In 2022, I decided to take part in Genuary after following the (many!) different monthly challenges like 36daysoftype, codevember, nodevember, inktober etc… I always liked when artists work around constraints that gives homogeneous outputs by the end of the challenge so I quickly decided I would try to follow some rules for my work. I also thought it would help me focus and avoid wandering too much. I was also keen to improve my skill at drawing stuff in GLSL with signed distance fields. Based on the previous statements, I ended up with the following rules:
- it should be made with a single fragment shader
- it should loop and therefore be animated
- it should be made of black, white and shades of grey
Fragment was also starting to be in a pretty good place, even if the public release would be made a few months later, so it was a good time to use it exactly for what it was made for: to quickly produce an output and share it with the world. I was in the middle of a work contract so I imposed myself some kind of routine to be able to do both correctly and in time:
- 30 minutes in the morning to find the idea based on the prompt of the day
- 30 minutes at lunch to compile researches to accomplish what I have in mind
- 1 hour to code and publish at the end of the day
I was able to keep up with the (intense) pace for only 7 days but I ended up being pretty happy with the results. Some are really basic as I had trouble to find a good idea or achieve what I had in mind in the time I got. Others I’m pretty proud of. It was also great to see my skills improved day by day, especially regarding animations of different shapes in the same shader.
Enough of writing, here are the results: