generate leads 1: WendyPaint℠ by Kim Asendorf

by mthw

WendyPaint℠ is to me one of the greatest projects of this year, it has the same DNA than its creator, online based, patterns, pixels, gradients, glitches and other properties you can find on Kim Asendorf's work. It is basically an online pixel pattern painter, where the user has to create his/her own patterns and paint with. All the patterns are created into a 32 x 32px box which is the maximum size for the brush and in that space you can create whatever you want, I think 32px is enough for a pixel pattern tool, it's the double size than a favicon and per example you can reproduce a lot of already existent icons from the internet whose fit perfect on that space. To build your own patterns it's an interesting and creative process, one has to care quite a lot about the edges of the pattern because WendyPaint only offers one way painting mode which is by dragging the pattern and doing a continue stroke if you keep the brush going on, and one click equals one pattern, so edges are important on here. Once the pattern is done you can edit it using some rotating and flipping features and save them in different modes, but what it's really nice it's that you can also create others using little code through the colour pattern generator and modulator which works using i, x, y, w; variables and with that it's possible to create infinite geometric and glitchy patterns and gradients very quickly, some examples into the post. Another good point is that the users have the option to share the patterns they do and build a public huge archive of patterns, good online based concept. It also has a Stream where there are all the public pieces, make sure you click on the checkbox when saving your painting as it is hidden by default. See more;

WendyPaint's interface it's simple as it's the whole project. I didn't find an undo command to go back some steps while painting but this is probably related to some glitch art concept considering every error beautiful and necessary for the final piece :) . Users who like geometry, the shift key works to keep the horizontal and vertical lines straight, it works on the canvas as well as on the pattern canvas.

In the first image below you can see the interface and in the second one how the modulator formula works, I have drawn a Nyan Cat and then used the modulator to distort it and create an abstract and random new pattern, it is even nice how it glitches. By the way in the Pattern Manager you will find a pattern album I did called eICONS containing few icons, an example of it's the first WendyPainting below.

For people who doesn't know to code and play with the colour generator and pattern modulator here are some examples to introduce you to the fun.

Generator Formula