2021creative-coding · computer-graphics · independent

Draw Blobs

A soft-body sibling to Extruded Shape Synth: freehand gestures rendered as smooth, normal-mapped blob-tubes rather than hard extrusions.

An S-curved blob-tube rendered with normal-map shading — blue along the body, green toward the underside, magenta highlights at both rounded tips — the piece's own title still.
01

Overview

Draw Blobs renders a drawn gesture as a soft, rounded tube rather than the harder-edged extrusions of its sibling piece,Extruded Shape Synth— same drawing interaction, softer, more organic output. Its own title/header image shows a single S-curved blob rendered with normal-map-style shading (blue body, green underside, magenta highlights at the rounded tips).

02

Concept & approach

A further capture shows the same rendering style applied to a pinched, teardrop-like gesture, where the tube narrows toward one end and swells into a rounded bulb at the other.

A pinched, teardrop-shaped blob-tube: narrow and tapered at one end, swelling into a large rounded bulb at the other.
A pinched, teardrop-shaped blob-tube: narrow and tapered at one end, swelling into a large rounded bulb at the other.

Both renders are dated9 August 2021, four days before Extruded Shape Synth's captures; an earlier screenshot in the same folder from June 2020, a plain title card reading "daan ^ portfolio website", suggests this sketch started life as portfolio-site draft material well before that final August 2021 pass. Per earlier research this session, the piece was at one point deployed live atdraw-blobs.vercel.app.

03

Reflection

Like Extruded Shape Synth, no write-up survives, only the render captures. The two pieces read as a matched pair: one hard-shaded and pipe-like, one soft-shaded and organic, built from the same underlying draw-a-gesture interaction.