With “Strands”, I wanted to initially simulate another type of doodle where I just draw random overlapping strands with black ink. While the output looks somewhat simple, I took an interesting approach. Each “strand” is created by drawing one “slice” of that strand at a time at a given point on the screen represented by a vector. I then change the position of the vector using velocity and acceleration vectors aiming in a particular direction.
In the example to the right, I randomly generate a number of strands at the bottom of the screen and then have them change direction slightly as they grow upward. As the life of the strand increases, the rotation of the vector increases and the size of the strand gets slightly smaller.
With additional experimentation, I was able to generate the featured image above by staring multiple strands at each edge and adjusting the curviness until I was able to fill the screen with what looks like a mess of wires.
If you’d like to try this out for yourself, click the demo here. If you click the mouse or screen, it will reset using a different color palette. If you are at a computer, you can also pause by pressing ‘L’ and save an image using ‘S’.
Please share your comments below!
