Marcos Lopez LA-1

LSystem 1

Working on the first L–System was really inspired by the book. I first started by making most of the examples in the book until I felt I was comfortable with what was happening. Then I went into messing with the rules and making them my own. I personally enjoyed the sharp edges and robotic look of the 90 degree angle. So I made the axiom a square and started messing with the rules and found something that I found pleasing while not being too inspired by the fractal designs from the book. I really enjoy the way my fractal creates this design where I see goggles or a mask. (left). But I also really enjoy the squared-off look on the right. I went with the design on the right for the physical cut-out which was laser cut anything with more iterations was too delicate to print at the size we had available.

Botanical

I remember working in Net-Logo and stumbling into this sort of design while working with recursion for the first time. But the L-System approach is much more sophisticated and can lead to a much more interesting design. I like many others did not realize that there was a way to have randomness in the rules of our L-System and had a fairly boring design, to begin with. However, as soon as we learned that my designs for the trees that I was creating were certainly cooler. I chose this one in particular because it just looked the most appealing to me. I did not choose to put leaves or anything on the end of the tree, but it could have been a good way to introduce some color to the design. But I personally like the way the dark branches contrast with the white background.

Shapes

Now, this was the hardest and yet most rewarding part of this assignment. I had the most fun creating these insane L-Systems. When I first started, I could not figure out a satisfying shape to use to create this L-System, I saw the example on the page and could not bring myself to do something similar. Instead, I wasted plenty of time trying to make the turtle draw interesting shapes and then iterating those and I almost entirely made useless images. Then I went back and said what shapes are already done in processing and picked Circles and Squares as they had pre-built functions and I did not have to do anything fancy. Plus, I found that these shapes could be filled with color. I put those circles and squares into my original L-System and out popped something awesome yet unrefined. Then I thought what if I got rid of the path of the turtle and just kept the shapes and another awesome thing popped out. Then I thought what if I make the turtle path the same color as the background and yet again another even more interesting thing popped out. I for the most part used the same code in the original L-System with only small changes to some of the rules and drawing interpretation.

Rogan Brown Inspired

The Rogan Brown paper pieces are so cool and the attention to detail is insane. I however did not have a good time trying to emulate that work. I am not even that happy with the work that came up with. The biggest thing I saw that came out of his work was these tentacle-like things or spindrals which I called them. There would be a center mass with lots of branching vines coming out and that’s what I chose to emulate. I made some designs that hardcoded some starting circles and made these spindrals that came out of the circle in similar but technically random ways. The final design is what I chose to cut out of paper. It was not pretty. The design was probable too intricate to cut out in the paper and I lost one completely to me trying to get the cut design out of the entire paper. I think if I were to follow this up I would make a bigger much larger stroke width to make a piece that would hold up better in the end.

Code URL

https://handandmachine.org/classes/computational_fabrication/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/MarcosLopezLA1.zip