Early inspiration

Always been fascinated by Boids since writting my first three.js web app. Heavily insipred by 3 Dreams Of Black - an interactive music video directed by Chris Milk.

Video link here - https://youtu.be/UpuNR27qXwg

It was a transmedia extension of a concept album ROME, , produced by Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi, featuring Jack White and Norah Jones. The song "Black," sung by Norah Jones, is a dream-like, first of its kind interactive music video. The first of the "3 Dreams"—written and directed by Chris Milk—allows Google Chrome users/viewers to actually navigate and interact with the virtual landscape – to take the journey, themselves, through the dark fantasy-in-motion unfolding before them. The beautiful, darkly poignant live-action opening segment, shot by Milk, evolves and transitions effortlessly into dynamic sequences that integrate rich 2D illustrated cel animations with interactive 3D animations, built entirely in WebGL.

Source - https://merkintilism.com/rome

What's next?

I will probably write another article on how and what Boids is, even though a quick online search or LLM prompt will probably give you more insights and a fully functional prototype in minutes. However hand coding it was extremely fun, even with the latest version where it was converted to r3f with tsl which is another post on its own.