Elise

Simplicity becomes complexity

With Elise, you can draw complex shapes with simple instructions. The key to this is concept of the L-systems, as developed by Aristid Lindenmayer. It’s a very simple language to give your computer iterative instructions.

The designs you can make with this principle are like fractals, iterative shapes like we see all around us in nature. Cauliflowers, trees, crystals; all share the same kinds of repetitions on different magnitudes, like Russian dolls.

Learn more

For more information about L-systems, you can take a look at:

• Algorithmic Beauty of Plants: The research with which it all started. (PDF Book)
• Wikipedia on L-systems
• L-system experiment in Flash. First tests for Elise where based on this experiment, before the code was totally rewritten
• L-systems in architecture

Elise will draw it for you

Imagine a little girl called Elise. You instruct her to walk around with her crayons, drawing lines, making jumps, make curves and change colors.

Every line that she draws, she can redraw with another more complex shapes. Every line in that shape can be redrawn again with the same (or a different) complex shape. No effort is to great for her and soon, she will be drawing you the most beautiful patterns!

Alpha version now available

For all you people who want to try out something new and are not afraid of using alpha software, please go ahead and install this first public alpha release of Elise. we’d love to hear what you think!

Do you like Elise? Please consider donating so we can learn her to do more tricks with crayons.

Keep an eye on our website or sign up to our Ludens Fan Mail to stay up to date!

Example Files

Starting to write instructions for Elise can be a bit daunting, so that’s why we’ve made you a little archive with example files.

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