BotRoss

BotRoss is a Processing-based twitterbot that posts generated images like Bob Ross would have programmed in 1985. Not just paintings in the style of, but following the processes he used.

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The conceit is that the generator was found on a floppy disk in a PBS station, but while I often go along with the author’s framing, I want to pull back the curtain a bit here and highlight some of the technical details here.

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Specifically, the bot doesn’t use Perlin Noise. This is partially because Perlin noise wouldn’t have been available in 1985, but also because it gets used a lot in other generators. By making the artistic choice to avoid it, it has the additional benefit of giving the generator a unique look.

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The other artistic choices (the dithering, following Bob’s process closely) similarly help both the framing and the aesthetic output. Not to mention, it generates painting that would be at home on a C64 RPG.

https://bitbucket.org/R4Unit/bot-ross

https://twitter.com/JoyOfBotRoss