Genuary 2021 Day 7a: "Rules by Hand"

 Ok, revisiting the prompt for today, which reads:

"Generate some rules, then follow them by hand on paper."

I don't feel like my previous piece really lived up to that first word - and, in so doing, I missed perhaps the most important part.

So, I started over.

I generated some rules this time, from a small list of nouns and a handful of templates. The generated rules ended up:

next to each yellow star with no adjacent purple moon, place one blue waves

fill all spaces next to red circle with green diamond

place one purple moon next to each green diamond

find a space adjacent to green diamond and green diamond. Place a blue waves there.

next to each blue waves with no adjacent blue waves, place one green diamond

find a space adjacent to purple moon and blue waves. Place a yellow star there.

find a space adjacent to purple moon and purple moon. Place a purple moon there.

find a space adjacent to blue waves and blue waves. Place a green diamond there.

place a blue waves next to a green diamond

fill all spaces next to blue waves with green diamond

next to each red circle with no adjacent purple moon, place one red circle

place a yellow star somewhere

And I did this over and over again, until I couldn't. (Actually, I missed a spot, so you can finish the work, if you like.)

The red circles in the rules never had an opportunity to be generated, which I'm sorry about. Maybe next time, I'll seed with a few red circles.

Purple moons definitely provided an "insulating" layer - they would spawn outside of green diamonds, and then not spawn anything but other purple moons. 

Yellow stars would generate blue waves,  which would generate another yellow star, and so we get double stars.

Neat little patterns.

Tools Used: Gel pens, hex grid graph paper

Languages Used: Python

Development Time: ~2 minutes

Drawing Time: ~60 minutes (I was also watching Star Trek: Discovery)

What's Generative Here: The rules were generated. I had a certain amount of freedom to pick things, which made me a randomizing agent within the rules. I was tempted to try to steer the growth, but I kept forgetting what patterns I was trying to set up.