Concept and Sketch
For this assignment, I wanted to explore the concept of tension and release within a biological system. I was inspired by the way starling murmurations move as a single, fluid organism, and how that harmony is momentarily shattered by external threats.
My visual goal was to move away from the triangle-boid aesthetic and create something more aetherial: bioluminescent beings. I drew inspiration from the use of additive blending and light trails to create volumetric glow that we’ve seen in our course before.
The sketch begins in a state of calm flocking. The beings move in a coordinated, rhythmic dance, glowing with soft blue hues. Their wings flap slowly, and they form dense, glowing clouds.
When the user clicks, a lightning strike occurs. A thunder crack sounds, the screen flashes, and the flock’s physics instantly shift into a scatter behaviour. They turn a fiery red, their wings flap frantically, and they fly away from each other in a panic. However, nature always finds its way back to balance; after five seconds, the storm passes, and the beings slowly regroup into their peaceful blue pulse.
Highlight
I am particularly proud of how I achieved the cloudy look of the swarm without using expensive blur filters. By using blendMode(ADD) and layering multiple ellipses with very low opacity, the light “stacks” wherever the beings are close together.
// This creates the "Nebula" effect when birds cluster fill(h, 90, 100, 3); // Only 3% opacity ellipse(0, 0, this.bodySize * 7, this.bodySize * 5); // The "Hot Core" stays visible in the center fill(h, 15, 100, 85); ellipse(0, 0, this.bodySize, this.bodySize * 0.5);
This means a single bird looks like a faint spark, but a cluster of fifty birds creates a brilliant, white-hot center that fades into a saturated blue aura.
Milestones and Challenges
The first step was getting the math right. I started with simple, non-glowing circles to ensure the Separation, Alignment, and Cohesion forces were balanced. The challenge here was making the movement feel organic rather than robotic.
Once the movement was smooth, I replaced the circles with layered ellipses and enabled blendMode(ADD), and it transformed the dots into a cohesive, glowing nebula.
To make the agents feel like beings rather than particles, I added wings. I used a sin() wave to oscillate the position of two side-ellipses. Matching the flap speed to the flock’s velocity made a huge difference in the realism of the motion.
The biggest logic challenge was creating the Auto-Revert system. I had to implement a timer using millis() so that the scatter state wasn’t permanent. I also added the lightning flash and the thunder sound to turn the state change into a sensory event.
Reflection
This project taught me again how small changes in physics parameters (like increasing separation while decreasing cohesion) can completely change the emotional tone of a piece. Thematically, it was a reminder of something we often forget: this too shall pass. Working on this sketch reminded me of an Urdu quote from the legend Faiz Ahmed Faiz: “لمبی ہے غم کی شام مگر شام ہی تو ہے”. Translated, it means: “The night of sorrow is long, but it is still just a night.“
The storm will clear. The sun will rise!