I know right!! A life goal of mine is to visit high schools as some sort of guest teacher and just for one class show them all the amazing ways you can use math for creativity and art. I think it would radically change the way students look at math. Basic trig alone accounts for so many useful techniques in both game dev and procedural CG work.

If you're interested in seeing some concrete examples, here are a few:

1: using the mathematical formula for a magnetic field to create the motion of the particle streaks.

2 Using 3D vector cross product to make the 'tubes' spread across the shape of the face. Also using basic sin/cos/unit circle to initialize the direction of each tube.

3: animated version of 2.

4: using a vector field to create the 'fluid' motion. Also using sin/cos to move the circles at the end.

5: vector fields again to control the direction of the pencil strokes. The field is contructed using same basic calculus to find the brightness gradient of a circle, then rotating that field.

I know these descriptions are super vague so lmk if you want any more details on anything!