◈ Introduction

Hello! I use the nickname Tendenzy on web3, I'm a multidisciplinary artist who loves to know and delve into new techniques/tools to create art. From manual to digital, what matters to me is not just the final result of the work, but the entire creative process involving it.

My career as an artist is relatively new (about 5 years) compared to my old profession, which is completely connected to my generative works and influences it daily. Before I became an artist (about 5 years ago), I was a construction worker for 12 years. I learned the profession by working with my father who also taught me to read blueprints. My role for the longest time and my favorite was the construction of iron structures for beams/columns/slabs (but I also worked on the other areas, from the structure to the final touches).

Before learning how to coding I worked creating art with oil paint, charcoal, and gouache. With these works I participated in some collective exhibitions in New York and Lisbon, and more recently I was presented by the fxhash community that voted for my first generative work 'Shapes of the civilization' to participate in the exhibition 'Unblock Gaudi. Digital Art via Blockchain' at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt.

◇ My start in creative coding

I started in creative coding as a way to "escape" from painting the real on oil canvases, as a hobby to create a completely different world from the world I see and portray in my paintings. I love working with all the techniques I use to create art, but having this place to breathe new air, and learning a new way to create art was truly amazing.

◈ Let's talk about 'Life through the city'

◇ The inspiration

'Life through the city' was born with the aim of exploring the contemporary architecture. With human and technological evolution, the contrast between large buildings and small houses in cities is increasingly evident. Population growth has also required buildings to be higher and higher, as there is not enough room for everyone on the floor. So I decided to create something to show this contrast in a fun way and so that I could create constructions similar to the real ones while creating a unique world in this work.

◇ The development

During the whole process I used simple geometric shapes and a lot of patience and dedication to create the structures, it took just over 2 months of work while I advised the work with my move at the end of July, as the ideas came and went, there were many experiments to see what worked best.

The work started with a simple solitary building in the middle of the screen.

After that I started thinking about making a river/lake so that the building could reflect, so I started working on it.

After that I started to think about the houses that would contrast with the buildings, I got to do some tests but I ended up leaving them to do in the end.

I started to think about how to harmonize more buildings with that lonely building, how many to use, which position, overlap or not. I did some tests but didn't like the result, while creating the terrain that would support the city (which will also change during the process).

While thinking about it, I added clouds to the sky, removed the grass-like terrain, and added a base in the same color as the buildings. After that I decided to set certain limits for the positions and then I decided to create only 7 buildings, which may or may not appear in each iteration.

I started thinking about trees, which are a fundamental part of urban architecture, I added 4 different trees that may or may not appear, each with a name of a native tree in my country.

After that I started working on the facades improving the existing ones and creating new ones.

I introduced the grainy texture, stars, roofs, and the little houses.

To make it more organic and give perspective, I created two rows of houses and put random() in action for their X position.

The project has daytime hours like my work 'Shapes of the civilization', so I positioned the sun/moon to "walk" across the screen every two hours, moving from right to left as the day or night time progresses. And with that I also made the shadow of a part of the clouds move according to the position of the sun/moon.

I changed the clouds to have a thinner and a thicker version, their position is also defined by the time of day, two extra parts of them may or may not appear, as there may be only one or no clouds.

◇ The final touches and afterword

After deciding on the design elements my work was to improve them to the maximum and create variations to create a complete work. The project has 19 color palettes + 2 special black and white palettes, which have a 20% chance of appearing if the time of day is 12am or 12pm.

The project has an animated loading screen, where you can see the random algorithm in action deciding where the buildings will be positioned, and while you wait you see this smol worker created with arcs, line and ellipse!

Thanks to everyone who got here. One last thing I would like to say is that creating with generative art is something I really like because I keep building houses, but this time in my own world and with my own rules and I can share them with y'all. <3