Generative Art With TouchDesigner
Create digital artwork like a professional, and find your style in generative digital art! A beginner-friendly course, containing 12 hours of content for budding digital artists
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Create digital artwork like a professional, and find your style in generative digital art!
Learn how to use and combine different (existing) algorithms to turn a blank canvas or an existing picture into dynamic works of art, without having to touch any code or AI. Through the simplicity of a drag-and-drop interface, you can whip up unique variations in no time while having full control over what your art will look like. Slightly adjust your settings, and see new art come to life.
In this course, Rik Lomas will teach you the skills needed to make art, in your own style, using the secret techniques of experts. All you’ll need is a computer and your imagination! From classic brushstrokes, funky particles, and abstract gradients to ancient 3D gods, don’t be afraid to get a little weird before you get your wow, that’s the magic of generative art.
What you’ll learn
Learn how to create digital artworks using drag-and-drop program, TouchDesigner
Create one-of-a-kind artwork that will be different on every run
Work with source images, videos and webcam inputs to manipulate and distort textures
Learn how to create artworks in both a 2d and 3d environment
12+ hours of video lessons – Practical, go-at-your-own pace learning
Access the community – Join our Discord and connect with thousands of SuperHi students and alumni
Continued help – Help from our expert teachers and educators with years of experience in the industry
Real world projects – Projects and code that you can alter and remix to add to your own sites and portfolio
Resources – Resources to get you started and going post-course
This course is for all budding digital artists who want to learn how to create artwork with the simplicity of drag-and-drop.
All the tooling that we need for this course is completely free to download. You need a computer (MacOS or Windows) with the latest version of Chrome installed and a broadband internet connection. That’s it!
Want to try our teaching before signing up? Join our free 'Plan, Design + Code Your First Website' course!
Syllabus
Alla Prima
In our first project, our objective is to create generative art by manipulating textures. Through the application of random noise, we will be able to make art with a distinctive, cloud-like watercolor effect. Additionally, we will provide detailed instructions on how to customize the TouchDesigner program to match any of our specific requirements. Lastly, we will learn how to export our artistic creations as both images and videos.
Circle of Fifths
Sometimes, we want to make something out of nothing! In this project, we'll create our own shapes, split their color channels, distort them, and put them back together again! We will then remap the colors to align harmoniously with a bespoke color scheme of your own design.
Kurinuki
To achieve a more brutalist style of texturing within our artwork, we’ll embark on an enlightening exploration. In this project, we’ll draw inspiration from a renowned Japanese ceramics technique known as Kurinuki and adapt its principles to our own unique textures.
Vapor Trail
In this project, our focus lies in crafting a captivating piece of art through the mesmerizing interplay of color mixing and blending. We will be using several techniques from the TouchDesigner library, such as transform, feedback, and blur to make beautiful artworks from simple shapes.
Xan / Xor
To give our artworks a sense of depth, we’ll dive into the world of the third dimension. In this project, the first of our 3D projects, we will discover how to work closely with 3D shapes, including existing models, and then alter them to fit our own styles.
Peak District
To create realistic natural art, sometimes we have to resort to unnatural techniques, exclusive to what computers can do. In this project, through a harmony of vibrant hues and dynamic waveforms, we can create an artwork with a soothing ambiance.
Negative Space
In our artistic efforts, we often find that working with a large number of shapes can be challenging when relying only on manual and repetitive techniques. Through the exploration of instancing, we'll gain precise control over a wide-ranging collection of shapes. This helps us to craft mesmerizing artworks, that exude both coherence and complexity.
Lodestone
Introducing organic movement into our artwork not only makes it more realistic but also brings in an element of warmth, preventing any computerized sterility. Using TouchDesigner's particle systems, we can create shapes that exhibit life cycles, from birth to death, and engage in collective behaviors such as flocking and attraction to other objects. Through this interplay, our artwork goes beyond the boundaries of artificiality, with a natural feel that will resonate with your viewers.
Trail of Dead
As creatives, we often go beyond the boundaries set by off-the-shelf tools. To do this, we must dig into the foundations of our art and acquire an understanding of its underlying medium. This project will uncover and take apart TouchDesigner's tooling to fit our own custom needs to create a redux of our earlier Vapor Trail project.
Paintwork
In our ultimate capstone project, we'll seamlessly integrate the diverse techniques we have learned over the course of this artistic journey. Our artwork will be composed of an impressive amount of miniature pen strokes that together form an abstract piece, based on an existing source texture. Are you ready to crown all of your hard work?
Extras
We have created a range of extra projects to take your learnings even further. Each video is self-contained and around 20-40 minutes in length. Keep in mind that it's worth completing the course before watching these videos as they contain assumptions based on skills taught within the course itself!
Your instructors
Our instructors have decades of professional experience, have spoken at international conferences and have won countless web design awards.
Arianna Ninh
Arianna (she/her) supports students at SuperHi in embracing the messy magic of learning something new. She hails from the San Francisco Bay Area and loves hiking outdoors in the SF fog. Outside of SuperHi, you can find her attempting to make food or sculptures, or daydreaming in a park somewhere.
Rik Lomas
Rik (he/him) is a Mancunian coder, teacher and CEO of SuperHi. He was the co-founder of Steer (a code school in London) and has taught several thousand people to code. He is a bit too old to be posting memes on our social media and recently featured as a Sour Patch Kid in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.
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