works / my favorite game.

my favorite game #0

just a game.

Parametric art can be quite confusing at times from the co-creator's point of view. Often you find yourself moving esoteric sliders, blindly inputting numbers … when not getting overwhelmed by the number of parameters to try out …

Editart↗ has an interesting concept in that regard : parametric art that is fully deterministic and only gives you 5 sliders to play with. This approach allows anyone to get a better grasp on the full parametric space of a given series. And it makes the experience quite enjoyable and less time consuming.

#24 by Andre Fuchs

The challenge then is to create a system that relies on simple understandable rules and ensure the effect of each slider is visible and somewhat predictable - while offering a large parametric space for collectors to explore, producing a variety of interesting outputs.

#20 by pixelwank

#3 by Camille Roux

#7 by nbswwit

#9 by nbswwit

nobody has time for that.

With the goal of a quick, fun experience for the collectors in mind, I decided to make it a fun, quick experience for myself. I built the system in one day and kept it to the simplest forms and techniques I enjoy working with : grids, wonky geometric shapes, symmetry, and a pinch of shader magic. But it had to be quick and dirty.

basic grid / reflected grid

same parameters, different random seeds

So. Simple rules : there is a grid that gets randomly filled with simple shapes. There is also an optional 'reflection' mode where the output changes to a two-axis symmetry …

... we randomly pick :

• whether a cell gets a shape or stays empty (weighted by a density factor)
• the type of the shape
• the color of the shape (from a set palette)

... sliders control respectively :

• the color palette (133 options)
• the number of rows (3 to 59)
• the number of columns (3 to 123)
• the random seed that will affect all random picks (1000 options)
• the density factor (density > 50% triggers the reflection)

133 palettes

The big thing I have been working on before this release is a color palette generator (guaranteed love-hate relationship with a computer program). I made it produce a lot of palettes and hand-picked 133 from the bunch.

have you noticed how I kinda tried to sort them by first color but quickly decided it was not worth the effort ?

"Why 133 ?" I hear you ask. Because arbitrary numbers are arbitrary.

a hidden dimension.

#5 by Jess Hewitt

#11 by Pifragile

As a nod to parametric art esoterism, some obscure slider combinations give completely different outputs with heavy shader distortion. But I'm a nice person so they're not that rare and pretty easy to find by simply spamming the 'randomize' button.

#5 by Pawel Dudko

See the full collection on Editart ↗