Society of Stickpeople Tech Notes
Posted on in Society of Stickpeople, Tech Notes
Technical Information
The original OpenGL program was crafted to simulate a population controlled by finite state machines, using stickmen and stickwomen with simple animations to visually represent the unfolding dynamics of the population. Later, the program was changed to experiment with the idea of digital chronophotography, or a way to capture in one frame the essence of each particular simulated run. This was achieved by leaving the drawn image every frame rather than clearing it between frames. This technique, combined with a very low opacity in the drawn elements, allowed the image to slowly accumulate over the course of thousands of frames. At any point in time, a key could be pressed to save a high resolution version of the image at its current state of evolution.
Resources
A companion Art Gallery Sketch presented at SIGGRAPH 2006 describing the techniques and inspiration for these images:
Click here to download the Art Sketch pdf
(642 KB, Adobe Reader required)
Click here to download the Art Sketch presentation
(2.78 MB, Microsoft Powerpoint required)
If you would like to try out the software that was used to create these images, contact me.