Watercolor Brush --- Online Version Released!

Finally, I decide it is time to release the "Watercolor Brush" online version to public. You can now try it here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/Bruce_Jawn/water-color-brush-the-free-paint-tool 

"Watercolor Brush" is a simple watercolor painting tool I developed in 2011 using Flash/AS3. The first version (2011 Chinese version) was no longer available online. I made some updates shortly after the first version was online, and then uploaded it to Kongregate. But I didn't publish this "new" version at that time and gradually forgot about it. With the recent announcement from Adobe to end-of-life Flash in 2020, and with no plan to further update it, I think now I should release it to public before Flash vanishes. This "new" version integrates Kongregate API so you can submit and save your painting online. If there could ever be a newer version, I guess it will be recreated using OpenFL/Haxe and compiled to HTML5.

BNote - A Free Online Simple Application for Taking Handwriting Notes

BNote is a simple note-taking app based on the the smooth drawing application by Dan Gries at http://www.flashandmath.com. The application is specially designed for touch enabled screen notebooks/tablets to take handwriting notes.

Launch the Application

Features:

Smooth Strokes: Thanks to the smooth drawing function by Dan Gries.
Double Input Modes: Pen Input Mode for multi-touch enabled devices and Mouse Input Mode for non-touch screens.
Experimental Software Palm Rejection: Based on input pad, allowing users to rest part of their hands on the screen. Works only in Pen Input Mode and designed for capacitive touchscreen devices without hardware palm detection function and build-in stylus support.

Note the current release (Version 0.1) may contain bugs and deficiencies. Report of bugs, suggestions and feature requests are welcomed, just leave a comment below!

User Guides:

Writing: The app will switch between Pen Input Mode and Mouse Input Mode according to whether the device supports multi-touch mode.
For the Mouse Input Mode, you can use the mouse to write the notes just as any common graffiti board app.
For the Pen Input Mode, you can use a stylus or your finger to write on the board. The input pad (transparent circle) is the area where input/strokes will be accepted while any moves of pen or finger outside the input pad will not produce any stroke on the canvas. This is how the palm rejection works. This allows you to rest part of your hand on the screen, however, too much part of palm on the screen may prevent the app from detecting any moves inside the input pad. So if you find that you can't write anything inside the input pad (while the pen tip is out), try to lift your hand off the screen a bit to let the input pad get focus. It is recommended to use a small point tip stylus pen instead of rubber nib, such as Adonit JOT pro/mini for better writing experience.
How to move the input pad (for Pen Input Mode): During the writing when you want to reposition the input pad (e.g., when starting a new line), tap the pen icon (above the input pad) to stretch back the pen tip. Now you're in protection mode and you can tap any place to move the input pad there. Finally tap the pen icon to stretch out the tip and you can write again.
Settings: Tap the setting icon in the top-right corner to open the setting menu. In the setting menu you can Load/Save notes as a .png picture, switch to full screen, change pen color and thickness, undo last stroke and erase the notes.

Credits:

Smooth drawing application by By Dan Gries (dan@flashandmath.com)
UI Framework: JiuGongGeUI-v0.1 By Bruce Jawn
Icon Artist: Austin Andrews (@templarian)

Links:

http://www.flashandmath.com/advanced/smoothdraw/
http://www.nocircleno.com/graffiti/
http://modernuiicons.com/
Support this Free Sofware!

Watercolor Brush - New Version Released for Android!

Here comes the updated version of my simple & free painting tool - Watercolor Brush. This new version is much smoother than the old one.
Build with AIR, this is my first AIR project for mobile platforms.
Newer version for web will come soon and I may also release an IOS version in the future.

Download the APK (v0.1):
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5V2PrQ8xX_EeEszYlFNV0l0Y2s/edit?usp=sharing

Bugs, feedbacks, features requests are welcomed!

Finally, some notes for AIR mobile projets:

1. FileReference.save() works on AIR, but you need some declaration in "application.xml" to enable the save function:
http://richard-heck.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-write-file-to-android-filesystem.html

2. AIR Guesture events on mobile platforms:
http://paultrani.com/2011/02/touch-events-and-gestures-on-mobile/
http://www.flashandmath.com/mobile/zoompan/

3. Some optimization tips on AIR mobile performance:
http://www.andymoore.ca/2012/01/how-to-improve-your-mobile-as3air-performance/

The old version for WEB (Flash, outdated, new web version is coming soon):
http://bruce-lab.blogspot.com/2011/09/paint-online-with-chinese-water-color.html

Paint Online with Chinese Water Color Brush

I once tried to learn Chinese calligraphy and painting when I was in primary school. Unfortunately, I dropped them for lack of gifts.  However, I'm still fond of these Chinese styles of art. So I have always wanted to create something to simulate the Chinese Brush and Chinese Painting in Flash.


This is a project I made for Baidu's APP contest. This toy use automata machine to simulate the dispersion of the ink, which is explained here.
A Chinese version of this toy can be found here: http://app.baidu.com/widget?appid=138371
You can share your art and suggestions at the Forum for this toy:
http://flaswf.freeforums.org/watercolorbrush-f33.html