Colin Liotta

Macaroni Sun | Brick Bending This design was as shocking to create as it is beautiful to look at. When you sit down to work with hundreds of curved 'macaroni' LEGO bricks what you don't expect to emerge is an homage to the sun. F...

Here's the original amazing artwork by Jeff Sanders:

www.brickbending.com/product-page...

A geometric sculpture built out of blue legos

A geometric sculpture built out of blue legos

I built a thing! (Original design by Jeff Sanders, the Brick Bending master)

630 pieces. 3 hours. A few vaguely illegal building techniques.

#lego

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

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

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

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 of a grid of differently colored lines overlapping with each other

#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 Truchet tiles with gold and silver lines

#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

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

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

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.

Pen plotter drawing composed of many nested triangles forming spiral patterns

#genuary Day 13. Nothing but Triangles

#genuary2025 #genuary13 #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.

#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

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

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

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

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

And here are some slightly easier versions

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

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

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

#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

‎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...

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...

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

#genuary Day 9. Textiles.

Simple weave pattern, but got to try out some new metallic pens that look really nice together.

#genuary2025 #genuary9 #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.

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

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

Here's an example circuit with a slightly different routing

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

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

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

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

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

Some other variations

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

Day 6 of #genuary. Primitive (shapes) landscape

aka... so many rectangles

#genuary2025 #genuary6 #axidraw

Some other random versions

A large collection of isometric cubes with various different size scales

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

Hexagonal line art with descending spirals

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

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

And a few more variations

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

Pen plot of a geometric spiral pattern

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