About
Welcome to Bettadelic!
Bettadelic's purpose is to create colorful Betta fish once per day every day for everyone to enjoy! At at random time throughout the day, a new colorful rending of a Betta fish will be posted.
The Betta fish that are posted are photos of our actual Betta fish, but transformed in a colorful way.
We hope that this website can bring some color to your life!
How it Works
Our Betta fish artwork could be considered a form of algorithmic art. This is where a computer algorithm is used to assist in finishing the artwork. No, this is not AI-generated art, which involves neural nets and training data. Algorithmic art is deterministic, and repeatable. In fact, if we got rid of our random number generator, the same art would always be generated!
The Betta fish you see start from actual photographs of the various Betta fish we've had over the years. We then use GIMP's built in high-pass filter tools to make a black-and-white base image of the Betta fish. This part is mostly done by hand, to get the outlines just right.
Once we're happy with the base image, that's when the base image gets fed into an algorithm. The algorithm separates the black pixels from the white pixels. The black lines become the outline, while groups white pixels separated by the outline become "areas to color". Each area to color then gets its own unique pattern.
Types of Patterns
Fill
The fill pattern colors a color area a single, randomly chosen, color. Think of it like the paint can option in MS Paint.
Edge
The edge pattern tries to do a spiral inwards for a color area by hugging the edge of the color area as much as possible, while slowly going inwards. From a starting spot, the algorithm goes around the edge of the color area, coloring any pixels it hits along the way that has not been colored yet. Once it reaches the starting spot, or it hits a dead end, a new starting spot and color is chosen and the cycle repeats.
Snake
The snake pattern is an early (and incorrect) implementation of the edge pattern; but it looked cool so we kept it. Its a little tough to describe, but it starts out by hugging the edge of an area to color, but once it reaches the other side, it turns around and heads the other direction until it reaches the original side, and goes back the other way. The result is a snaking pattern. Once the pattern reaches the starting point or a dead end, a new starting spot and color is chosen and the cycle repeats.
Stripe
The stripe pattern makes each color area stripped, where each row or column or diagonal is a randomly chosen color. The direction of the stripes (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) is also randomly chosen.
Noise
The noise pattern is simple, in that each and every pixel that should be colored in is randomized. The effect makes it look like static, or a bunch of noise.
Mixed
The mixed pattern chooses a random pattern for each separate area to color. The end result could have a Betta with stripes, static, and solid colors all in one!
Types of Background Patterns
In addition to a pattern going on the betta fish itself, the background also has a pattern.
Solid
The Solid background is a background of a single, randomly chosen, color. Can't get any easier than that!
Halo
This background starts from a randomly chosen color and shifts to a different color before shifting back again. The end-result resembles a halo around the betta fish.
Multisquare
This background is similar to the Halo background, but two parameters are reversed during the calculation. This was found by accident when trying to create the halo pattern. The end-result is a fish that sit on top of a tower of multiple squares.
Plus
By tweaking the Halo patterns algorithm a bit, we get a pattern that looks like a plus. Like the Multisquare, this pattern was found by accident when trying to create the halo pattern. The end-result is a background that looks like a plus sign.
Gradient
The background pattern starts with a base color, and then it randomly increases or decreases each pixel's color (Red, Green, Blue) in one direction for each row or column in the background until it reaches 0 or 255. Then goes the other direction until it reaches 0 or 255 and repeats. However, there is a small chance each time a color is being incremented or decremented where the color will change direction, thus ensuring the patterns is not repeated over and over again.