experimenting with generative design:
As part of the studio ongoing design incubator for innovative ideas, we’ve taken on an experimental study in generative design.
We set out to explore and develop a system for generating an engaging, successful visual output in the form of character design and illustration - creatures - through the design of multiple elements cendlessategorised into groups.
The groups are defined around key body parts eg: head, eyes, mouths, noses, bodies, legs, arms, tentacles, ears, wings, horns, other (special category)). A set of rules (i.e. a custom algorithm we developed) is then implemented to join the parts together to create a near variety of unique creatures (see actual number of potential unique creatures possible based on current bodypart data base below).
The study can be broken down into roughly the following main components:
Developing the design schema - the look and feel and graphic language of the creature parts.
The rule system through which the illustration can be generatively created
Means of testing the desirable schema
As part of the study, to test the integrity of the generated creature structures, we developed a tailored application (a Java engine) that randomly selects body parts (i.e. input) out of the preset groups and applies the connection points rules (i.e. the algorithm) to create the variations of the creature (i.e. the output)… we called it the DNA machine :)
Each part can be drawn in a different position relative to the body, making the algorithm a little more complex as we have to work out different connection points based on a number of variables.
the number of possible characters generated using the body parts database stands at:
Short Answer: 1.37707019e+22
Full Answer: 13,770,701,909,626,806,144,000
(and the projects still going)
