Project 2 - Lsystems use in Illustration

I have generated a series of Lsystem trees with "Processing" program and moved them into Photoshop, where I made my illustration scene. There I composed the trees as hair on my characters` heads.
Here is my Plant-head City!

and here is the procedure..

My L-system trees:

The background that I draw in photoshop:

Added some scanned newspaper to make it look like collage:

and my weird-cute characters!

Project 2 / some progress

I`m using the "Processing" program to make my L-system graphs. I have taken a few of them into Photoshop and composed them on my illustrations as hair. Here is a test:

Project 2 - Initial Idea

For my second project I want to implement L-systems in my Illustrations as "hair" for characters! I`ll write the code to make the branches (probably in C++) and then will bring them to Photoshop where they will be composed to some different Characters.

As a test to start, I`ve drawn some "L-system-like" branches in photoshop and planted them on my character`s heads. Actually I`ve replaced the branches with their original hair to see how they look like.
I`m trying to get some new look for these characters, and here are the results:

Final Project 1

After two previous attempts to do a chance-based illustration, for my final work I decided to move my way a bit more toward abstract paintings. so here are the steps I took to get these results:

- Three canvases of the same
- I let paint drops to flow on each canvas, and with steering them I helped to get a better composition. And       also I tried to make curves as well as horizontal and vertical lines. Although I was controlling the drops in some extent, but still the result is a random grid line.
- I repeated the same step 3 times with three different colors. (letting each series to dry, then starting the next color)
- I designed a color palette to fill the areas with.
- To map my color palette to the areas of the painting, I started naming each area by numbers from 1 to 60. each canvas contains around 250 areas, which means I went to through the numbers 4 times for each canvas.
- After naming all the areas, I needed to map my color palette to these numbers, which was done by a Matlab code, Generating 3 series of random numbers, mapping 9 colors to 60 areas. colors are named 1 to 9.
- To have a slightly different weight of colors in 3 canvases, the colors which are number 1 and 2, are weighted twice as others.
- Here is the result!

And now after 2-3 weeks, I felt like I want to continue painting this little cells based on my color table (which was generated with random numbers) so I filled all the cells as my initial idea.
Here is the result!

Second attempt

Here is a bigger canvas and brighter colors.

Chance based Illustration

This is my first attempt to make a chance-based grid and draw an illustration out of it.

Response to first 3 Reading

Ok, the first assignment is to read 3 readings which are basically the definition of the course title:

Galanter - What is Generative Art?
Galanter - What is Complexism?
Boden and Edmonds - What is Generative Art?


Before reading these articles I had a vague shallow understanding of a the phrase "generative art", and now after reading them, I can`t claim of through understanding of the subject, but at least I have a much better idea of the concept. Here are some clarifying paragraphs from the very first article by Galanter:
"Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such
as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other
procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy
contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art"
"For now here are some observations about this definition. First, note that the term
generative art is simply a reference to how the art is made, and it makes no claims as
to why the art is made this way or what its content is. Second, generative art is
uncoupled from any particular technology. Generative art may or may not be “high
tech”. Third, a system that moves an art practice into the realm of generative art must
be well defined and self-contained enough to operate autonomously"


Then we reach to the concept of "Complex Systems" and "Random systems vs. Chaotic systems". Here are some key parts of the same article:
"Complex systems typically have a large number of small parts or components that
interact with similar nearby parts and components. These local interactions often lead
to the system organizing itself without any master control or external agent being "in
charge". Such systems are often referred to as being self-organizing."
"chaotic systems are not random systems. Natural chaotic systems may be difficult to
predict but they will still exhibit structure that is different than purely random
systems"
Now that I have some idea about the course contents, I have this feeling of a need to see some generative art samples, try to critic them and decide to what extent they can be considered ART? My initial feeling is that when you are greatly involved in the "process of creation", the result is less like Art! I think the artwork is the result of creativity, intelligence and artistic skills of the human. So the process of creation may change and move to a new direction many times based on the "decision of Artist" until reaching the result. If such process is semi programmed, its like saying the artist has predicted the success of his creativity at the beginning of process.
That`s what I think now, hopefully after reading some more about it, discussing the subject and most importantly, seeing different samples, I can get a better understanding of the whole thing!