Circles.

[kollatt]

me? i'm a huge fan of circular form and composition. they're useful for creating contrast because they're unnatural and perfect.. which of course denotes order, not chaos. but maybe a tool could be created that would generate a circle and attach it randomly to the nearest form where it could fit. something. i'm not sure. but, lately when producing thumbnails or warm-up sketches with alchemy all of my creations are starting to look too similar. i think some different shape language is what's needed. or perhaps a geometric shape generator? maybe there could be a library of geometric shapes ranging from squares to circles to ovals to octagons, and the tool randomly chooses one and puts it on the canvas, or attaches it to existing blobs of shapes? i understand the danger behind perfect mathematics, but the contrast would be useful. typically what i do is take the file i'm working on over to photoshop or painter and do this anyway. i would like the ability to take ideas farther in alchemy if i choose.. is this wrong? am i going in a contrary direction? i ask this honestly.. sometimes i get caught up in my ideas.. let me know!

[inverse catheter]

i like this idea and am very much all for it. certainly see the need to extend the ' shape language ' as you put it

off the top of my head i can see an implementation that. as an affect module. would place a circle ( or other predefined shape ) at :

random vertex ( of last or other created shape )
random canvas location ( on pen / mouse up. or random timed intervals )
average center of pen down. pen up
etc

etc

would be keen to hear any other ideas you have on this topic

[Karl DD]

I like the idea of extending the 'Shape Language'.
This post here got me thinking that we want to avoid having Alchemy associated with a certain kind of look.
Being vector based tends to narrow down the range of stuff you can do, and it becomes easy to 'spot' the Alchemy 'look'.

I would be interested in seeing some sketches showing how you see the circle stuff working. I can certainly imagine them having some physics and deflecting/deforming when dragged on to other objects at speed.

By the way, does anyone have any idea about what this 3/4 mirroring means? I can't quite visualise it.

[kollatt]

i'm going to try to sit down and have a few sessions with alchemy and then photoshop the screenshots to convey what i mean. i definitely think the shape language thing we were discussing needs to expand with geometric shapes and circles. i tend to get a lot of pointies in my drawings. perhaps that's just how i'm using the application? maybe if i just grab the type module and use nothing but un-distorited O's and zeros.. heh.

[Donna]

If I'm visualising it right, 3/4 mirror is like... one side is "normal" but the other one is skewed, but still mirrored. Imagine a face - it's symmetrical (erm, more or less, but let's pretend it's perfectly symmetrical). When you turn the head to a 3/4 view, the side nearest to you would be the "normal" one and the other would be a 3/4 mirror.

Does this make any sense? *scratches head*

[Karl DD]

Maybe mental visualisation is not my strong point...
How about a sketch?

[kynu]

It's something like this. 3/4 view is when you see about 3/4 of the face's closer half and 1/4 of the farther.
But don't listen to everything what you read on ConceptArt. For example the kid who told you this 3/4 mirror thing, most likely can't draw a correct human face without some kind of help.
Don't make Alchemy to a guide-software! Although assimetric mirroring would be a cool feature, but not as it was mentioned here...