When we look through a microscope, we discover a microcosm where many curious things exist - snowflakes, pollen, germs and so on. Microbes, such as freshwater algae, are especially intriguing. Although their cell structures are very primitive, they display a wide variety of artistic forms. Microcosm is an attempt to represent the artistic beauty found in this microscopic world as a 2D animation.

To begin with, I elicited the forms of freshwater algae by means of microscopic observation, in order to grasp their characteristics. It became apparent that most algae basically have geometric cell constructions that are actinomorphic (characterized by rotational symmetry) or zygomorphic (characterized by bilateral symmetry).

However, as there is quite a variety of algae shapes, it appeared to me rather arduous to model every type of algae separately. Accordingly, I attempted to express the formation processes of algae cell structures as an algorithm, which could be used to generate a variety of shapes autonomously.

For the purpose of implementing the algorithm, procedural techniques were used. I noted that procedural approaches to computer graphics have great advantages in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and creativity. Therefore, it seemed to me that procedural techniques would be suitable for representing complex shapes or natural phenomena too intricate to be detailed precisely. Therefore, in order to achieve an efficient and unique representation of a microcosm, procedural techniques were used in this piece.

The main modeling technique was a method called “metaball” (also known as “blob”). In particular, square metaballs (which I call “metacubes”) were used to model algae-like objects. By placing these metacubes symmetrically, a representation of both organic and geometric shapes was accomplished. Then, by varying properties (size, position, angles and so on) using random numbers, a wide variety of shapes was generated.