Mike Chambers

I have always been amazed by some of the digital art work that Mario Klingemann (aka @Quasimondo has created using with Voronois. After doing some searching, I found an early ActionScript 1 Voronoi implementation that Mario did, and I ported it to JavaScript.

I wanted to share the results:
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Last week I was playing around with a little EaselJS experiment which required me to do collision detection against all items on the screen. This worked fine with a small number of items, but of course, the more items I added, the slower everything became.

I knew that I needed to optimize the code, and pare down the number of collision checks. I have done this before with a grid (even held a contest for it) and was going to port that AS3 code to JavaScript. However, Ralph Hauwert suggested I look at implemented a QuadTree, which should be more efficient.
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I have been having fun playing around with JavaScript, the HTML5 Canvas element and EaselJS lately, and have been building a lot of small experiments. I wanted to share a simple one I created, which creates spiral designs.

The example was pretty simple to put together, but is fun to play with, and can make some pretty nice patterns / spirals. I have uploaded a couple of images that I have created using the example:
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If you have happen to have been watching my Flickr feed for the past week or two, you have probably noticed that I have been playing around with creating some graphics using Canvas and EaselJS. What started as a simple EaselJS experiment, quickly morphed into an excuse to build a mini app / example and play around with some of the new HTML5 and CSS3 features.

The example I created (named PixelFlow) is a simple example / app that allows you to choose an image, and then create some designs using the colors from the image. The core drawing functionality is built about the HTML5 canvas element and the EaselJS library. It also leverages CSS3 transitions and transformation for animating the UI elements (loading and unloading).

You can play around with the example yourself at:
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Just a quick note, but I have created a Flickr set which contains some of the generative graphics I have been creating using canvas, JavaScript and EaselJS.

You can view the set here.

I havent released all of the code used to create all of the examples, but I will release the code / examples as I finish them. Ill post new images on the set whenever I create something I think is interesting.

If you run my EaselJS Drone Follow example from yesterday on any non-Android / iOS computer / device, you may notice that a graphic is drawn between the mouse touch point and the current position of the drone. This is done by managing and drawing to two canvas elements and is provided to help make it clear what the drone is following (your mouse) and which direction it is currently heading.

Why use two canvas elements, instead of just drawing to one? Well, there are two primary reasons I architected the example like this.
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As I posted the other day, I have been spending some time playing around with dynamic drawing with the HTML5 Canvas element and EaselJS. I have put together quite a few examples and experiments and will be posting them (along with what I learned from them) over the next couple of weeks.

The first example I want to share is a simple one which I call “follow”. It basically uses EaselJS to create a snake like shape that follows you mouse. Here is a screen shot of a graphic I created with it:

Here is an inline version of the example that you can play with. Just click to toggle whether the drone follows your mouse (requires a browser with support for the HTML5 Canvas element).
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One of the features of HTML5 that developers are most excited about is the Canvas element. The Canvas element essentials provides a bitmap canvas for dynamically rendering shapes and bitmap graphics. It is very similar to the Flash Player’s Bitmap and BitmapData classes.

However, working with the Canvas element can be difficult, especially if you need to manage, update and or / animate multiple shapes and bitmaps. Unlike the Flash Player, the Canvas element does not have a concept of a display list or individual items to render. Instead, it provides a single Canvas on which to draw, and it is up to the developer to determine what needs to be rendered and when.

Grant Skinner has release a JavaScript library named EaselJS, which attempts to provide a Flash like DisplayList API in order to make it easier to work with the Canvas element. The library is just an alpha release, but is surprisingly full featured at this early stage. If you are interested in experimenting with the Canvas API, this is a great way to get started.
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