» Droplets

Droplets

April 11, 2019 by Chris Johnson. Filed under public, twoville.

A year ago some students and I started designing programming languages for generating 2D vector art. I called my language Twoville, which pays homage to Seymour Papert’s metaphor of learning math in Mathland just as we learn French in France. The language is a place to learn about and forge 2D shapes. After the semester ended and the accountability dried up, I set my language aside to work on more pressing (income-generating) matters.

But the project has been gnawing on me. Every time I see an interesting graphic, I consider what features are needed for me to recreate it in Twoville. For example, during my sabbatical in Australia, I encountered this logo on Musk Avenue during my daily walks through the Queensland University of Technology:

Daily did it haunt me. But at the time, Twoville didn’t support arcs or a facility for abstracting the droplet shape. However, I’ve just added support for functions and SVG path elements, and I can finally get this logo out of my head and into Twoville:


  
    with viewport
  center = [0, 0]
  size = [20, 20]

to droplet(spin, size)
  offset = 0.25
  
  p = with path()
    color = [1, 0.5, 0]
    opacity = 1
    with rotate()
      pivot = [0, 0]
      degrees = spin
    closed = true
  
  with p.jump()
    position = [offset, offset]
  
  with p.line()
    position = [offset, size]
    
  with p.arc()
    degrees = -270
    center = [size, size]

droplet(0, 5)
droplet(90, 3.25)
droplet(270, 4.6)

    
    
    
  
  
    
    with viewport
  center = [0, 0]
  size = [20, 20]

to droplet(spin, size)
  offset = 0.25
  
  p = with path()
    color = [1, 0.5, 0]
    opacity = 1
    with rotate()
      pivot = [0, 0]
      degrees = spin
    closed = true
  
  with p.jump()
    position = [offset, offset]
  
  with p.line()
    position = [offset, size]
    
  with p.arc()
    degrees = -270
    center = [size, size]

droplet(0, 5)
droplet(90, 3.25)
droplet(270, 4.6)

Sweet relief.