Just for fun!
Rotating monkey saddle
Ripples (believe it or not)
Hyperactive flatworm
When I bought my first computer (a Commodore 64
Unfortunately, as you'll know if you've ever been a C-64 owner, programming
graphics on that machine involved quite a bit of "mucking about". You had to
learn lots of PEEK's and POKE's, and you were limited as what you could do
with colour - unless you were a whiz programmer. Also, C-64 BASIC was
S-L-O-W !
However, I persisted; and I produced some quite nice stuff, if I may say so.
Of course, the C-64's 320×200 resolution wasn't great, but it was adequate
for a first-timer; never having had anything flashier, I was quite happy
with what I was doing. I always thought, however, that... someday...
That day came. A PC with a decent version of BASIC running on it was a
gateway to doing some quite respectable graphics. Then, with the coming of
the internet and associated things like GIF's and GIF animators, the door
was finally opened to a fairly easy way to produce animations.
It still involves a bit of "mucking about", but it's worth it. So what if
animated GIF's are a bit "old hat" or "retro" now? I'm still a fan of them,
in case you haven't already noticed!
Just a bit about the animations themselves:
1. Rotating monkey saddle
Ever since I first ran across this surface in an advanced calculus textbook
at university, I was amused by the mental image of a monkey on horseback,
using a special saddle with allowance made for a tail.
(Perhaps jockeys should grow tails. They could then thrash them from side to
side and use them as whips, thus having both hands free to hang on for dear
life!
By the way - if we remove all but one of the closed curves which make up the
monkey saddle, and move our vantage point so that we are looking at the
rotating curve from the side, guess what we get? The rotating 1:3 Lissajous
figure from the
previous page
- the old ABC logo!
2. Ripples (believe it or not)
A book on C-64 graphics programming, "Commodore 64 Graphics and Sound" by
Steve Money (Granada, 1984), first turned me on to the idea of attempting
this. Very soothing to watch, I find - although some people think that the
pointy bit appearing in the middle every cycle looks a bit yucky! (You can
see a scanned printout of the C64 graphic which inspired this animation on
my
Humpty Dumpty Book
page.)
3. Hyperactive flatworm
If you've been to an aquarium, or watched aquatic wildlife programs on TV,
you may have seen those weird creatures that get about by
muscular contractions
of their edges - though not, as a rule, quite as rapidly as suggested
here! (The program I used was a modification of the one I used to create the
frames for the monkey saddle.)
UPDATE, Saturday, 5th July 2008
Recently I noticed that the link just given no longer works. I sent an email
to the creator of that page, who has informed me that the page has moved
here.
At the moment, the move is not yet complete, with some photographs not yet
in place. The original page was beautiful, and I have no doubt that the new
one will be also when it's finished - do check it out!
No
quaternions
were harmed or injured during
To close, here's a still photograph of a strange, mountainous little island...
(You can click on it to see the original 640×480 version.)
My home page
Preliminaries (Copyright, Safety)
Animated surfaces
), I
was fascinated by the idea of doing some graphics programming. I'd always
liked 3D computer images of mathematical surfaces, and so it was with great
relish that I made the first moves toward generating some of my own.
)
the production of these animations.
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