User:Shoebby/Webby Sprouts

Download here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webby-sprouts/

blogpost: https://shoebby.github.io/dist/blogpost-penplot.html

(Where am I in) The Process

My dive into fractals brought me into contact with a lot of different mediums for drawing them, here is the process shown by way of images in (rough) chronological order.

Pen Plotting

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  First fractal, made using the pen plotter and a Math'd python script to generate instructions

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  Video of the first fractal being drawn, you can hear my partner in the background 'ooh' and 'aah'ing

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  Following fractal experiments introduce variability in left/right angles and ratios

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  A fractal where the left angle is higher than the right angle

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  Chaotic fractal 1

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  Chaotic fractal 2

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  Chaotic fractal 3

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  Chaotic fractal 4

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  This fractal introduces slight randomization per branch, set within min-max limits

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  This fractal also randomizes ratios per branch, adding a much more organic and clustering look to the overall structure

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  I think this one is quite pretty

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  This one looks kinda cool I think

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  Hey woah

PostScript

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  Recursion was also useable in the PostScript class we had, so I applied a bit of it here to lists of PDFs/JPEGs on my computer

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  Funny spin

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  Triggers my catholic guilt somehow

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  Eerie kinda feeling

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  I just like this one for the concept, where the text size is scaled depending on the file's size on disk

The Canvas Element

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  Now taking fractals fully digital I used the canvas element to generate them, generate your own here!

Fractals From Divs

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  Canvas didn't really tickle me however, and then Doriane came with the suggestion to instead draw them using divs, which struck me as incredibly cursed and awesome

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  It works, and I could even apply past things like uneven left/right angles already

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  Squeer

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  Due to the way theyre drawn you can draw multiple over eachother to make neat patterns

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  (gif) First experiments with animating the tree

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  (gif) Spin

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  (gif) Spinnn

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  (gif) Spinnnnn

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  (gif) Spinnnnnnn

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  I figured I could also expose the CSS more to the user so they could mess with the styling for themselves, to make the trees pretty and/or weird-looking

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  (gif) Meta-ball-ish dual fractal spinning unfurling and such

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  (gif) Kinda the same but with wackier colours and using mix-blend-mode

Fractals From The DOM

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  So now lets take it to a web extension! Assignment: generate a tree fractal based on the webpage DOM

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  And also show what sort of element is related to which branch!

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  On some pages the tree even applies some of the page's styling to itself, why? How? I wish I knew (help)

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  Some interactivity is introduced, now element type pops up on hover! Maybe also highlight the elements themselves? (yes)

The Final Yuri

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  For fun I also made the divvy sprouts compatible with the webby sprouts, so they could intermingle, pull from eachother, and kiss!

Questions

• (webby sprouts) Can I pull from the page's own stylesheet to style the branches and if so how?
• Where do I go from here? Should I refine the things I already have or keep going, maybe venture into the third dimension?
• Could this/these play a fun interactive role(s) during the Special Issue? What would be desirable?
• Could there be another step to make these more meaningful and a bit less purely toylike? Webby sprouts has it somewhat but yeah