Many thanks to Darius and everyone at ColourLovers for making a great, easy to use API, also thanks to Juan Sanchez and the Degrafa team for making Degrafa the best way to draw in Flex. The DekafLovers mashup is currently featured at programmableweb.com as the mashup of the day and they have a nice writeup of it here. This mashup uses a similar codebase to Cooler Kreator, but uses the ColourLovers API instead of Kuler.

It’s great to get people making these patterns, I love seeing the stuff it produces.

I’ve been posting color mashups for a while now… just about have that out of my system and ready to move on to some other pattern generation, but first I’ve been working on the output phase of the work. Making something tangible out of those 1s and 0s… So, I’m using that same codebase to produce some large prints on acid free paper with Adobe AIR, and getting them framed/matted. I only have enough $$ to do about 3-4 of them, though. I’d like your advice… which palettes should I choose? I’m going to be putting them in 20×20″ Black matte metal frames on 2″ acid free matte board behind UV reducing anti-glare plexi-glass. If you have Kuler or ColourLover palettes you’d like to see in a high res form, email me, maybe you could end with some high res files yourself… Read more to see the images.

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Got notification that I was added as the most recent designer spotlight at Kuler! Very cool indeed. Many thanks to the Kuler team for building such a cool site (I love the new features added recently - create a theme based on a photo, so cool!) and thanks to Stacy Williams for putting the profile together.

Take a look:

Hey, just noticed my CoolerKreator tutorial is now available at ComputerArts.co.uk for download, along with all the source files. Go check it out!

FTA:

With numerous Flickr pools and other sites such as www.generatorx.no devoted to displaying generative art, this creative trend is gaining steam. With some of the more popular tools such as VVVV and Processing being easy enough to use, but a bit esoteric, you may feel left out as a Flash user.

With Adobe’s release of ActionScript 3.0, it’s possible to create beautiful generative pieces using tools you already have in your arsenal. Here, we’ll explore some basic tenets of generative art and you’ll learn how to augment your efforts using Adobe’s online kuler service.

Randomness, fantastic colour themes and some display filters will be employed to create one-of-a-kind compositions. The algorithms we’ll use are simple but effective and should serve as inspirational launching points for your own exploration of the field.

Each step of the tutorial, where appropriate, has an accompanying FLA file (found in the support files) with ActionScript 3 in it. If any of the text isn’t self-evident, open that step’s file and learn how it’s done from the code.

I do love Technorati. Without it, I wouldn’t see that a couple blogs (here and here) have recently posted about my CoolerKreator app, one of them actually making a clone (a very nice one, too)… probably using the source that was included in Computer Arts. It’s great to see people enjoying something you make.

I hope to have some more time to build a couple more mashups and AIR apps soon, though work has been time consuming and the school semester is in full swing. I also recently had to take a couple days off of work to attend a family funeral, so I have been out of the loop a bit… Here’s to hoping for a productive Spring!

If you are a Mac user and are looking for a fun sketch tool to work out some ideas or create quick compositions, go check out Nodebox. Its a python based tool that uses simple syntax to create some really great drawings. Similar to Processing, but perhaps a little simpler, Nodebox has a ton of great libraries as well (Quicktime, Web, iSight, etc.)… Check out this image I made with Nodebox… It combines Kuler and Flickr to make a nice piece. For these I chose a keyword query that pings both APIs and returns a recently entered Kuler color palette and a image from Flickr sorted by number of views. I have a set of them at Flickr, go check it out.

Two great conferences are going on this week, and though I won’t be attending either of them, I will indeed be watching the blogs, twittering and news coming out of both of them. FITC looks to have some great speakers lined up and hopefully some of them will make their programs available after the show. 360|Flex looks to be the launch place of Flex 3 and Air 1.0 according to Ted Patrick. A number of other developers are either demoing betas of new libraries, component sets or APIs, as well. A couple contests are set to be awarded at 360|Flex, too, so do your part and go vote! All in all a great week to be a Flash/Flex devigner.

As a sidenote, I hope to have a new gnerative composition mashup completed this week as well. It involves my favorite API, Kuler, of course, and a new one that I haven’t worked with yet. The subject matter involves colors and the emotions they elicit and vice versa. When released, the source code will be published with it, too.

Dekaf is listed there as an entry along with everyone else’s. Some great work up there. I really, really like the PostACard app. Very nice work indeed to everyone who submitted.

And of course thanks to the entire Degrafa team. Awesome work on an excellent framework!

I was inspired by a post on the Degrafa blog about generative compositions being made with Degrafa and saw they were running a “Degrafa Derby” contest… So, I decided to tie Degrafa to Kuler and produce a mashup similar to my CoolerKreator app. It’s called Dekaf. It’s lacking a couple features that CoolerKreator has, animation, filters etc… mainly cuz I’m totally new to Degrafa.

The source is a bit of a mess (available via right click in the app), i haven’t deleted a number of traces, etc… I have to admit, I had a heck of a time getting the “removeChild” type methods to work in Degrafa. I ended up using “pop()” on the items arrays instead. Oh well. I hope to add in filters and animation in the next few days/weeks as time allows.

Much thanks to Erno on the DeGrafa Gogle Group and of course to Mark Tovey, my coworker who gave me a bit of help with the ciricle removal code troubleshooting.

Enjoy!

I received correspondence from some folks at Adobe… I suppose that the name my little app had been using wasn’t really something that they had approved. So, in the interest of being courteous and such… I have a new name for everyone’s favorite Kuler powered generative art composition tool. CoolerKreator.

The site does use a 301 redirect to help prevent 404 errors, but for future reference, update your bookmarks.