Author: Mariam Aljunaibi

In his talk, Casey Reas explores how generative art uses code, rules, and chance operations to create dynamic and unpredictable visuals, showing that creativity comes from both structure and chance. I found it particularly interesting when Reas explained that generative art is a space where structured rules interact with randomness, because when people generally think of coding, they assume there’s always a “right” way to do it, but I don’t necessarily think that’s true. I agree with Reas on this point about how chaos and order thrive together in generative art. But at first, I was one of the people who thought coding was strict and bound by certain rules to follow,  now I see that it can be more playful and freeing.

When I was coding my artwork assignment, I decided to add randomized colors to my code to make it more exciting every time I run the code. The outcome always comes out as different and unique from the one before it, and I enjoyed the unpredictability of it. At the same time, I wonder if too much randomness could take away from the artist’s control. Reas seems to always see randomness in a positive way, but I’m not sure I fully agree with that. Personally, I think it works best when theres a balance, where the structure I write in the code guides the randomness so that the results are still under my control to some extent.

Concept

For my self-portrait, I decided to base it on my Animal Crossing Avatar. I thought it would be a fun way to represent myself since my character in the game feels like a version of me. Also, the cartoon style of the avatar fits perfectly for this kind of assignment!

Here’s my character for reference:

Favorite Code

Although I didn’t do anything super complex, I’m especially proud of how the eyes turned out. I think they gave the portrait a lot of personality and helped bring the whole thing together.

//left eye
  fill("black");
  ellipse(175, 225, 38, 50);

  fill("white");
  ellipse(174, 213, 18, 12);
  ellipse(182, 235, 6, 10);

  fill("black");
  triangle(158, 220, 152, 200, 163, 210);

  //right eye
  fill("black");
  ellipse(265, 225, 38, 50);

  fill("white");
  ellipse(265, 213, 18, 12);
  ellipse(274, 235, 6, 10);

  fill("black");
  triangle(248, 220, 241, 200, 251, 210);

Here’s the self-portrait I created:

Reflection and Future Improvements

While working on the portrait, I experimented with different shapes for the mouth and lashes. I tried using curves and Bezier functions, but they didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. In the end, I used an arc for the mouth and a triangle for the lashes, which worked better for the style I was going for.

I also used a semicircle arc for the bangs, but it stuck out a little awkwardly. To fix it, I placed a triangle in the same color as the background on top of the part that was sticking out, but I’m sure there’s probably a cleaner way to handle this.

In the future, I’d like to practice more shapes and figure out better techniques for handling these things.

Overall, this project was a fun way to explore coding and experiment with shapes. I’m excited to keep practicing and see how much more expressive I can make my sketches in the future!