Running Moon
Licia He , 2022
Running Moon is a long-form generative art program by Licia He. It was launched and fully minted as the first release of Art Blocks Curated Series 8 on Wednesday, July 13th, at 12 pm CDT.
The official launch site: https://www.artblocks.io/project/334
Print info and High-res outputs download
25% of the proceeds generated from the primary sale was donated to AnitaB Institute and Girls Who Code to support female and non-binary technologists.
Follow @Licia_He for project updates:
Announcement | Color | Texture | Dev Story
Running Moon depicts the nuanced interaction between clouds and moonlight. It is a search for boundaries between structure and fluidity, precision and errors. It is a quest for harmony.
The rendering of Running Moon is inspired by stained glass and watercolor. It captures the sharpness of the glass and the softness of light using abstract forms. As organic shapes gradually fill the space, brush-pen-like stripes solder these pieces together to form intricate compositions.
This project page documents Running Moon with many (lazy-loading) examples in the following order:
Running Moon has three major elements: Expansion Shapes, Segmenting Lines, and Texture.
Sample Output
Expansion Shapes
The core idea behind Running Moon is expansion. Starting from a focal point, curves gradually spread across the page. As a result of this expansion, groups of versatile curves cut the canvas into shapes. I refer to these shapes as Expansion Shapes.
There are 10 different types of expansion shapes, each producing a wide range of curves with unique characteristics.
Segmenting Mode
Stained glass works often have restrictions on the size and shape of individual glass pieces due to physical properties and production requirements. While Running Moon does not have these physical restrictions, I imposed a set of additional segmenting lines to balance the composition.
There are 8 different types of segmenting lines. Here are examples that demonstrate how the same set of expansion shapes would react to different types of segmenting lines.
Color Scheme
Running Moon assigns color and shading to each shape using one of the probabilistic color palettes in its collection. Each color within a palette is associated with a unique distribution.
There are 36 carefully developed color palettes, grouped into 5 categories.
Special Modes
After determining the core composition (through Expansion Shape and Segmenting Line) and the main color scheme, I introduced 5 additional special modes that add various effects.
Development Story
Running Moon is the most intricate web-based generative art system I have developed so far, with many iterations and various artistic/technical challenges. It has been quite a journey. Here I summarize a brief history of the development process.