

Show HN: In memory of Bob Ross, a simple painting generator, Gogh - ngokevin
http://ngokevin.github.com/gogh/
Currently features the sky, the ground, and a tree.<p>Happy little clouds are in progress.
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morsch
Very nice. I was sad to see it stop when it had done the tree.

The Joy of Painting is great (Bob Ross Incorporated, not so much). I don't
think I'd ever hang one of those quaint images on a wall. But the quick
techniques to achieve a certain effect are fascinating, at least to an
ignoramus like me, e.g. pushing down with a certain brush to get tree
branches, or swooshing down on previously drawn stuff to create reflections on
water.

Incidentally, I've always thought there was something almost algorithmic to
it: the motives themselves were really formulaic, and the techniques reminded
me of certain Photoshop tools and brush effects. The submission is a fantastic
start, but I think you could go much farther than that.

~~~
ngokevin
Thanks for the encouragement! I'm still going to keep going, but I wanted to
submit it close to Bob Ross's anniversary. I was planning to do mountains
next.

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lsb
It's beautiful.

And it's further a demonstration of how magical Bob Ross was; without his
narration, it's just an insipid landscape, if the clouds are not happy and
little, and the left cloud does not have the right cloud as a friend.

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reitzensteinm
This is absolutely fantastic!

It would be interesting to expand this to allow user control - a bunch of
procedural high level brushes.

The goal would be to get someone who can't draw able to drastically influence
the output, but still make the result look good.

Do you mind if I pinch the idea and see what I can come up with in that
direction?

~~~
ngokevin
Definitely, go for it. That's what GitHub forks are for right? :)

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inoop
For those interested in tightly-coded procedural graphics, have a look here:
[http://pouet.net/top10.php?type=procedural+graphics&plat...](http://pouet.net/top10.php?type=procedural+graphics&platform=any+platform&x=29&y=16)

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moepstar
Nice - but needs more happy little clouds :)

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Vivtek
Or a happy little bird.

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tinco
Are you guys looking at the same picture as I am? What I see is a weak copy of
Bret Victors landscape generator with horrible colours and MSPaint-like
strokes.

I mean it's nice to have such a thing on your CV, but why post it to HN? (and
why upvote it?)

~~~
eru
Could you link to Bret Victor's generator, please?

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hannes0x21
totally reminds me of [http://www.schlussdienst.net/html/canvas-
flowers/canvas-flow...](http://www.schlussdienst.net/html/canvas-
flowers/canvas-flowers.html)

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michaelhoffman
I'm going to fork this and make a new version in memory of Vincent van Gogh,
which I'll call Bobross.

~~~
ngokevin
Well played.

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zachinglis
This is gorgeous.

Though, if in memory of Bob Ross, why is it named after Gogh?

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taybin
The brushstrokes are more in Van Gogh's style. (not the author)

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corysama
You might also appreciate "Automated Landscape Painting in the Style of Bob
Ross"

<http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/poster/alex_NPAR.pdf>

The full paper is behind a membership wall here <https://diglib.eg.org> but
you can read the first page here

[https://diglib.eg.org/EG/DL/WS/COMPAESTH/COMPAESTH09/115-122...](https://diglib.eg.org/EG/DL/WS/COMPAESTH/COMPAESTH09/115-122.pdf.abstract.pdf)

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inetsee
Snow-capped mountains :)

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sarah2079
Fun, thanks for posting.

If this puts anyone in the mood to receive some Bob Ross affirmations, I
really enjoyed PBS's Bob Ross remix made earlier this year:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO7tCdBVrA>

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Vivtek
Cute: "on the second day, ngokevin built the sky [ngokevin]"

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dsego
Happy little trees :)

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stinky613
This is really cool. How apropos that I just last night started reading PG's
book "Hackers & Painters"!

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j2labs
Where are you based? If you're in NYC or Berlin, you should present this at
Hack And Tell! It's great!

~~~
ngokevin
In Oregon. If I was in NYC, I'm not too sure if I would venture out into that
weather.

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bitwize
That made my day -- seeing JavaScript draw me a happy little tree.

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spideyunlimited
Beautiful

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Toshio
I may use these generated pictures as backgrounds for slide presentations, so
it would be nice to hear if the author is fine with that. What license is the
resulting picture subject to?

~~~
wolfhumble
I am not the creator, but in the spirit of Bob Ross the only natural thing
would be to liberate it: "It's your world" :-)

