This is one Simon’s most beautiful projects recently! Simon saw the idea to link the webcam image to the boids of a flocking system in a video by Daniel Shiffman, but the code featured in this project Simon wrote himself. The Flocking code is based on Daniel Shiffman’s example from his book The Nature of Code. (Flocking is a steering behavior that consists of separation, alignment and cohesion – which are also steering behaviors – combined).
Simon’s sis also posed for the camera:
Simon is also about to make a JavaScript version of this fun project, because JavaScript allows to host it easily online, so that everyone can play with it. With JavaScript, he may even be able to write it in an online editor, so there won’t even be a need to host it. Check in later for an update to this post!
UPDATE: Simon encountered a problem trying to translate his Flocking System Painting with Pixels into JavaScript: P5 runs much slower than Processing after Simon added steering behavior. He doesn’t know how to solve this. Simon’s JavaScript code is online at https://codepen.io/simontiger/pen/ZJKBbN?editors=0011
Geeks out of the box 