Some stuff that would rock.

[dave nielsen]

First I want to say I love Alchemy too, and it's been cool seeing some of the new stuff that's been added. Particularly the pressure option. I think the more variables that are dynamically controllable at once, the more a user can discover and control new ways of creating an abstraction. Stated another way, the more human input, the more advantage a human can take to make the results imperfect, unique and less computer/procedural. That's the thing that makes abstraction and ideation so fun.. Going in and doing something with an unknown result, but just enough control over it that you can push results you're getting if you like them, and mess things up to create those happy accidents.

The reason I love the new pressure tool is that now I can control a shape just by pushing down harder or lighter. But, instead of making Pressure solely a "creating mode" What would open the program wide, wide up would be If I could click a checkbox to dynamically control any setting within any drawing mode through pen inputs. What if I could vary the amount of random distortion based on how hard I push or what angle or tilt I use on my Wacom?

What if there was fractal/flame generation that would respond dynamically to my Wacom input?

What if there was a timer that ran a global "filter" on everything, after a certain amount of time has passed? For instance, I'm drawing for a minute, then the program screws things up for me a little bit and makes some happy accidents (maybe after autosaving what I've done so far). Then I draw for a minute more, and the program jacks my drawing again so I have to keep improvising.

What if I could save my program settings and access them through a submenu?
If the timer settings were a little more sophisticated, I could set a timer to switch between program setting presets. So I have a minute to draw purely abstractly. Then it switches me to a pressure brush at a certain size for a minute and I draw opaquely to flesh out the shapes I've found. Then it dumps my image to the PDF and starts the cycle over.

What if there are some more control variables to make the randomizations less spikey and more bubbly... Or more square/triangular. Something that really varies the outputs users are getting so my abstractions look different than the next guy on the forum. Like... Maybe Alchemy bases the shapes that it randomizes from a vector file. Kind of like the "Pull Shapes" works now, but instead of the dropping the shape itself like a symbol brush tool, the computer is calculating a randomization that has the geometric character of a circle if that's what you have in your vector file.. Then it squashes or stretches that template file, kind of like if you were working in photoshop and did pinch or pull operations, but the program is doing all that on its own.... Orrr, like I was saying earlier, responding to one of your Wacom inputs to decide how much to pinch or pull. This puts all of the control into the users' hands. To decide how controlled or abstract to go.

Anyway, this is just some brainstorming. I love Alchemy. And I would basically pee myself if you were interested and able to add any of this stuff. It would take Alchemy from being crazy fun to "substitute for crack" territory.

- Dave

[blue_fox]

Your ideas sound interesting!

[theantisphere]

Yea, i love all the ideas you've expressed, especially making use of time - like the effect that's put in place after a certain amount of time.

[albatroxx]

What would be really cool is if the program simply faded out the image as you went along, because as I work I find the screen often gets too cluttered, and there is almost no effect when I add new shapes, especially as there is no undo button (which is a good thing, it prevents you from trying to make a finished work of art). If what you had drawn simply got lighter as you went along that would be great.