Tom.K



AARON

This is a quite unique program published back in 2001 by Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies and originally made by Harold Cohen. It's able to generate paintings that contain people, plants, basic shapes and simple paintings (not recursive).


Generator

At beginning, it will prepare stroke lines for objects that it will draw. After that, it will start painting each object with few strokes of paintbrush until it's complete.

Painting process screenshot

Drawing process where AARON is currently painting green background.

It doesn't perform any bucket fill painting behavior to just fill everything inside of stroke lines. Some stroke lines might be overdrawn by painting strokes in some situations. After painting part is done, lines will be re-drawn to resolve this. Basically, that should be enough to generate a single and unique AARON painting.

Interface

You have few options for generating paintings: Paint one, or paint continuously. Painting one obviously generates a single painting. Continuous painting will keep generating paintings until you decide to stop it. However, continuous painting waits for specific time before generating a new painting after the current one is done. This can be changed in options.

Menu options screenshot

Simple amount of options where you can only paint, review, print ot exit.

There is also an option to review your paintings by navigating back and forward, or by a selection. The image you're currently reviewing can be printed.

PDF preview screenshot

Printed drawing in PDF format, rotated by 180 degrees.

In my case, I've used CutePDF Writer to print the painting to PDF file. Results aren't spectacular, but fair enough.

There also options to send the software to your friends, configure delay time for multiple drawing process and drawing location.

Web preview

Besides of using this software on PC, you could also check out the preview of it through the web using Java applet technology.

Java preview screenshot

Preview of drawings on web through Java applet.

Luckily enough this archived version of java applet does function properly. Even though existing drawings from the website were mostly not archived, it was still possible to use a substitute thanks to proxy server usage.

Pricing

Evaluation lasts for 3 days. Even though you technically can use it even after 3 days, it's against the license to do that. They trust that you won't go against it.

Evaluation pricing screenshot

It's not possible to download the software from their archived website since it's using a form that could not be archived properly.

Price is about $20, but you can't buy it anymore. I don't see any page offering AARON to be available for sale.

Availability

Even though their website is still functional at the time of this writing, they don't seem to offer AARON anymore. Also, there are few more pages being removed along with download and watch page.

Demo

I've made a video about demonstrating this software. Initial part mostly gives overview, later there are some details about their website and finally a small compilation of artwork AARON kas made with some music.

Paintingfinal

One of final paintings rendered in the video.

Check the video here.