lsh-LookingOutwards02

Inigo Quilez's Happy Jumping (2019) is an incredible project for a few reasons. The project itself is a raymarched shader of a cute character jumping around on a bouncy floor in a surreal landscape. One can easily talk about the impressive technical skill behind this piece. The jumping is believable, the floor bounce is wonderful. What I find admirable about this piece is how whimsical the work is, given the context of the piece. ShaderToy is a host to many technically skilled individuals, a few of which have masters and PhDs in math or physics. This piece breaks a mold of the usual geometric study and invites silliness to an otherwise mathematically focused group. The algorithm behind this piece are available for all to see, but the main backbone is the raymarching algorithm, and movement is done with noise. Inigo has proven that he can easily do photorealism, but lately his sensibility from has time at Pixar has been prevalent in his work. Though infinitely generated, the piece will always be the happy creature jumping along.

View the project in realtime!