600 small spiders, each with left/right symmetry of the pose of their legs.
I've wanted to draw something based on a spiral on my AxiDraw for a bit, so here we are.
For each spider, I generate a list of four numbers [-1, 1] that describe how "forward" one leg is. I then use that for both left and right legs to draw lines for the legs. I was thinking that I'd randomly let some spiders be L/R symmetric, others be rotationally symmetric, but the rotation code didn't work the first time, so rather than debug it, I just fell back to L/R symmetry.
The spiral is a simple archimedean spiral: r = k * theta, but I'm trying to take steps of roughly uniform distance along that spiral, so my step in theta is based on figuring out the radius of a circle going through the current point, and dividing a target step distance by that. This math was hard for Monday morning brain.
I started drawing this on the AxiDraw Mini, and estimated that each spider took around 4 seconds to draw, which didn't feel like a lot, but there are a lot of spiders, so I added a counter to my spider drawing loop, which counted 600 spiders exactly, which is unexpected.
I've been drawing on normal printer paper, folded over four ways to fit on my AxiDraw Mini, which sometimes led to the paper bowing upward during the print. This time, I ripped the paper down to 4.25" x 5.5", which reduced bowing. I think the better solution will be to get some drawing paper, which will have a more interesting texture and a little more thickness.
I should also try to draw to a smaller region; this image is 15cm x 10cm as generated, but my AxiDraw Mini drew off the edge of the paper, bumped into the binder clips, and drew off the edge of the board. So, maybe 12cm x 10cm next time.
Tools Used: AxiDraw Mini, InkScape, DrawSVG
Languages Used: Python3
Development Time: ~60 minutes
Plotting Time: ~60 minutes
What's Generative Here: for each spider, for each leg, that leg's pose is generated using a random number generator
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