HackMD
Sketchdance Suite
tags: sketchdance
Description
Sketchdance is the working title for an in-progress suite of web applications that are intended to work together to be greater than the sum of their parts. The suite includes intentionally simple content creation tools (Shimmy, Veil, Jitter, and Gammaray), more advanced programming tools (Moonshine, Waterbear, Plugh, Joker), a whole bunch of underlying, re-usable tools to put these together (Tardigrade, Moss Piglet, Alley), some tools for sharing, both privately (Moat) and socially (Xastle), some smaller re-usable components (Halo, Roomatoom), and some larger projects that don't fit in any of the categories, but leverage many pieces of Sketchdance (Garden). Descriptions and status of all of these are below, along with some initial ideas of how they fit together.
Because there is a lot of overlap between these web applications goals, i.e., Drawing Board, Greenscreen, and Stop Motion are all very similar, there can be benefits to developing them in parallel and each can be informed by the others. Waterbear and Garden are different but might be useful to integrate with both content creation and sharing. I want two ways of storing results: shared to a social site (based on the Scratch community) or posted to a temporary private server to be downloaded later. Collectively, this is the Sketchpad Suite.
Pick a random project to work on
Earlier version of this document with even more projects
A note on epistemic statuses
Each of these projects has a status, which may be that it is only a pipe-dream I hope to one-day see in the world, whether I make it or not. For the most part, I would be happy to not have to build all of these, but to find them already existing or to partner with others to build them.
The epistemic statuses are related, but different, and originate from this post: Epistemic statuses are lazy and that is a good thing. The epistemic status is my confidence that a given project is a good and useful thing, and also possible downsides to it. The epistemic effort is a rough gauge of how much thought I've put into it and my confidence I can actually build it, although the second part may be elided since I'm confident I can build any of these, given time.
Project relationships
Rough idea of how all of these projects relate to each other. Not all connections are shown, for instance many of the projects are designed to work with / rely on projects from Infrastructure, and ideally there will be a rich set of interconnections from the media creation projects to the programming projects (so you can, i.e., create sprites in Shimmy and use them for a game in Waterbear). Ideally all of these will be written in Moonshine some day, along with the demonstration programs that are otherwise unrelated to Sketchdance.
Currently Working on
- Standard Stack Testing
- Waterbear Getting (re-)started
Content Creation
Nodes in red have not been started in any significant way yet. Nodes in black at least have a prototype implementation.
Shimmy
Flipbook Animation
Shimmy is sketch-based animation tool (status: working, needs Moat and some UI work). All the content-creation tools use Moat and eventually Xastle. Will feed into Waterbear and other Moonshine-based tools.
- Status: Launched 1.0, in active development
- Epistemic status: High confidence this can be a beneficial tiny tool for low-effort animation and introducing animation concepts, especially but not limited to children.
- Epistemic effort: I have built this, used it, presented it in public, and run workshops using it, so I've had time to both think about it and test my ideas out in the world. Still some rough edges and lots of room for improvement, but overall solid.
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Veil
Greenscreen Effects
A program to remove/change background for video. Test version works fine with chroma-keyed background, researching ways to remove background without green screen.
- Status: Research phase
- Epistemic Status: Confident this can be used for a variety of creative endeavors, mixes well with other tools such as Jitter
- Epistemic Effort: Have used commercial and open source tools for this in library programs and barely scratched the surface of what we can do.
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Jitter
Stop Motion Animation
- Status: Working prototype
- Epistemic Status: Confident this can be a useful tool for creating animation, even in its current simplistic state.
- Epistemic Effort: Have used commercial tools for this in the past. Have taught my own kids, but not public workshops yet.
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Gammaray
Special FX
Be able to insert special effects that look like super[hero/villain] powers, magic spells, etc. onto live video footage and record the results. Similar to commercial apps on the iPad, but using free effects overlays and/or generative effects code. For bonus points, add gesture detection to trigger specific effects.
- Status: Research
- Epistemic Status: I like it, I want it. Have used the commercial versions in the past and they were fun, but we can do way better. There are overlay effects with green chroma keys on YouTube and more that can be found on various sites, but producing effects with code would be my preferred option.
- Epistemic Effort: Have used commercial apps that record a short video with guide overlays and then generate the results (not realtime). I've created a couple of demos so far
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demos Fiery Eyes Lightning Hands Draw with hands
- Teaching Guide
Puppet
Constraint Animation
- Status: Not started
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Programming
Nodes in red have not been started in any significant way yet. Nodes in black at least have a prototype implementation.
Waterbear
Block-based visual programming
Waterbear is a Scratch-like programming tool for general web and graphics programming. One of the most ambitious pieces to date, used (and developed) around the world. Currently being updated to be based on Moonshine and DJ, which will enable several features not possible before.
- Status: Working, needs UI refresh and further work
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Moonshine
Block-aware text-based programming language
Moonshine is a text-based language that maps well to blocks (status: early prototype). This is important because most languages do not necessarily map well to blocks.
Moonshine will start by being factored out of existing Waterbear code and turned into a runtime that can be shipped with Moonshine files to make them runnable in the browser stand-alone. Will evolve from there, the goal is to make it transpilable to other languages relatively easily.
- Status: Research/prototype
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Plugh
Flow-based programming for the web
Plugh is a tool for flow-based programming for the web. Ideally should also use Moonshine behind the scenes. This is an alternative graphical programming tool, similar to Quartz Composer, Pure Data, and other graph-like programming tools.
Interestingly enough, it looks like Node-Red does most of the hard bits of this already, but integrating it with Moonshine/Waterbear is still on my To-Do list.
- Status: Not started
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Utilities
Tardigrade
Block toolkit
General purpose tool for creating block-based languages. Waterbear uses blocks specific to Moonshine, but Tardigrade can support blocks for any language.
- Status: Early version working as part of Waterbear, but needs to be extracted and generalized
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Alley
Connector from web-apps to the rest of the world
Alley is an optional external program to connect web-based scripts to your computer, similar to Scratch Link. Allows Waterbear blocks to create Python code, hook into other systems. Will be usable for all Moonshine language and Tardigrade interfaces.
- Status: Not started
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Moss Piglet
Graphic toolkit and runtime
Moss Piglet is a layered toolkit for graphics and user interfaces, based on ideas from the Nile language from STEPS towards the reinvention of programming.
- Status: Not started
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
VaMished
Virtual Machine
Inspired by Uxn, a portable way to adapt Moonshine-based languages to different environments.
- Status: Not started
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Advanced Projects
Nodes in red have not been started in any significant way yet. Nodes in black at least have a prototype implementation.
Garden
Collaborative Text Adventure (MUD)
Garden of Forking Paths is a collaborative text adventure game tool (status: working, needs to be used to find weak points). A text adventure environment for both developing (multiple simultaneous developers) and playing (multiple players can be in a room and communicate with each other). An updated version of a MUD (Multi-user dungeon) for the web.
Worth exploring: Adapting something like the Chapbook Twine format to be both multi-user and multi-author using our toolkit.
- Status: Working demo, no advanced features yet
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Xastle
Social Networking for Projects
Social site for favouriting, etc. visual projects. Design based largely on the Scratch social network, but allowing a wide variety of projects (both Sketchdance and others). Almost certainly built on the protocols of the Fediverse.
- Status: Design Phase
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Moat
Private temporary file sharing
A way to store temporary files securely (status: in progress). This project is aimed squarely at libraries to solve the problem of someone creating content in a library program, but having no way to take it home with them. Generates a saved online copy only the user can access, with built-in expiry to prevent misuse.
- Status: Version 1.0 complete
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Documentation, Progress, Bugs
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Bootleg OS
Minimalist Operating System
An operating system like that imagined by STEPS Towards the Reinvention of Programming, fits in about 30,000 lines so that a single person can understand and modify it.
- Status: Research
- Epistemic Status:
- Epistemic Effort:
- Bootleg OS
- Code
- Demo
- Teaching Guide
Stack
Standard Libraries and tools
The Standard Stack is a set of tools that are external to Sketchdance but are re-used across projects. It has its own documentation page.
Demos
Demonstration Progams to re-write in Moonshine
The Demonstration Programs are not necessarily related to Sketchdance, but should be examples of the kinds of things you can create with Sketchdance.
