Can we simulate the behaviour of animals? How would they move in groups? How do they cohere, align or separate, what are the rules of behaviour?

Those questions were asked by Craig Reynolds in 1986. It was the first time anyone did show a promising set of rules to mimic a bird flock movement.

Inspired by the effect I asked myself a question. Could movement be solidified?

After programming Craig’s inspired algorithm I could fly artificial birds around a finger. After flying them around I received the paths of flight of five birds.

During the “flight” I could control if birds should gather, repel or align by tweaking forces making them do so. After around a hundred flights that were not appealing there was one that attracted my attention - the one you can have on your finger.

There are a lot of different techniques I had to use to achieve the final look. One day I will write a blog post about it.