Okay so I did give them a bonus for the final and I am having them use code I made that makes Turing patterns and told them to play with three parameters to match Minki
Here is an example of the code output (although I am sure some students may be able to match better).
how to make cool blobby turing patterns in photoshop
i'll preface with i learned the basic loop from skimming a tutorial on youtube, but as someone who prefers written tutorials i'm sure many would appreciate one! also, the second part of this is some of the visual effects i figured out on my own using blending modes and stuff.
i'm using photoshop CS4 on a mac so some buttons and stuff might be in different places on windows and newer photoshop versions but all the actions are the same. my canvas is 1000x1000 pixels.
UPDATES (i'm hoping these'll show up whenever you open the readmore?)
it's possible to do something similar in krita using this plugin, made by the love @arcaedex
A rudimentary krita docker that allows the user to generate iterations of turing patterns on their current layer - GitHub - arcaedex/kritado
it's also possible to do this in photopea, a free browser alternative to photoshop! the results are pretty much identical.
FIRST off you wanna get or make a black and white image of some kind. it has to be one layer. can be noise, a photo, a bunch of lines, whatever. here's mine, just some quick airbrush lines:
now find the actions tab. idk what it looks like in newer versions of photoshop but you probably won't need to dig!
hit the little page thingy to make a new pattern. once you hit 'record', it'll record everything you do. the little square 'stop' icon will end it.
now you want to do a high pass filter. you can mess around with the radius to change the size of your squiggles, but the tutorial had it set to 6. experiment!
now add the 'threshold' adjustment layer. i use the adjustments tab but i think there's also a dropdown menu somewhere. keep it at the default, 128. merge it down. (control or command + E or you can right click it like some kind of weirdo)
and finally, the gaussian blur! the radius of this affects the shape and size of your squiggles as well. i like to keep it around 4.5 but you can mess around with that too.
after that, hit 'stop' on the action you're recording, and then repeat it a bunch of times using the 'play' button, until you have something you like, like this:
WOW!! that was fun!! and only a little tedious thanks to the power of macros. anyway, here's some fun layer blending stuff i like to do. it's with a different pattern cause i made this bit first.
anyway, using a black and white gradient (or a grey base that you do black and white airbrush on), make a layer with the vivid light. this will make the blobs look thicker or thinner.
then, for cool colors, do a gradient map adjustment layer over that:
and finally, my best friend, the overlay layer. just using a gradient here bc i'm lazy, but feel free to experiment with brushes, colors, and blending modes!
NOW GO. MAKE COOL SHIT WITH THE POWER OF MATH. AND SEND IT TO ME
also these are not hard and fast rules PLEASE mess around with them to see what kind of weird shit you can make. here's a gif. as you can see i added some random airblush blobs in the middle of it, for fun.
Turing patterns are a concept introduced by mathematician Alan Turing, and he describes how patterns - shown here as stripes and splotches or spots on my frog stickers - occur naturally during morphogenesis (the process that causes tissue to form shape by controlling the spatial distribution of cells during early development).
In an otherwise stable and asymmetrical state of growth, the interaction of the chemicals controlling that growth autonomously result in the formation of pigmented markings on animals and plants.
And once you start to look, you’ll find Turing-style reaction-diffusion systems can be seen in all sorts of places:
Wind ripples in sand caused by the interplay of accumulation and degradation.
The nanoscale formation of atomically thin layers of bismuth crystals.
The uneven distribution of matter in galactic discs.
The feedbacks involved in replication, competition and predation may even set up organized patterns in animal communities.
post inspo by my good friend jayinee basu:
trypophobia on a basic level is a fear of turing patterns which makes sense because there is nothing more horrifying than a visual reminder of spontaneous self-organization
Dream Journal 2017-09-25: The Sculpture Mystery House
Have you ever heard of the Winchester Mystery House? It’s a real place that was built by the wife of the guy who created the Winchester rifle empire. The house was under near-constant construction for decades, and has lots of weird and nonsensical architectural features (like stairs that don’t go anywhere). Legend has it that these oddities were there to confuse the vengeful ghosts of those killed by Winchester rifles.
In the dream, I worked in a place that was like a less-sinister version of the Winchester Mystery House. It was weird for no other reason than being weird. There were floors with holes in them that led to secret tunnels, hallways that started off cavernous and tapered into a space barely big enough to crawl through, and no guarantee that a room would ever have an even floor. Hand-carved wooden sculpture decorated nearly every available surface in the house, except for one room that appeared to be a giant plastic slide. We would give tours to anyone who wanted to visit, and we always had a good number of visitors despite the house being located in the middle of a forest.
But one of the inconveniences of living in such an unusual house was that there weren’t any proper bedrooms. There was a warm and surprisingly comfortable place underneath the house where everyone would sleep. We would lay down on a patch of bare dirt, and various small animals would come snuggle up to us. A red fox and a horde of calico cats would make camp under the house with us nearly every night.
My favorite part of sleeping under the house was a phenomenon known as “Feline Delta,” which is what happens when 20-30 calico cats huddle together and the splotches in their fur align in such a way as to look like an image of a river delta from above. Because I am a super-nerd, my appreciation of this phenomenon was based on some real-life obscure math known as “Reaction-Diffusion Systems.”
I am not ashamed. Math is cool as hell.
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Header image is of the Minister’s Treehouse, which is supposedly the tallest treehouse in the world and was built in Tennessee.
