Top all-time · #2568
Tyler Hobbs
Personal blog · tylerxhobbs.com/essaysdesignprogramming
Tyler Hobbs's personal blog at tylerxhobbs.com covers design and programming. Since 2019, 30 different Hacker News readers have linked it 33 times, most often “Flow Fields”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tyler Hobbs's essays on generative art, flow fields, and his process and curation write-ups, often as learning resources for creative coding.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The artwork of Tyler Hobbs, a practicing generative artist, creative coder, and painter, whose work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and has been...
Most-linked posts?
- Flow Fields8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-02-04
- /essays3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-06-15
- Fidenza2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-13
- /process2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-15
- Code Goes In, Art Comes Out2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-02-04
- Simulating watercolor paint with generative art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-28
- The Rise of Long-Form Generative Art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-31
- A Guide to Simulating Watercolor Paint with Generative Art2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-05-19
What Hacker News says?
Check out flow fields, eg.: https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2020/flow-fields
Comment linking /essays/2020/flow-fields
on “Random Animations”Submitted Flow Fields as a story · 99 points
HN discussionAgain, I think the act of "owning" it creates a much different relationship between the collector and that art than simply looking at it. They have skin in the game because they either spent money on the piece, or were able to mint it by being in the right place at the right time. To be sure, a lot of the "advocacy" is exactly what you describe, where people are just trying to push their bags. But the advocacy I'm t…
Comment linking /essays/2021/the-rise-of-long-form-generative-art
on “Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism”Submitted Fidenza as a story · 61 points
HN discussionA lot of the examples here feel very simar to Tyler Hobbs work... https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2020/flow-fields
Comment linking /essays/2020/flow-fields
on “What I've learned about flow fields so far”Submitted Reflections on Five Years of Making Art Through Programming as a story · 4 points
HN discussionCreating a watercolor filter which can be applied to an image dragged into a website <canvas> element is on my list of Fun Things To Do Over The Holidays - but having previously looked at the the mechanics that need to feed into the filter ... well it looks like I'd be jumping down a rabbit hole of complex maths and generative art approaches[1][2]. It's a complex problem space and I'm not sure I have the brain power…
Comment linking /essays/2017/a-generative-approach-to-simulating-watercolor-paints
on “Show HN: A little side project, a watercolor art generator”Submitted The Rise of Long-Form Generative Art as a story · 3 points
HN discussionJudging generative art on how complicated the code is that it is generated by misses the point. For the "art" aspect the code is just a tool. It can get quite complicated but it does not have to. Other aspects as "controlled randomness" are far more important. Concerning the "I could have done that in an hour" objection: Most photos are taken in less than 1/250 seconds but no one would use this as an argument agains…
Comment linking /essays/2019/code-goes-in-art-comes-out
on “Exploration of Generative Art”Submitted Code Goes In, Art Comes Out as a story · 3 points
HN discussionLearn a polygon-modeling tool. The obvious choice is Blender, but Houdini and Cinema4d are also good alternatives if you're willing to pay up. Learn the basics, a little bit of sub-division modeling (it'll take a month of youtube tutorials to get that down), a little bit of particles work, a little bit of lighting setups, a little bit of generator/matrix/cloner functions, flow fields and forces, etc. in your chosen…
Comment linking /essays/2020/flow-fields
on “Ask HN: Resources to learn generative art programming?”Submitted Simulating watercolor paint with generative art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOne of the better ones I've found is Tyler Hobbes [0]. I recently found the "Bridges Archive" online [1]. It's a goldmine of ideas (I won't link to them but they have tilings, space filling algorithms, multi-scale Truchet patterns and many more). I favor the ideas rather than the implementation as I already know how to program so you may do better with learning something like processing/p5.js [2]. In terms of raw id…
Comment linking /essays
on “Ask HN: Resources to learn generative art programming?”Submitted Intellectualism Has Hampered Generative Art (2018) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI work in the crypto industry right now - my job is to keep bad guys from stealing XXX millions of dollars. I've also worked on a team that has done the tech side of several record breaking NFT's sales. And I've sold my own NFTS for fun, and strangers have bought them (wat!). I'm not a "believer". Crypto is indeed full of idiots - and scammers - and crazy people who will say anything to see the token they hold go up…
Comment linking /fidenza
on “The Tinkerbell Griftopia”Submitted Flow Fields for Generative Art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHehe I don't mind, it is my favorite off topic, I love pen plotting. I use it to draw my generative art, which you can see here: https://muffinman.io/art/ As for the engraver, keep in mind that AxiDraw is only using the weight of the pen (engraver) to press on a surface, so you might need to add some weight for it to work. But please be careful not to damage the servo motor or the plotter. Tyler Hobbs did something…
Comment linking /works/mirror-removal
on “Show HN: Pulsar, micro creative coding playground”Submitted Tyler Hobbs, a visual artist from Texas, works with algorithms as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTyler Hobbs writes about generative art, including getting started and improving. Some of his tips are Clojure-specific, and others are more general. I found the essay on flow fields especially interesting. https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2020/flow-fields
Comment linking /essays/2020/flow-fields
on “What Is Generative Art? (2022)”Submitted How to Hack a Painting as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLooks neat! I'm wondering why/how the first two results pictures (under "Values For num_steps") in https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2020/flow-fields have flow lines that are crossing each other. The paths follow a direction field, so that shouldn't happen except where the gradient vector vanishes, which doesn't seem to be the case there.
Comment linking /essays/2020/flow-fields
on “Flow-field.js – A library for generating flow fields”Submitted Flow Fields as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe source code is visible on-chain - it can be queried from the smart contract, but also it has been etched into the data of the “script upload” transaction. This is how ArtBlocks and other projects can fetch the script and display it. But that doesn’t mean the code is open source! Just like scripts on a website (which are also easy to see), the author decides on how to license the work. I often suggest GenerativeA…
Comment linking /essays
on “Fidenza”Submitted An artist who works primarily with algorithms and plotters as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGreat work by Tyler, love his dedication to not just the work itself but also documenting the process, the technology and last but not least reflecting on the "art" of it: https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays
Comment linking /essays
on “Fidenza”Submitted A Guide to Simulating Watercolor Paint with Generative Art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI really enjoy seeing algorithmic works of art that have a touch of human control. That's also a nice write up on Tyler's process. For those interested he mainly uses Closure: https://tylerxhobbs.com/process
Comment linking /process
on “Fidenza”Submitted Tips to improve your computer generated art as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThank you! I totally agree; the curation part is by far the hardest part for me. Tyler Hobbs writes about the curation process nicely here: https://tylerxhobbs.com/process I've not tried anything in 3D yet, that's a nice idea.
Comment linking /process
on “Show HN: Color Orbs (Generative Art)”I love generative art. I've only really dabbled in it myself, but if you want to see what professional-quality generative art looks like check out the work of Tyler Hobbs [0]. He uses the Clojure library Quil [1] to make his pieces, which in my opinion is one of the most fun and intuitive ways to make generative art. [0] https://tylerxhobbs.com/ [1] http://www.quil.info/
Comment linking /
on “Generative Art Is the Ideal Hobby for a Software Developer”
