Eschersketch

May 9, 2013 4:09 PM

Eschersketch is a fun online web-toy for making symmetry/tessellation drawings. It was created by the likably interesting brainiac, Anselm Levskaya with the tessellations of MC Escher in mind. On Twitter he says it is as yet unfinished.
posted by nickyskye (24 comments total)

That is really neat.
posted by oddman at 4:19 PM on May 9, 2013

Sweet! I wish I could export this stuff as decent quality images, or even better vector paths.
posted by klangklangston at 4:20 PM on May 9, 2013

My god, I could just swirl my mouse around that screen and watch it fill in for hours.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:22 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Cool! I know Anselm - he is a very smart and very interesting guy. This is his day job.
posted by pombe at 4:28 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

"Eschersketch", too cute!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:29 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, could we just have an interface that feeds this directly into Spoonflower?
posted by jacquilynne at 4:30 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Based on her response, my math teacher (8th grade) wife may have just had some sort of sexual experience when I showed her that.... She said to say thank you, and yes, she would like to see you again!
posted by HuronBob at 4:36 PM on May 9, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm addicted to symmetry.

If you want a nice picture of all symmetries in one, look here.

If you want to play with symmetries that don't fill the whole plane but look even trippier, check out yurvish's Silk (show the controls to play).
posted by benito.strauss at 4:50 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

LIKE CRACK ROCK if it ever gets a decent export feature. For now, maybe more like Pixie Sticks.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:07 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

To this day, I regret not buying this design on a t-shirt before the Funny T-Shirt site went under.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:47 PM on May 9, 2013

Oh, Deluxe Paint. Yeah.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:29 PM on May 9, 2013

I've spent a lot of time on this. It looks especially cool when I write my first name in cursive. Now I'm trying to figure out how to have it draw circles. Then I'm going for triangles. Then...

I might not go to bed tonight. Thanks, nickyskye!
posted by double block and bleed at 6:32 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

AND YOU CAN DRAW THE PATTERNS IN DIFFERENT COLORS!

Is it obvious that I spent much of my childhood playing with spirograph?
posted by double block and bleed at 6:39 PM on May 9, 2013

Oh I love MC Escher and I just started a paper relief sculpture project with my students. I was designing my pattern for a demo. Now this! Oh I love this, I am a patterning freak, and tessellations are particularly entertaining for my psyche. I ran across this today when I saw some of my students with them. They did these in math. So anyway, what a grand thing!
posted by Oyéah at 7:09 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

Omg, Oyéah, I'm crazy about the hexaflexagram vid. Way cool!
posted by nickyskye at 7:34 PM on May 9, 2013

I need a Photoshop plugin that does exactly this.
posted by Soliloquy at 8:06 PM on May 9, 2013 [2 favorites]

IOrnament is my favorite iPhone/iPad tessellation program. And it's got a very good set of mathematical descriptions for what's going on.
posted by leahwrenn at 8:29 PM on May 9, 2013 [1 favorite]

Not only can you change colours, you can also change the active symmetry while you're drawing. For example, select p3 symmetry and draw some asymmetric shape (e.g. an apostrophe, or the letter 't'). It gets two partners, rotated 120 and 240 degrees around a common centre. Now switch to p6 and a different colour and try tracing over the same shape. Now do it again with p1 and a third colour. Really useful for getting a feel for how the symmetries relate to one another.

(Unfortunately some of the symmetry groups don't seem to line up properly -- the horizontal offset between repetitions is different -- so the relationship between p1 and pg for example isn't as clear as it could be.)
posted by logopetria at 12:09 AM on May 10, 2013

Back in the days of Mac OS7 and 8, there was a nifty software toy called The Groove Thing that did a similar thing. But with club and trance music.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:51 AM on May 10, 2013

This is so much fun! Just what this bored librarian needs, a new toy.
posted by mareli at 6:01 AM on May 10, 2013

Yesterday on Twitter I asked the creator, Anselm Levskaya, if he might tweak it a little, like to save the picture and today it's there.
posted by nickyskye at 8:41 AM on May 10, 2013

This is fantastic! I've made some lovely tablecloth patterns. Varying color and lineweight is key. I do wish it had a way to easily share patterns with friends. It'd be hard to generate a link with all the relevant information, I suppose.
posted by Vampire Cat at 9:42 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Anselm, you have just changed the world of pattern design, forever. You are going to be rich, this is so much fun, and it will be a great thing for the art classroom. Students can design their own patterns to learn about repetition, pattern, and movement. Then they can color them in the room, the old fashioned way. Fabric designers can have a heyday with this, and visual geeks well we will have a great time. I had a room full of students looking at this, they were able to activate it with a smart board, and over and over they made things until they blackened the screen with over work. What an awesome toy. I have a pile of patterns in front of me, some colored, some black and white. Thank you for this.
posted by Oyéah at 9:50 AM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

See also Levskaya's polyHédronisme.
posted by weston at 12:40 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]