DoodleFriend
What Is It?
DoodleFriend is a collaborative sketching tool — a collaboration between you and your computer. It starts with a doodle or a drawing from you. Then you turn it over to the computer to sketch on top of the marks you made. Back and forth. Back and forth. Forever.
Where’d It Come From?
DoodleFriend is a work in progress. It is completely inspired by and based on Ze Frank’s Scribbler. Here’s the story:
After playing with the Scribbler, I found that it was quite a fun tool to use. But I wanted more:
More screen real estate
The ability to import your own images for reference
The ability to export your creation (with alpha channel) for further tweaking in an image editor
So, I decided to try and recreate his drawing algorithm in Flash. Then I needed to port it over to Director for easier access to the file system. Then I needed to make sure that I could prototype it. And thus I present it to you.
Where Do I Get It?
You can download it right here. But remember, this is a private beta just to see if this is something that creative folks would have any use for. Please don’t pass it on to your friends just yet. The responses I get will dictate whether to further develop this idea or to move on.
Download DoodleFriend for Windows (3 meg ZIP file)
Download DoodleFriend for OS X (5 meg DMG file)
How Do I Use It?
As I started to write documentation for this, I realized that it needs to be so intuitive that you don’t need “directions.” And this is partly why I’m putting it out to you: to give me feedback on what’s not intuitive. I don’t feel it’s quite there yet. So I’ll give you a little heads up on what to expect.
The application has three Modes: Draw, Sketch, External Image. You can select them from the top menu (or by using the keyboard shortcut key beside its name):
Clicking on a Mode button, presents you with different Options buttons. Here’s the basic rundown of what you can do in each Mode.
Draw Mode
This is where you start. Do a drawing. It’s that simple. You can clear your drawing from the Options menu at the top. And you can show or hide it (you’ll discover why once you start playing with the tool).
Sketch Mode
This is where the computer has its fun. After you’ve drawn some lines, you can tell the computer to sketch by hitting the Start Sketching button from the Options menu. You can always start sketching (or stop sketching) from any mode just by hitting your Spacebar.
If you hit your Tab key, you’ll get the fun options for the Sketch Mode:
I recommend playing around with them to see what they do. NOTE: You cannot draw while in Sketch Mode (unlike Ze’s Scribbler). Also, the pallette is draggable, and you can tweak values while DoodleFriend is sketching.
External Image Mode
This is where you’ll import your external image that you might want to use as reference. You can also clear, hide and show your imported image. You can import JPG, GIF, and PNG (but right now it doesn’t support images with transparency). If your image is bigger than the canvas, it will resize it for you.
And at all times along the bottom of the application, you can hide and show your imported image as well as adjust its opacity with a slider:
Exporting Your Creation
After doing some sketching, you can export your output by hitting the Export button in the upper-right corner. This will export your sketch as a PNG with alpha transparency. NOTE: Your background color will not be exported with the image.
The End?
So, again, this is a first shot at making something functional. I would absolutely love to hear any feedback, see any creations, and hear about any bugs. I definitely have my own list of features that need to make the next release(s), but want to hear your thoughts first. Please go ahead and use the comments on this page to post your thoughts. And if you make something sweet, please post it to the DoodleFriend Flickr Group! Thanks for any time you spend with this thing. Maybe something interesting will come of it.
Shaun Inman Says:
September 11th, 2006 at 3:51 pm Gorgeous man. Some notes on the Mac version:
Export seemed dodgy. I was only able to export one image successfully. The images I’m posting to the Flickr group were from system screen captures.
Pressing tab for the sketching palette was the only unintuitive part. Perhaps that should appear automatically when you select the Sketch mode or be an option like Clear, Hide and Start Sketching.
Multiple undos or the ability to erase when Drawing would be great. I don’t have a tablet so tracing with a mouse without making any mistakes is nearly impossible. Also, the first time through it’s hard to anticipate how the program is going to connect the dots. I ended up having to trace that image more than once because the first two times I traced too much detail in the face area and her entire head became a solid cross-hatch. Being able to erase would have saved me the trouble of retracing the whole image just to correct a small problem in one area .
On the wishlist:
Zoom. Both in Draw and Sketch modes. I’d love to zoom in on the node connections of a finished sketch and be able to output that. Are the sketch lines vector or raster?
Exporting a drawing. If I trace an image and export the sketch only to find that I’m not satisfied with the sketch I have to retrace the image before I can generate another sketch.
Even with these (minor) nit-pickings DoodleFriend gets the thumbs-up. Nice work Mike!
Mike Says:
September 11th, 2006 at 5:24 pm Shaun, thanks a ton for checking this out. Your feedback is very helpful. I’m really curious about the troubles you’re having with the Export functionality — exactly what is it doing? Blank image? Corrupted image? No image file at all?
I want to make sure the exported image expectations are met: this will export a PNG the size of the canvas with an alpha channel — the only thing that is opaque will be the actual sketch lines. There will be no background color exported (but I want to make that an option now that you can change the background color).
And yes: erasing and undos. Definitely something I want to work in for the same reasons you mentioned.
As for the wishlist items: zoom would likely be possible since the drawing is just a bunch of vector points that I’m storing, but the visual drawing output (as well as the sketch) is raster. So I will need to work some magic. I was longing for it myself in a test sketch I did last night.
And I definitely want to make it so you can save a drawing state. I’m thinking of different ways of doing this, but it’s definitely a good point you bring up.
Again, thanks for the feedback and the test drive.
Shaun Inman Says:
September 12th, 2006 at 3:11 pm I was only able to export one image which gave me an image exported successfully message. All other attempts did nothing. No image file, no message.
Of course, I didn’t even think to try to reproduce the error (I was too into playing with my current drawing). And now I can’t (reproduce the problem). It may have happened when trying to export while DF was still sketching? I can’t say. Sorry. Maybe no worries then.