When I started (or, rather, restarted) making fractals these past few weeks, I began with simple two tone gradients with a linear blend. But then I got an idea. The Gimp lets you create gradients interactively, plus it comes with its own stock of gradients. The format is text-based and turned out to be very easy to break down. So now, I am creating my gradients in the Gimp and then using a Python script to turn the gradient into a list of RGB tuples for OCaml. This is an especially useful technique as my video animations use songs, so I want a thematically appropriate gradient. For instance, my next video will be using the song Sim City by Susumu Hirasawa:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/BUbv_D9G1Kg&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/BUbv_D9G1Kg&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

It's the title track of a concept album about a cyberpunk future in Southeast Asia and conjures up images of urban alienation, rampant consumerism, and a diverse proliferation of human enhancement technology. The visual aesthetic that best summarizes this trend for me, in the geographical context, are the neon lights that loudly hawk their wares all throughout Asia, like these:



But it turns out (IMO) a better color scheme can be found in the surrealist movie Enter the Void, which takes place in Japan. So, the gradient I finally worked out for my upcoming video will look more or less like this: