Alright, so I decided to experiment a bit with my flocking cellular automata system inspired by Jared Tarbell. And I am definitely liking the results!! I guess I have a thing for moving line exposures.

My system has a small number of boids (for these iterations I played around 10-15). Each boid has one of the following states :

• “Loneliness” (0 neighbors): alignment and cohesion forces applied
• “Contentment” (1-2 neighbors): no motion
• “Anxiety” (>2 neighbors): separation forces applied

Here is the basic structure of my program:

while (boids are not all content){

• update boid positions
• draw

}

Iteration I:

• Boids generated from center image
• Linear link drawn between each boid

Iteration II:

• Boids generated from random point
  float fx = (0.1*randomGaussian()+ 0.5) * width;
  float fy = (0.1*randomGaussian()+ 0.5) * height;
• Linear link drawn between each boid

Iteration III:

• Boids generated from random point
• Curvilinear link drawn between each boid

Iteration IV:

• Boids generated from random point
• Curvilinear link drawn between each boid
• If line has not moved from previous frame, line is drawn with a lower opacity (this is to help get rid of those opaque black lines that develop when line hasn’t moved for a while)