Painting Software - The Scribbler

"The Scribbler" simulates the scribbling effect where one kinda draws circles following a tracing path. This is an implementation of "Tone- and Feature-Aware Circular Scribble Art" by Chun-Chia Chiu, Yi-Hsiang Lo, Ruen-Rone Lee and Hung-Kuo Chu.

The software (for the windows 64 bit operating system) is available to download on dropbox at thescribbler-x64.rar.

After having extracted the archive, I invite you to go to the "jimi_hendrix" folder. There you will see a file named "thescribbler.bat" which needs to be edited (using notepad or wordpad or whatever editor you like) so that the path to the executable, thescribbler.exe, is the correct one for your installation. The software is run by double-clicking on "thescribbler.bat". The output from The Scribbler is an image showing black scribbles over a white background.

The Scribbler's behavior is controlled by the input file named "thescribbler_input.txt". The following shows what's in "thescribbler_input.txt" in the "jimi_hendrix" directory:

source image = source_image.png
tracing path points = sample.tsp
tracing path segments = sample.cyc
minimum disk radius = 2
maximum disk radius = 16
minimum center velocity = 0.2
maximum center velocity = 8
scribble rotation increment = 80
output image = output_image.png

The source image is the reference photograph. It can be either tiff, png, or jpg. It can be either grayscale or full color.

The file containing the tracing path points (sample.tsp) is the output from Painting Software - The Stippler.

The file containing the tracing path segments (sample.cyc) is the output from linkern. See Painting Software - The Path Maker.

The minimum disk radius, maximum disk radius, minimum center velocity, and maximum center velocity control the density of the scribbles. Imagine following the tracing path (the one generated by Painting Software - The Path Maker) and drawing circles without lifting the pen. Clearly, you can draw small or large circles. The minimum disk radius and maximum disk radius control that. About as clearly, you can go slow or fast drawing those circles. The minimum center velocity and maximum center velocity control that.

The scribble rotation increment is a bit hard to explain, to be honest. It's an angle in degrees that should be between 0 and 360. I guess you'll just have to try changing it and see what happens. I think that values between 20 and 80 are good values to try out.

The output image contains the scribbles in image form. It can be either tiff, png, or jpg.

Source image.

Output image.

Here is a tutorial video:



Source code: thescribbler on github.