Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to make it do that yet. I have however, gotten it to generate random cloud combinations and position them randomly on the canvas with semi-random colours based around reds, yellows and oranges.

It is available online here.

I have added a stroke(1) command to the draw function, every time it redraws the clouds, it will add a stroke around each circle, this gives it a very cartoony look. I have commented this out as it slows down the rendering, but switching it back on is very easy by removing the //.

Changing the value of the level has a significant impact on the render times, increasing it slows it down, decreasing it speeds u the render. On my computer, 5 seems to be ideal, anything higher and the interval between each cloud that is generated becomes uneven. Anything lower and the density of the clouds starts to drop and it loses some of the effect.

 }
void setup()
{
  size(500, 500);
  noStroke();
  smooth();
  frameRate(50);
}

void draw()
{
  // uncommenting the below creates a very cartoony effect
  // stroke(1);
  drawCircle(random(500), random(500), random(170), 5);
}

void drawCircle(float x, float y, float radius, float level)
{
  float r = 126 * level/4.0;
  float g = random(80);
  float b = random(60);
  fill(r, g, b);
  ellipse(x, y, radius*2, radius*2);
  if(level > 1) {
    level = level - 0.5;
    int num = int(random(2, 6));
    for(int i=0; i<num; i++) {
      float a = random(0, TWO_PI);
      float nx = x + sin(a) * 6.0 * level;
      float ny = y + radius/2;
      drawCircle(nx, ny, radius/2, level);
    }
  }
}

Going through the online learning basics, there are two recursion examples, “Recursion” and “Recursion 2“. In the first of these, recursion is used to have a circle repeat itself twice at half the original size inside itself, and continue doing this with each smaller circle until the level is no longer greater than 1. The level is basically the amount of times the function will call itself.

The second of these examples builds on the first, but instead of repeating the circle’s inside themselves, it generates random sizes and shades of circles in semi-random x and y co-ordinates around the main circle until the level is no longer greater than 1. The level again basically being how many times the function calls itself.

Experimenting with these two recursive functions, I combined the two to create a cartoonish cloud that slightly resembles a mushroom cloud which can be found online here.

What I have done, is I have taken the second recursive example, and then changed the way it positions the circles along the y axis to be the same as the first recursive example. Thus the circles are all on the same level and appear to be getting bigger, though they are actually getting smaller.

Because I have kept the way the second example generates the circles, there are heaps of circles overlapping each other that weren’t before, creating a more cloud-like appearance.

void setup()
{
size(500, 500);
noStroke();
smooth();
noLoop();
}

void draw()
{
drawCircle(250, 200, 170, 6);
}

void drawCircle(float x, float y, int radius, float level)
{
float tt = 126 * level/4.0;
fill(tt, 153);
ellipse(x, y, radius*2, radius*2);
if(level > 1) {
level = level - 0.5;
int num = int(random(2, 6));
for(int i=0; i<num;>
float a = random(0, TWO_PI);
float nx = x + sin(a) * 6.0 * level;
float ny = y + radius/2;
drawCircle(nx, ny, radius/2, level);
}
}
}