So, I got this weird phrase stuck in my head the other day, “oscillated coral wuthering waves”. Don’t ask me where it came from, probably just brain noise from staring at the wall too long. But it sounded kinda cool, you know? Like something delicate trying to stand against some big, messy force.
Anyway, I was messing around, feeling a bit bored, and decided to try and make something visual out of it. Just for kicks. Fired up this old coding playground I sometimes fiddle with, nothing fancy, just a thing to draw shapes and make them move.
Trying to make the coral bit
First, I tried getting the ‘coral’ part going. Started simple. Just drawing some branching lines, trying to make them look sort of organic, flowy. Made them slightly thick, gave them a pinkish-orange color. Then, the ‘oscillated’ part. I added a tiny bit of back-and-forth movement, like they were swaying gently in calm water. That part was easy enough, just some basic math to make things wiggle.
- Drew some lines branching out.
- Added a bit of wobble using a simple sine wave thingy.
- Colored them. Looked okay, kinda like seaweed maybe.
It was pretty calming, actually. Just these little digital strands waving slowly on my screen.
Then came the ‘wuthering waves’… chaos!
This is where it all went sideways. How do you make ‘wuthering waves’ in a simple drawing program? I wanted something powerful, chaotic, something that would really push the ‘coral’ around. Not just gentle swaying anymore.
My first thought was particles. Lots of them. Swirling around, pushing things. Big mistake. The whole thing slowed to a crawl immediately. My laptop fan started whining. Looked less like waves and more like digital dandruff caught in a hurricane. Scrapped that idea fast.
Then I tried messing with forces. Like, applying a big invisible push that moved across the screen. That worked a bit better? But it wasn’t ‘wuthering’. It was just… a push. The coral bent over, then popped back. Didn’t feel wild enough.
I spent, like, two evenings just tweaking numbers. Trying different noise patterns to make the force more random. Sometimes the coral would just fly off the screen. Other times it barely moved. It was getting frustrating. Honestly, it felt more ‘wuthering’ in my head than on the screen.
Getting somewhere, kinda
Eventually, I gave up on making it super realistic or physics-based. Too much hassle. I went back to basics. Instead of a complex simulation, I just exaggerated the wobble I already had. Made the movement bigger, faster, and more irregular when the ‘wave’ was supposed to hit.
So, I created a sort of invisible ‘wave’ timer. Most of the time, the coral does its gentle oscillation. Then, bam, the timer hits, and for a few seconds, the oscillation goes nuts. Everything shakes and bends more violently. It’s not actual waves pushing it, just the movement itself becoming chaotic.
It’s a cheat, really. Doesn’t look like real waves. But it captures the feeling a bit better? That contrast between the calm sway and the sudden rough shaking. The ‘coral’ holds its ground, sort of, but it looks stressed.
So now I have this little digital animation. Gentle swaying, then sudden chaos, then back to gentle swaying. It’s mesmerizing in a weird way. Not sure what I’ll do with it, probably nothing. But it was something to do, kept my hands busy when my brain was buzzing with that weird phrase. Just a little experiment, you know?
