Breeding_Grounds

Breeding Grounds

Social Networks. Molecular Clouds. Neuronal Circuitries. Quantum Mechanical Structures.

Blurring Boundaries. Infinite Self-Similarities.

Total. Mess.

Perfect. Order.

Breeding Grounds is inspired by the assumption that both the brain and the cosmic web are very similar in structural design. This can also be found in many other subsystems of the universe, such as Social Networks or molecular clouds. Thereby either biological or physical factors play a role and influence these systems in a certain way which leads to these similarities. Breeding Grounds should not be another fractal algorithm, but more an abstract idea of the topic. Especially since a distinction must be made between fractal systems (self-similar) and those described above (not self-similar). Fractal systems are an important component of the Universe, therefore I didn't want to leave them unmentioned at least in a lyrical way.

Palettes

dissolve-in-fog

reduced

Each palette (with three exceptions) comes with a reduced version (only the core colors are used) to achieve different effects. With the full palette you sometimes get very washed out, with the reduced version somewhat more defined outputs. Note: the background colors in the following are included in the respective palettes, but not in the "swatch" overview.

reduced

shimmering echo trail

reduced

sundial visitors

reduced

stellar parallax

reduced

thinking about the fireworks

reduced

dream after dream

reduced

time intervals for sushi

reduced

gradation between gathering

reduced

slumbering biome

reduced

collapse into the roof

reduced

motion sickness of gravity

reduced

floating sunset radiance

new-born roots

All color palettes at once

nothing but everlasting white

Other Features

Painting Ground

linen canvas

bamboo

flax canvas

handmade washi

light wrapping paper

window in a ship

To clearly see the differences, it's best to look at the tokens in live view and/or download a png by pressing "s". All textures are generative.

Preliminary Drawing

cope without it (no grid)

need a little help (very light drawn grid)

accidentally grabbed the sharpie (the grid is fully shown)

The Preliminary Drawing is the actual subdivided grid on which all elements in the artwork are based. This feature tells if and how much this grid is visible.

Trails

confused particles (no trails)

light

medium

heavy

deep connection (very thick trails)

Determines the thickness of the particle trails emanating from the cores. The first time I experimented with the stroke weight and changed it to 4 px (deep connection), I was blown away by the complexity of the outputs and the change in the overall appearance.

Connections

The number of polygons that make up the cores. The cores are the main actors of Breeding Grounds and everything revolves around them. They are made up of polygons. The higher the number, the fuller the cores appear. I added circles to the corners of the polygons to illustrate the idea of nodes connected in a network.

1

42

166

PoV

distant

fly-by

trapped in the network

Inner Connections

If the cores consist of less than 20 polygons (see above), we can catch a glimpse of the inner architecture of the cores.

visible

invisible

Symmetry

aligned

chaos

Indicates whether the cores are aligned to the grid or rotated randomly.

Color Distribution

macro

micro

The respective color palette can be distributed either per core or per polygon. This leads to interesting and sometimes very blurry results.

First of all, thank you for making it this far. Breeding Grounds has become like a good friend to me, and seeing it come to fruition has made me really proud and sentimental at the same time. And I still am.

Aside from the whole brain-universe comparison, one of the more technical approaches of Breeding Grounds was to take beautiful and innocent color palettes and mess them up by mixing and layering colors a thousand times. Similar to how gas and matter in molecular clouds are clumped together and formed into something larger. This often creates a depth effect reminiscent of volumetrics. However, in the HQ outputs, it becomes clear that these "volumetrics" are made up of thousands of razor-thin lines that only blend together at the right viewing distance/zoom level.

An important aspect of Breeding Grounds is that it’s also intended to exist in the physical world. I therefore offer to anyone who wants to make a print of their iteration to export an HQ version of it. I didn't want to just make this available as a direct export from the code, because it's always nicer to talk to each other in person and possibly customize the output. Just send me a DM via Twitter (@pxlshrd) or Discord (pxlshrd #8590).

nostalgia emphasis chamber

Our position as an observer.