HOW
I WORK.
By hand.
Through code.
Back into my hands.
Inside the ExyOzy creation process.
01 / COME INTO THE STUDIO
DRAWN.
TAKEN APART.
Made again.
The marks are mine.
So are the rules.
I draw the components, cut them up, recycle their colours and combine them through my own code. Then I work with what comes out.
These eight short films follow an ExyOzy from its first marks to its moving image. I talk through the decisions, the experiments and what Iโm trying to express.
The chapter notes below are edited from the walkthrough. Watch the films to hear it in my own words.
STUDIO FILM 01 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSWhere the characters begin
The ExyOzys grew through my experience of neurodiversity and sensory overload. In this introduction I trace the journey through We All Bleed the Same Colour, a work I made in 2019, and into Sensory Overload: fragments of popular culture and vivid colour assembled as a way of describing how I experience the world.
STUDIO FILM 02 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSPopular culture goes into the mix
Logos, cartoons, clothing, television and signs surround us with recognisable images. I call this mixture Pop Soup. I take fragments out of their familiar settings, cut and combine them, and bring them into my own 66-colour palette.
STUDIO FILM 03 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSThe hand makes the shapes
I draw a heart, make scribbles and lines, and add flicks of paint on paper or card. The marks are photographed or scanned, then separated in Photoshop into individual transparent PNG files. Each becomes a reusable mask, allowing other imagery to appear within its shape.
STUDIO FILM 04 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSCode breaks the images apart
My procedural code recolours solid shapes using the 66-colour palette. It selects source files, rotates them and takes small square sections to overlay. Repeating the process produces a large collection of transformed fragments to work with.
STUDIO FILM 05 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSColour follows my own rules
I change what happens when colours meet. Instead of keeping the result of a conventional blend, my process assigns a new colour. A red and a yellow might yield blue. The replacement is chosen through randomness, while the same colour combinations remain consistently mapped within the resulting image.
STUDIO FILM 06 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSThe fragments return to the drawings
The generated images go inside the original masks: hearts, Xs, Os, drips and scribbles. Repeated processing builds a library of variations. Random selection brings those variations into the next stage of composition.
STUDIO FILM 07 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSLayers become frames
A background, scribbles, the heart, its outline and the remaining marks are stacked in a deliberate order. In the example shown, twenty layers combine into one frame. A sequence of these frames makes the short animation, holding the characterโs structure while its surfaces change.
STUDIO FILM 08 / 08
EXYOZY CREATION PROCESSSomething holds through the noise
The heart and its marks remain visible through the restless colour and pattern. For me, that constant is hope: a form you can keep finding amid distraction. Pause the animation and fragments of familiar culture become discoveries of their own. That is my interpretation. You might find something different.
02 / TOOLS THAT GREW WITH THE WORK
THE CODE
HAS A HISTORY.
An experiment that kept growing.
I began the pixel-swapping and shape-detection system in PHP and JavaScript in 2019, later porting it to Python using OpenCV. The drawings supply the material, the code creates variations, and I decide how those results enter a finished work.
For Double Dragon, I generated hundreds of ExyOzy layers, selected and incorporated several by hand, and painted individual components within them. Stop-frame animation and effects brought the scene into motion. I made its soundtrack on guitar and keyboards in Logic Pro, including every vocal overdub, transformed with distortion and pitch changes.
Explore Double Dragon โ03 / KEEP FOLLOWING
SAME HAND.
Many worlds.
The process travels.
The work changes.
Follow the characters, the fragments of popular culture and the ideas that keep returning.
Meet the ExyOzys โExplore Pop Soup โ
I am the system โ