iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

I built a thing! (Original design by Jeff Sanders, the Brick Bending master) 630 pieces. 3 hours. A few vaguely illegal building techniques. #lego

A geometric sculpture built out of blue legos

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

I'm trying out a new technique where I first draw patterns on paper using the #penplotter, and then laser cut different patterns and stack the layers together. The goal is for the drawn lines to continue seamlessly from layer to layer. Alignment isn't quite there yet, but it's looking intriguing

Squares drawn on black paper with a pen plotter

A laser cutter cutting different patterns into the paper with the drawn square

The cut layers of paper stacked together to form a single square

A view from the side showing the square pattern existing as discrete pieces on each layer of paper

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

I totally fell off the wagon, but one final day to round out the month. #genuary Day 19. Op art #genuary2025 #genuary19 #axidraw #penplotter

Pen plotter drawing showing a series of spiraling squares that form an illusion of a sphere breaking out from the page

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

#genuary Day 16. Generative palette Very simple design, but I got to try out some new Spectrum Noir Metallic pens. They're bright, clean, and uniform. Very nice to work with. #genuary2025 #genuary16 #axidraw #penplotter

Pen plotter drawing of a grid of differently colored lines overlapping with each other

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

#genuary Day 15. Design a rug Truchet tiles! (The middle silver lines are actually about 0.5mm misaligned, but it weirdly adds a bit of a 3D effect that I kind of like.) #genuary2025 #genuary15 #axidraw #penplotter

Pen plotter drawing of Truchet tiles with gold and silver lines

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Day 14 of #genuary. Black and White This prompt reminded me of a chessboard so I did a knight's tour on a 16x16 board. (It still boggles my mind that the algorithm for finding a knight's tour is so simple.) #genuary2025 #genuary14 #axidraw #penplotter

A pen plotter drawing showing a single silver line that crosses over itself many times and represents a knight's tour on a 16x16 chessboard

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

It would be easy to create a maze that recurses to any finite depth, but after creating the pattern, I'm then printing it using a pen plotter so I'm limited by the resolution of my ink. I really like the idea of an infinitely long route that still fits in finite bounds.

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

#genuary Day 12. Subdivisions A maze within a maze within a maze within a maze. Fractal maze! (Travel from one star to the other) #genuary2025 #genuary12 #axidraw

$A pen plotter drawing of a fractal maze where an 8x8 maze is embedded in the center 4x4 squares of a larger 8x8 maze, and that is repeated three more times. You can solve the whole maze by traveling from one star to the other.$

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Actually, I think I like this version better. Different metallic colors for each face.

Pen plotter drawing of a maze that goes across the surface of an isometric cube

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

And here are some slightly easier versions

A pen plotter drawing of a maze that looks like a cube

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

Day 11 of #genuary. Impossible A-maze-ing! Can you make it from one circle to the other? Not exactly impossible, but tricky to solve if you're just looking at it. Had fun writing maze code and playing around with styles. #genuary2025 #genuary11 #axidraw

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

#genuary Day 10. Nothing but TAU Tau means circles. In this case two sets of nested circles, and the moire pattern produced where they overlap. #genuary2025 #genuary10 #axidraw

Pen plotter image showing two sets of nested circles and a moire pattern that looks almost like tree rings where they overlap

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

This looks super cool! Reminds me of a game that we made ages ago that was exclusive to the Apple TV. That game never went anywhere. I hope your game does great! apps.apple.com/us/app/hyper...

apps.apple.com

‎Hyperdisc Frenzy

‎SMASH your friends, BASH your foes, CRASH your disc into everything you see! Like air hockey on steroids, Hyperdisc Frenzy is a madcap rush for victory in the shortest time possible. 1-6 players com...

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

#genuary Day 9. Textiles. Simple weave pattern, but got to try out some new metallic pens that look really nice together. #genuary2025 #genuary9 #axidraw

Pen plotter drawing that looks like a set of different metallic ribbons all woven together to form a textile

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Catching up on #genuary. Day 8. Make a million. This drawing has 1,048,575 squares. The pattern doubles 19 times. ... Okay, not really. After 9 doublings my pen was just layering more and more ink. Making a million of something physical is tricky! #genuary2025 #genuary8 #axidraw

$A simple fractal that starts with one square, then two squares that are half the size, then four squares that are a quarter, etc.$

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Here's an example circuit with a slightly different routing

Simple circuit created in Kicad that shows a bunch of parallel copper lines wrapping around in a vase like shape

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Catching up on #genuary. Day 7. Weird software. For this one I created circuits using Kicad and freerouting. At first I was planning on doing something really complicated but I ran into limitations in freerouting so I went with something simple instead. #genuary2025 #genuary7 #axidraw

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Day 6 of #genuary. Primitive (shapes) landscape aka... so many rectangles #genuary2025 #genuary6 #axidraw

Pen plotter drawing of a planet with a forest of rectangular skyscrapers sprouting out of it

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Day 5 of #genuary. Isometric I start with a cube, then for each cube randomly either draw it, skip it, or subdivide it into 8 smaller cubes and recurse. Ended up looking quite cool. #genuary2025 #genuary5 #axidraw

A large collection of isometric cubes with various different size scales

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

Day 4 of #genuary. Black on black For this prompt I tried creating a stipple image of the moon using black ink on black paper, but it didn't really work. Too low contrast to actually see the image. So, instead I did a second image using silver ink. #genuary2025 #genuary4 #axidraw

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

The axidraw made something almost like music while plotting this. Harsh, screechy, terrifying music.

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Day 3 of #genuary: 42 Lines of Code I interpreted this one pretty literally. The outer "circle" is a tetracontadigon, a polygon with 42 sides. So yeah... 42 "lines" made with code. #genuary2025 #genuary3 #axidraw

A geometric pattern made with a pen plotter showing nested polygons ranging from a triangle up to a 42-sided polygon

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

They’re drawn with an Axidraw pen plotter. It’s a super fun tool! (The patterns are all made using my own custom software that has grown and evolved over the years into a hulking monstrosity.)

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

I'm going to try and do some portion of #genuary (a set of prompts to make procedural art). Here's day 2. Layers upon layers upon layers. #genuary2025 #genuary2 #axidraw

Hexagonal line art with descending spirals

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Playing around with a bunch of different variations on a starting theme

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

New axidraw plots for the new year

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I love doing quick secret projects with the AxiDraw.

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Colin Liotta @vyrin.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

Getting back in the habit of posting art/math/code/random stuff. I wanted to create sunflower style patterns with growth based on the golden angle. I first used the standard sqrt(n) for the radius, but I found that n^2 actually looked a lot cooler.

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