Silly project — real learnings (Generative breasts )

Code is something I have wanted to include as a tool in my creative process for many years. I did participate in a ‘Draw with Code’ with Andreas Refgaard back in 2016. Since I have been to multiple workshops — but I had to finish my masters in Interaction design and participate in Processing Day Copenhagen 2022 before I made my first project. It started on my way home in the train.

The project have left me feeling both proud of making my first code based creative project — but also a it silly and embarrassed since since I wrote a piece of code to generate random sets of boobs.

The Idea #

I had seen a poster similar to this at a friends house. It tells the story about all breasts are unique. Well if you coded the breast you could generate unique posters with unique breasts.

The result #

So I sat out to code my first sketch in p5js and as you see below I ended up with a sketch doing what I tried to achieve.

Why it was a great learning project #

The project was a mixed of things I am interested in or was familiar with

Creative Coding — Generative Art — Figure Drawing

Besides ticking off multiple interest it was also the right amount of hard. As described in the diagram below I was able to have a flow experience each evening since the project provided me with right amount of challenge.

So yes — spending my evenings coding breast made me feel silly, but it also allowed me to get started with code as a creative tool.

Learning outcomes from a silly project #

fiA breast is not a perfect circle → How to draw a vector curve using code in order to define the breast

Early iteration	Later iteration

• Breast comes in different shapes and sizes → Using random ranges to allow for random boobs to be drawn
• Make all my values relate to the canvas size to allow for different output formats
• With a lot of Clipping masks to ensure the nipples stayed within the breast