Tilt and swirl

I’m an artist and creative technologist. I write about generative art, code, creativity and other interconnected topics. You can expect a diary on Fridays sharing the things I’ve been working on. Thanks for joining me here. 💖

Hello!

I think finishing the Meaningful Nonsense print series (check it out) and then having my birthday last weekend knocked it out of me, so I’ve had to drag myself through this week a bit.

That being said, drag I have, and I’ve made progress on a few things that I have to share with you!

Things I’ve done this week

Interactive Handwriting

There are all these variables that I’ve been playing with in the handwriting code for months - things like letter tilt, size, weight, scramble distance and so on. And now I’ve made this UI that lets me control them live in the browser.

Just today, I added an option to animate the Perlin Noise seed for the Scramble settings so the letters wibble around. For people who know about Perlin Noise - it’s actually the z-position for the noise() function call. So, if you imagine a 3D noise field, we’re moving through it in the z-axis over time.

Some of the variables can be also varied across the canvas i.e. a different setting on the left vs the right, and a gradient between them. I love the way this looks with the letter tilt as it creates sort of a perspective effect.

Subscribe now

Here’s one more screen recording I shared on Instagram

Plotting Nonsense

I didn’t really feel like getting the plotter going for most of this week but I had promised myself I’d include a timelapse of the messy paint process in today’s diary. I got on that this morning and I’m really glad I did!

Stick with it - it comes together I promise:

I reverted to a paintbrush at the end of this but I still think there is value in the other materials, even if only because it got me to loosen up with the use of the paint.

And some photographs of where it ended up:

Subscribe now

Things I’ve enjoyed this week

• Sarah Nicole’s watery painting process.

• Morgan Sim’s drip painting process.

• Swanny Mouton’s (much neater than mine) watercolour plotter painting.

That’s all, thanks again for joining me!

I’ll leave you with this shot of one of my newest plants, and I’ll see you here next week.

- Amy ⭐