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Snowflakes

A four-column, five-row grid of “snowflake” shapes. Each shape has six primary lines coming from the center, covered in randomised secondary shapes and lines. The randomised elements make each snowflake look quite distinct
A festive experiment with generating unique snowflake designs
Print Date

A bit of festive fun to start my new hobby. These snowflakes were the first things I ever plotted, although I had been developing their generation for a while during the time it took for my AxiDraw printer to ship — only finally arriving a few days before christmas.

These were absolutely inspired by the snowflake generator of @revdancatt, who produces amazing work, and an array useful tools for plotters. Rather than use his generator, I created my own, with some (subtle) differences to the spacing and distribution of the various component elements. I also added variable “bushiness”, and in later iterations added additional detail with forked lines and additional shapes.

Each flake is completely unique and without seeded randomness, meaning once they are generated and plotted, they will never be seen again (as long as I remember to get rid of the SVGs!). These ended up on christmas cards, gift tags and even plotted onto already-wrapped presents for family and friends.

A screenshot from a computer showing the digital versions of four snowflake shapes
Digital vector showing random permutations
I’ll never get bored of the sound of those little circles being plotted!