Put Pixel to Screen and Express Yourself
Create visual and interactive experiences with the new Art category on Glitch
Creativity is fragile. Fantastic ideas and creations start out as nebulous thoughts that need time and focus to grow. But they’re easily dismissed, forgotten or downright crushed, and there are so many things that can crush them.
One such thing is technology. While it can be the driving force of creativity, at times, it’s just as likely to be the thing that stops us in our tracks too.
As web development technologies have evolved, their complexity has grown and the depth of understanding required across a whole slew of topics has followed in kind. It can be difficult for even professional developers to keep up, so those with just an occasional interest or ad-hoc requirement have a very difficult task. Just to be able to create something and share it online needs knowledge of package management, terminal commands, build tools and version control systems before you’ve even gotten to type a single `if` statement.
It’s no wonder then that many people fail to overcome these hurdles, and we’ll never know what could have come from their ideas.
This is why we’re excited to add our Art app collection to Glitch. It includes both examples of, and the tools to build, visual and interactive experiences without any of that complexity. They’re all available to be remixed, and doing so hurls you over many of the technical roadblocks, helping you to be immediately creative.
The collection includes building block apps for:
- P5.js — A library for creating graphic and interactive experiences, based on Processing.
- Three.js — An easy to use, lightweight, 3D library.
- ASCII-art — A library for ANSI codes, Figlet fonts, ASCII art and other ASCII graphics.
As well as Paper.js, Processing.js and Node-Canvas.
There are also examples to inspire, including:
- Color-wander — Generative artwork based on a seeded random by Matt DesLauriers.
- By conspiracy or design — A poem in Node.js by Daniel Holden and Chris Kerr. A valid program that produces a visual representation of itself when compiled and run.
- Make check box art — An app to make pixel art using checkboxes.
We hope you find these helpful in putting pixel to screen, and creating wonderful digital art. Let us know what you create, and if you want to see them on our community site then take a look at the Creator’s Guide.
If you get stuck, just raise your hand.
