Hacker News Reader

Comment by pgz | Hacker News Reader

When I see this beautiful art, it makes me want to play with Voxeljs. Sadly I'm a developer, so what I make would not turn out so pretty.

View on HN

I don't think it has anything to do with you being a developer...this stereotype has to die.

Maybe. But in all my long experience, this stereotype is extraordinarily accurate.

I know several devs who make music. It's not that accurate.

Well, becoming good at anything takes heaps of time. Time spent learning to dev is time not spent learning art. Vice verca.

Might as well say "because I watch Netflix, what I make would not turn out so pretty".

Have faith in yourself! You can go a long way with generative art, which boils down to applying algorithms to build interesting pictures. Building an really good generative artwork requires a lot of work, but the techniques are those of the developer.

Any hints on where to start?

Depends what interests you, but some suggestions:

- Google "generative art". You'll find lots of images and you can usually work out roughly how they were made. Try to reverse engineer them and create your own facsimile.

- Check out links here http://blog.hvidtfeldts.net/index.php/generative-art-links/

- Manning have a book here: https://www.manning.com/books/generative-art

- GRATUITOUS SELF PROMOTION ALERT! I'm working on book which is part functional programming (in Scala) and part generative art.

Current draft is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8669329/creative-scala.p...

Code is here: https://github.com/underscoreio/doodle

Discussion forum is here: https://gitter.im/underscoreio/scala

Feedback very much appreciated!

Start with something that looks a bit like something you might want to make into art. One of the standard fractals, Perlin noise with a fixed seed, anything that's got a bit of randomness to it. Look for a section that's inspiring. Then look to see if you can tweak the logic to make that closer to what you want it to be.

as someone who do both I have to say two things

if you see beautiful art and feel a yearning to explore art it probably means you might have some talent for it.

the best place to start in my opinion is by learning about colour theory which is one of the fudamentals of visual art, like with programming learning some fudamentals at the beginning saves alot of time in the long run. Learning how to use colours will instantly stop the stuff you make from looking like it is made by a 5 year old, it will make it look at minimum presentable and something you will want to show to other people and that they will react positively to.

It is a time taking investment but a very emotionally rewarding one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com