coding, and there's been a few meetups where I've just poked about on my computer and not really made anything I've been excited about.
So this meetup I decided to bring along an analog generative project for us to mess about with. Here's the end result!
The rules permalink
I'm a big fan of rules and constraints within creative pursuits. I think they can be quite meditative, they take the creative pressure off and allow you to just go with the flow and see where you end up. The cool thing about generative doodling is that you can make your own rules! But to start the dice rolling, here's mine.
You'll need one dice (a die?), a pen and some grid paper.
First choose a starting point, we went with the center of the bottom of the page.
First roll permalink
This decides what shape/decoration or shading you get.
- line
- dashed line
- Square
- Triangle
- Decoration
- shading
Second roll permalink
This gives you more instructions about the item you rolled.
- Line, this roll determines the length of your line
- Square or triangle, this roll determines how large the shape is
- Decorations, odd number = circle, even number = triangle
- Shading, odd number = dashed shading, even number = dark shading
Additional rules. permalink
- You can choose where to put your items but they must be touching previous lines or shapes. Think of it like doodle-scrabble.
- Decorations must be on an intersection of lines or at the end of a line. If there's no place for decoration roll again.
- Shading must be on an inclosed shape. If there's no place for shading roll again.
- The doodle is over when you reach the top.
Notes permalink
You could optionally add an extra throw for coordinates or direction? I experimented with this but liked having a little room for creativity!
If you make any generative doodles make sure to take a picture and tag @cassiecodes or @GeneratorBtn on twitter, or email me.