This was an exploratory experiment I made while building my Logo Generator. None of the code ended up in the Logo Generator, but lately I've seen a lot of pico monsters on twitter so I thought I'd share this little thing.

I'm continually amazed at how many recognizable objects can be generated on a simple black and white 7x7 grid. I've seen cowboys, snowmen, satellite dishes, a skull and crossbones, angels, the liberty bell, trees, people in different poses, beetles, ants, anchors, faces with different expressions, houses, wine glasses, trophies, tables, cars, airplanes, gas pumps, a bus, hearts, pac-man ghosts, rocket ships, flowers, robots, frogs, cats, squids, butterflies, R2D2, a Blues Brother, an envelope, a Guy Fawkes mask, a Cyberman, an umbrella, candelabra, a dress, a bikini, mushrooms, skulls, and of course space invaders -- perfect Rorschach test material. Someday I'd like to hook up the output of this to an image classifier and see how it labels these tiny drawings. I'm sure someone has already beat me to it. Send me a link if it's already been done. The 7x7 grid is my favorite, but 5x5 and 9x9 are good too.

Have fun, and share with your friends and enemies. If you like this, you might also like my Landscape Art Generator