Sunday, November 2, 2008

what does your bomomo art look like?

i really enjoy reading posts like this from geekdad; 4 Flash Games to Help Educate Your Kids. in this post, i found bomomo to be particularly interesting

This art-based game is beautiful. It allows you to explore shape, and more beautiful in its open-ended style that allows you to play and create amazing images forever. A series of bubbles follow the mouse in very subtle ways, in the beginning it is a little slow, so may be difficult to hold children’s attention. But, there are ample buttons to click and options to try. And, you can save the final results as a jpg file.

i like these types of applications because i think they are relatively quick to understand, they aren't that complicated, and they are really interesting. i think they would work great to get kids interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). here are a couple of other applications that are equally cool; pivot, light bot, and of course scratch.

here is my bomomo art:

i think bomomo is cool because i never created effects like this before. each mouse stroke is a new experience. and you start to wonder what other cool things you can make by changing the angle or speed of the mouse pointer. then you realize there are a whole bunch of other things to try out. you never really get it to do exactly what you want and you can never really make something you intend. but, i think thats part of what makes it interesting. you have to resign to the fact that its art.

i decided to ask a few of my engineering friends to try out bomomo and see what they could come up with and hear what they thought about the application.



JaredS: It was a nice way to generate random pieces of artwork. The different "brushes" provided some very unique forms that would be difficult to replicate using another more standard paint-like program. The app responds nicely to mouse movements and the interface is very slick and simple.



RyanK: Sort of trial and error to figure out what it all does and why and how.....I liked and disliked the fact that it tells you nothing. It was fun getting it to do what I wanted.



RobertP: Bomomo is cool. It’s fun to see what all the different tools can do and what kind of pictures you can make. It is something different each time. It brings doodling to a new dimension.



JasonL: if he made the size adjustable with keypresses and the color adjustable with keypresses this would be a better application. cause using the mouse with one hand and the keyboard with the other is a real possibility. and an undo button. but someone could take this app and become an artist with it having control on the color and the size of the dots would allow a "real" artist to make beautiful artwork. and if the artist needed new designs...just create a new tool with a different algorithm. but seriously that is one of the coolest things



ChadK: Actually, I think the cool part of it is that it provides a medium for art that could only be produced through software. Also it doesn't allow you to have a lot of control so you have to allow yourself to think more flexibly.



AltheaL: the program reminds me of the first time finger painting – having fun and being curious!




it seems like my friends had fun with bomomo. their art work is pretty cool. in all i think this is a really cool application that could be used in a classroom. what do you think?

btw, here is a gallery of other peoples bomomo art work.

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