Vince Allen: Pixel Art and Complex Systems - JSConf.Asia 2014

Once defined by its limitations, pixel art has evolved into a highly expressive visual style. Illustrators, product designers and artists continually challenge the conventional pixel art sensibility to produce beautiful work for the street, our homes and museums. Working in abstraction, pixel artists manipulate a simple set of design priniciples. This talk will focus on techniques to render pixel art in a web browser using JavaScript and the DOM. We’ll start by drawing characters and scenes in the traditional 8-bit style. We’ll also set them in motion and create framed-based pixel art animation. Next, we’ll focus on pixels themselves and how to transform them into autonomous agents. Using the same rendering techniques, we’ll create complex systems out of simple rules. As we try to balance these systems, we’ll observe interesting emergent behaviors. Finally, we’ll learn how to render these systems to HD video using Node.js and Photoshop. Vince is a software engineering manager at Spotify in New York. He’s been designing and programming for almost 20 years and devotes most of his spare time to FloraJS, a JavaScript framework for creating natural simulations in a web browser. Listen to Vince on Spotify (search for Vince Allen or his alias, DJ Monkey Pants) or find him at http://vinceallen.com. JSConf.Asia is the JavaScript, web and mobile developer conference for Asia. Amara Sanctuary, Singapore - 20 + 21 November 2014. Source: http://2014.jsconf.asia/#speakers Project website: http://vinceallenvince.github.io/jsasia2014/ Project link: https://github.com/vinceallenvince/jsasia2014 License: For reuse of this video under a more permissive license please get in touch with us. The speakers retain the copyright for their performances.