WICO@Home - Playful Art, Storytelling & Music Tools
Over the last few weeks of the global stay-at-home paradigm, I’ve been trying to think about ways that Wonderful Idea Co. can best support the local and global community in these strange days. I don’t have any great answers or solutions at the moment but we’re trying to take some small first steps. Over the next couple weeks we’ll be experimenting with online maker camps in collaboration with San Francisco School and Brightworks, putting together online meet-ups to explore new tools and continuing R&D on mini-exhibits that people can build at home. This will be a tough time for many of us for many different reasons, but we’re hoping to continue to spark some joy, inspiration and good energy in the darkness and get through this together (and hopefully get to do some tinkering in the shop, garden or around the kitchen table from time to time).
Along these lines, I’m planning writing a series of posts about different resources for people to check out at home such as tinkering video, educational articles, favorite exploratory places (to visit post-quarantine), playlists for the shop and other fun topics. To start, I wanted to pass along a non-exhaustive list of quirky, fun and slightly addictive online creative tools that I collected with help from the twitter hive mind earlier this week.
Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and especially Natalie Lawhead who made an inspiring list on her blog, Tiffany Tseng who suggested a lot of these (and even made a few) and Will McFarland of Parts and Crafts, Joylabz etc. Enjoy the links to a few these favorites; we hope that they can be a little fun distraction in the coming weeks.
Story Telling /Programming
Scratch - https://scratch.mit.edu/
Animation sandbox - https://css-animation-sandbox.glitch.me/
Micro:bit character designer - https://medium.com/@scientiffic/character-design-with-microbit-51c42586caa1
Twine (interactive story maker) - https://twinery.org/
Cateater (Stop Motion) - https://www.cateater.com/
Art
Glow Doodle - http://scripts.mit.edu/~eric_r/glowdoodle/
Weird Cuts (app) - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weird-cuts/id1462988624
“9 patch” border maker - https://maxbittker.github.io/broider/
Music
Playtronica synths - https://synth.playtronica.com/
MmmTss - http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/mmmtsss/
Chrome Music Lab - https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/
turtle.audio - http://turtle.audio/
Bongo Cat - https://ttseng.github.io/bongo-cat/
Animal Crossing Tune Maker - https://ac-tune-maker.aikats.us/
“Mario Paint” style composer - https://danielx.net/composer/#c5949c5d75437f16807f
Incredibox - https://www.incredibox.com/demo/
Beatbox - https://beepbox.co/
Sound Plant - https://soundplant.org/
Sonic Pi - http://sonic-pi.net/
Design
Tinkercad - https://www.tinkercad.com/
Paper House Designer - https://paper-house-designer.glitch.me/
Games
Phaser.io Games - https://phaser.io/examples/v2/category/games
Galaxy Kate’s apps - http://www.galaxykate.com/#apps
Please let us know if we are missing any of your favorite creative distractions and I will be sure to add them to the collection. Keep well and tinker on!