Project Guidelines, Goals, and Roadmap

[jackrugile]

Hey Tim, I'm loving this project so much! Good on ya for putting it together.

I'd love to contribute in any way I can, but wanted to get a better grasp on the goals of the project before moving forward. Here are some general questions and thoughts. Maybe your answers to these could be added to the readme for the benefit of others as well.

1. Should all tutorial contributions be static (not animating)?
2. Should all tutorial contributions be light background with a dark foreground, in black & white? Or, can inverted B&W be used, or possibly even color?
3. Based on your recent talk about generative art, I think it would be great to have some sort of glossary or reference page. Something that quickly explains each concept in your "toolbelt" slide. Any thoughts on this?
4. Any thoughts on adding a pioneers page that lists out all of the pioneers of the generative art world?

Thanks!

[tholman]

Yes, thanks!

You're totally in my headspace here, so I'll reply to this with a big brain dump (will be great for me to get this out of my head), and then get some things in the readme afterwards.

1 & 2 I don't really have a preference against static vs animating... although for now, a big part of what I'm trying to do, is dull down the tutorials a lot, so they're super approachable and don't contain too much of anything that might confuse someone new (I'd excluded any device pixel ratio for that reason, though I feel like you added it in a nice understandable way).

I definitely want to do a few more statics before reaching into the animating space. For the same reason, I've not added much color (although have just made a mondrian demo (https://codepen.io/tholman/pen/31cd2b3557be45546b6703e80ee413e6) that I'm looking to put into a post this week. I think I might still do black and white on the main page (or show color on hover, for aesthetics... but definitely add color in the demo).

A big part again, and why writing a tutorial takes a little longer than usual, is trying to simplify something down into real steps, that show a visual progress as we go through each post... The surprise and delight you feel as it codes in front of you, eventually leading to the final piece is the real joy I want to preserve (thats why I took out the images you had added at the start of each post (maybe we should show them only on mobile?)) ~ A lot of this is based on learnings from workshops, and finding out a way to teach a lesson so that it sticks with the student.

Adding animation will lead to some changes needed in https://github.com/tholman/tutorial-markdown (which is perfect, ideally each of these projects will push each other into being better, more useful tools)

3 Yep, this is definitely something I'd thought about, and want to do, in a similar tutorial based way. I'd love to be able to link out to a tutorial for example, on composite operations... or hsl as they are shown in each post, so people can get a stronger idea of whats going on, or inspire some creativity and desire to create variations of a piece.

In a similar sense, I was thinking of adding some "tutorial extensions" at the end of each one... so you could for example, go down a path of adding color, or click into a path of adding some extra complexity. Or moving into animating a specific piece. Again, this will push the tutorialmarkdown project forward as well as this.

4 Yep, also thought about this a bunch, and definitely want to do it. I imagined the sticky sidebar on the left, with images of their works that would appear as you scroll through. Could do a good mix of old and new artists.

I can add you as a contributor if you like, and just send a briefer (more poignant guideline than this one, to keep us on track)

[jackrugile]

Thanks for your thoughts!

Regarding animation and colors, I agree with you. Actually, I think keeping the core tutorials colorless and static, and then maybe having a "bonus" or "further exploration" link that send the user out to some CodePen demos that enhance the tutorial would be cool. Give the reader the option to push it further, but don't dilute the core tutorial with color or animation. Of course, some generative art styles are completely dependent on color, so that might pose a problem. That Mondrian generator is awesome!

In addition to color and animation, I think the inclusion of external libraries is something to discuss as well. For example, what would be the most elegant way to introduce a perlin or simplex noise library into a tutorial?

Ya know, I actually came to the same conclusion as I was adding things like device pixel ratio and composite operations. At what point do those things start to drift away from the core generative art tutorial, and move over to the tech intricacies of 2d canvas? I don't want the tutorials to get bogged down by the tech we happen to use, because the 2d canvas is just a medium, not the main point of the tutorials.

Agreed, I hadn't considered the delight of revealing the art slowly. Let's keep the images only on mobile. And maybe move the images to the very end of the tutorial on mobile? Speaking of mobile, it would be awesome to get the site working on mobile. I realize it's more of a layout problem, vs a tech problem with tmd.js, but maybe there is a clever solution we could do.

A few demos here that I'd love to work into tutorials sometime:

Flower Generator (simplify this down a lot)
Silk Generator

I'd love to be a contributor, thanks!

[tholman]

Haha, you're def coming to some of the same conclusions I have... adding external libraries feels unavoidable... since there's no way this site can exist without some form of noise effected demo's, and there's not really an easy way to add noise to anything without completely spilling over from simple to complex af... I filed it under "problem for a few months from now" 💃

Ya, of course feel free to add any tutorials (or others reading this, open an issue with an idea you have and we can discuss ala #6) ... I'm big on getting people to use tutorial markdown, so it can improve and grow 💃

[raurir]

I'm watching this space 😊