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A couple of weeks ago, Keith Peters (a.k.a. bit101) released Gifloopcoder. In short, “GLC” is a javascript-based coding environment for creating looping animations, and saving them as GIF files. A long, long time ago, Keith and I contributed to a book about creating Flash animations using math, and this project has a very similar feel. Gifloopcoder is tons of fun to play with.
GLC takes all the tedious work out of animating mathematical shapes. It creates a canvas for you, and has twenty built-in object types that you can then add to the animation. Each object types has properties that you can set, like its position, color, size, rotation, etc. Want to move an object across the canvas? Simply specify two positions, and GLC will animate between them. There are more advanced options available, but even these basics allow you to create very impressive animations.
GLC is exceptionally well-documented, so it’s really easy to get started. I’m going to try teaching my daughters (8 and 12 years old) how to use it. I think GLC is a very easy way for them to learn the javascript basics. No need to create an HTML page or deal with CSS (yet). Just write code and instantly see visual results. The example above – for example – is just 30 lines of code.
Check out gifloopcoder at:
gifloopcoder.com
A collection of gifloopcoder GIFs is available at http://gifloopcoder.tumblr.com/. I’ve created a GitHub repository for my GLC experiments. Feel free to clone it and create you own.
