degrafa

The other day I came across Chad Udell’s post about his KulerCreator and it got me thinking. Degrafa could easily be used to create random generated art, especially since so many of the Degrafa object properties are bindable. I grabbed Tweener (which I had never used before) and applied it to a few different shapes and their properties.

I used two circles and set tweens on their size dimensions, as well as some of the gradient fill properties, which creates some interesting effects. There’s a polygon in there and I set tweens to each one of it’s four points. Finally, I threw a bird shape in there drawn with SVG path data. It took no time at all to put this together and the results are interesting. Most importantly, it was easy and was done using MXML markup.

Things could get really interesting with some physics, random colors, filters, easing, etc.

See the results

The last month since Degrafa Origin was released out into the wild has definitely been an interesting one. Attention to the framework has popped up in a number of ways and in a variety of languages. From questions to interest, adoption to experiments, and a couple of cool contests. This is clearly evidence that the community has been waiting for the abilities to create and manipulate graphics directly within Flex, whether with Degrafa or any other solution. So far, there have been 1,300 downloads of the SWC (who knows how many using the source) and the feedback has been great. Here’s a few links to some Degrafa “buzz”:ﾠ

Get a job developing with Degrafa
ﾠ
Post by Ryan Stewart

ﾠPost by Doug McCune
ﾠ
Some User Examples:
http://alivepdf.bytearray.org/?p=11
http://ccgi.arutherford.plus.com/blog/wordpress/?p=156

360|Flex API Contest

ﾠAs a team, we have goals and features in mind for Degrafa, but a big part of it is what we think the community wants too. A list of feature requests has started being compiled on the Degrafa Google Code “Issues” page and we’d love for people to vote for and suggest what they’d like to see in Degrafa, no matter how big or small the feature may be. Any ideas are welcome and you can get a hold of us through email, the Degrafa Google Group or on Google Code.

ﾠWe want to keep adding features to Degrafa that will push it to be more of a declarative “design” framework, rather than focusing on the initial graphics capabilities that started this whole project in the beginning. This means adding things like layout managers, but also building on what’s already there, so you can do more with less code.

ﾠHopefully, this will get to a point where you won’t need external tools like Illustrator or Flash to create the typically static assets for a Flex UI, and make the power of programmatic capabilities more accessible at the MXML level. If their are external tools for Degrafa, we’re hoping they’ll be open-source, built in Flex, and have the source available. We know it’s an ambitious undertaking, especially when everyone on the team maintains a full-time job.ﾠ