UI Screenshots

View the screenshots below to see what the settings for this function look like within the Randomill panel.

Overview & Description

Oscillation is the idea of bouncing back and forth between two things over time. For example, a sound wave oscillates between troughs and crests. In this case, Randomill can be used to iterate over multiple objects in a selection and set their stroke widths to a value that bounces between two numbers of your choice.

Example Settings and Result:

For example, lets say you have 10 squares lined up next to each other with the leftmost square being the top object in the layer stack. Each square has a stroke width of 1 pt. If you oscillate the stroke width of this set of squares from 0 pts to 6pt over 3 steps, you would get this result:

Square 01: 0 pt stroke width
Square 02: 2 pt stroke width
Square 03: 4 pt stroke width
Square 04: 6 pt stroke width
Square 05: 4 pt stroke width
Square 06: 2 pt stroke width
Square 07: 0 pt stroke width
Square 08: 2 pt stroke width
Square 09: 4 pt stroke width
Square 10: 6 pt stroke width

The first square was scaled by the From value, and took 3 Steps to get to the To value. Another 3 steps were needed to get back to the From value.

Usage in Adobe Illustrator & Sample Art

Oscillating various properties of objects is great when working with dense, uniform object groups. For instance, a grid of squares can have their stroke widths modified in an oscillatory manner to create really interesting wave like effects. Combined with other Randomill functions like color shifting or scale randomization, the stroke width oscillation function can be a great addition to your creative toolbox.

A single small, red ellipse sits at the top middle section of the canvas. It's a good illustration of how random color illustrator script can lead to complex designs.

Cone (Before)

Functions: Duplication (Count) + Stroke Color (Shift HSL) + Scale (Shift) + Position (Shift) + Opacity (Shift) + Stroke Width (Oscillate)

A rainbow cone-like design made up of hundreds of rings that start small at the top middle of the canvas and change color and grow larger as they transition down towards the bottom middle of the image.

Cone (After)

This design used many of Randomill's functions, but ultimately was simple to make. Copy the initial ellipse in place a couple hundred times, shift each copy downward slightly, target the scale both horizontally and vertically to large values, oscillate the stroke width and opacity to create those intermittent gaps in the final design, and lastly just shift the huge value forward with each duplicate while leaving saturation and lightness alone. Hue cycling should be turned on so that once hue has shifted through the whole color spectrum, it will restart back at the beginning.

Related Functions