New art form: Graffiti/freehand

TheBroth as a platform for collaborative art will soon see whole range of new art forms. One of the coolest art forms, graffiti, will soon enter open beta.

NOTE: If you like to test the new graffiti mode, please message Zaphod B to gain access.

So what does that mean - does it mean the end of mosaics? No! Of course not. Mosaics will stay. Art of different types will coexist. The point is - at TheBroth, you can collaborate. You can load and continue and alter others’ works.

All the amazing TheBroth features that we’ve been able to introduce since we moved the tile rendering from Ajax to Flash will still be there. Dragging, rotation, multi-move, slide-under… you name it! Just don’t expect it in the early beta! :-)

This new mode - some call it sketching, drawing, freehand, painting, or graffiti - and the whole bunch of new modes we’ve got in the pipeline, they’ll have all the features that make TheBroth what it is: You can work together, you can watch others, you can work alone, you can import, change, view the replay… and use all those nifty tricks in terms of moving, dragging, rotating.

Limitations

And you’ll be somehow limited too - not unlike the mosaic, there’ll be a limit to how many strokes you can do. This is just how TheBroth works: imagine we had a public graffiti room and people would just add more and more and more layers of virtual paint. Before you know it, it would take FOREVER to load all the data that make up that painting.

So - there will be a limit of strokes. We call them paths. When you begin to draw a line, you’re basically adding lots of points, and when you release the mouse, the path is complete and stored with your name. This way everyone can still see who’s moving what and what the individual contributions are once the artwork is saved.

We’ll be limiting the amount of points that can be used in each room. When all the points are used up, but people continue to paint, then old points will be recycled so that there’s never more than a certain number of points used. We’ll choose a number that is high enough to allow for detailed artworks but low enough so that each room or artwork can load quickly.

A (welcome) side effect of this limitation of available points is yet again a leveling of the playing field. You can’t just add layer after layer of paint - you have to be economical. This is not Photoshop or Paintshop Pro or Coreldraw or whatever your favorite drawing application is. This is collaborative art on the internet, free, in your web browser! :-)

A new beginning…

Let this serve as the official announcement that TheBroth as a collaborative art platform has sufficiently matured. We’re now ready to add a lot of cool new art forms to … ermm… the broth. I can’t even spell that any other than TheBroth anymore.. :-)

This new mode we’re calling graffiti for now because that’s where the inspiration came from. When we showed TheBroth to new users, they often felt that making art with tiles just takes too long. Well, one thing is certainly true, good mosaic artworks take a least an hour. We just have to accept, advanced mosaicing is not for everyone!

Now, everyone is familiar with paint programs, and in this new mode, you’ll be able to create something quite acceptable in 30 seconds flat. I am certain that once we have all the advanced features, people will again begin tinkering and create art that’s so outstanding, you could NOT create it 30 seconds. But the difference is - in the mosaic, you can’t do much in 5-10 minutes. In the graffiti mode, you can.

I believe that good mosaics are so outstanding and amazing because they are mosaics. They will always look a tad different than graffiti art - and certainly different from these other (top secret, hush hush) art forms that we’re going to implement soon.

I’m going to also announce this in the forum because it’s easier to comment there - and I have the feeling that there’ll be some comments to this revelation! :-)

Discuss in the forum: http://www.thebroth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6770