From the Artist

Similus is about celebrating the incredible palettes that artists create. When you see colors in an abstract representation, it draws your attention to the artists genius. Creating beautiful color palettes is difficult, and the goal of Similus is to extol this part of the artists work.

It's very interesting looking at the Similus result next to the painting from which the palette is derived. You get a greater understanding of the artists intent, and why color is so important.

To that end, Similus has over 130 amazing palettes. Every palette is themed either to a unique painting in history, or to a thing or place notable for it's colors. The palette name gives a hint as to where it came from (it's a shortened version of the painting, place, or thing). Every palette is unique and has a very distinct identity.

Algorithm

Simulus uses techniques from the theory of FBM - Fractional Brownian Motion. FBMs are used in generative art, usually with motion to generate things like clouds, nebulas, etc.

Simulus uses FMBs coupled with noise and color blending to create beautiful art that is parameterized by the noise for stunning variations. One of the properties of FBM is that the increments are not independent. An underappreciated result of using FBM with noise is how the correlations in the increments can be used to represent color. Similus exploits this property to great effect.

Each work is built from thousands of strokes in real time using p5.js. Every few hundred strokes the image is updated, letting you watch as the algorithm proceeds.

Similus excels at emphasizing a color palette, any color palette, of any size. It mixes and uses all the colors in the palette randomly as a part of the algorithm, but it always produces artful, aesthetically pleasing results. The same colors tend to get used in the same areas, so the result looks creative and beautiful.

Attributes and Rarities

Palette

Each palette has an equal chance of being selected.

Blend Mode

The blend mode has a large effect on the look of the minted work.

• Blend - stroke color is calculated using lerp. Produces smooth results. Strokes are narrower in a range.
• Paint - Similar to blend, but with a much bigger brush (strokewidth), and many more iterations. Tends to paint over the entire background, looking more like a painting. Takes a long time to iterate.

When minting, blend mode is chosen with the following frequencies:

• 98% - Blend
• 2% - Paint

Stroke Width

The width of the stroke. A stroke width of 0 will cause each stroke to have a random stroke width in a range. A fixed stroke width will produce a slightly more uniform result. When minting, the stroke width frequencies are:

• 50% - Stroke size is randomly chosen from a range for each stroke.
• 50% - One fixed stroke size selected randomly from a range for the entire run.

Amplitude and Harmonics

Amplitude and harmonics have an effect on the number of colors that appear in a Similus run, and on how much structure is present. Most of the palettes in Similus are 5 colors, but a few have many more, up to 14. If the amplitude and harmonics are too low, many of the color won't be used. The range for amplitude and harmonics used in Similus are chosen to provide large variation, and to use all the colors in the palette.

Amplitude

Acts like a scale for the noise, so exposes fine structure. Higher amplitudes have more structure in the result. Amplitude is chosen randomly in a range.

Harmonics

Adds turbulence to the result. The harmonic range in Similus is relatively small and is chosen randomly.