Tools and Toys
The tools range from fun toys to powerful, professional tools, and most of them are free! Many integrate with Google so you may want to create a Google account just for this project - it's up to you. Most, but not all of these tools are web-based.
You should be able to open this up, figure out how it works and have fun with this. There are lots of online "toys" that are actually worth playing with just for the experience, they'll give you ideas.
This category is for things that may take a little learning but don't need lots of effort.
These items will require some studying but are worth the time. You can watch a few YouTube videos to get to grips with it, right?
These are complex tools for those who are more technically minded, or researchers or professionals. But hey, don't let that stop you.
Rasturbator is fabulous tool. It chops up your image so that you can print it on twenty or thirty pages, glue them together to fill an entire wall.
You describe the sort of music you want to hear, and A.I creates a playlist based on that description.
I added "post-punk-industrial tribal drums distorted guitar with funk bass, creating incredibly anger and tense discordant melodic noise" and it made this list - how'd it do?
Give this app a short piece of midi and it will generate a repeating generative version of it, Philip Glass style.
This wonderful tune creates interesting chord progressions for you. I tend to choose piano, turn off drums and set the bpm to around 80.
You have to pay to download the midi, but there are ways around this, using tools that turn recorded audio into midi. Although this may introduce errors or inaccuracies, we will live with these happy accidents.
A brilliant list of idioms. For fun, pick one at random and "bend" it slightly to give it a different meaning.
A brilliant tool to morph between two images. You plot the points, it generates a gif file.
Single line examples of how to do all sorts of things with Javascript
WayScript lets you create webhook functions, like APIs, or workflows using a visual workflow editor.
You can use Python, Javascript and SQL.
A lovely tool for creating "unfolding stories" that get longer, interactive narrative style, but different. You can add paragraphs, choices and add image URLs (which is interesting, because that means you *could* use almost any image out there on the web.
For developers, stories can be output in .json format, meaning *real writers* could use this tool to "tell a story" and developers might incorporate it into a game easily. Interesting.
Create animated explainer videos, animations and more easily. I made this movie ident in a few seconds.
Lovely tool that uses AI (though why we need to know that, I don't know) to help you create regular expressions (if you don't know what those are, count your blessings).
Lots of example text-based A.I apps that you can use to help your ideas along. If you like what they do, you could maybe integrate that feature via an API into your app.
Nice little SVG doodling app. A sort of join the dots way of working, maybe for making plans.
Need help creating a name for something out of other words? This app lets you add a number of words then makes all the alternatives for you.
Draw your design with simple colours and have A.I turn it into a more realistic image.
This particular timeline has a collection of disgraceful peoples' pronouncements surrounding Covid, from Toby Young to Julia Hartley-Brewer.
But the tool itself, is a pretty amazing tool for creating timelines, with features such as being able to import from Google Calendar.
A coding-for-kids environment, with Scratch-like block coding, or indeed Javascript and Python for more ambitious projects. Also has "Parent" mode. Free
This tool generates music (based on parameters) in lots of different genres and you get three free downloads. You can get a mixed .mp3 or midi file. Very impressive.
Text-to-Image Google Colab notebook. Run all the code sections, add your text, and get an image AND a movie.
Textable is an Add-on to a really interesting visual tool call Orange3. With them together you can do textual or data analysis and shaping, and filtering, WITHOUT coding.
A search engine that doesn't return the obvious, well known, high ranking results, but instead returns unpopular, obscure, less visited pages. Go find weird stuff you couldn't before.
See this <a href="https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random">random</a> link.
Free, open source games development environment. One day, I'll get round to having a go with Godot.
A site that has a collection of, er, things. I think this would be a great site for ideation, or being creative but you will have to figure out how.
Tonespace lets you play one note and intelligently augments what you’re playing with chords and arpeggios.
It connects via Midi (so to a synth or Garageband) and plays musically similar notes. Because it generates midi, you can “record” it and then use it in whatever DAW you are using.
No sooner does a new technology arrive, than someone tries to leech money out of it. A site to BUY prompts for A.I.
Designed to blend, or morph, faces together, I added an elephant's eye and got this strange output.
Not free, by any means (about $29 per 5 minute track), but an interesting music generation tool.
Amazing A.I. tool that lets you define the text for painted areas of an image. A.I then fills in and blends a generated image into the image you have uploaded.
Start audio processing with a flow diagram like language in the browser. OMG! Amazing!
Boomy is A.I. that automatically generates music in various genres. And as an added extra you can upload a vocal audio and it will bend it to the melody.
Create an infinite zoom video. Although I never quite get what I want, the results are always interesting.
Generates a number of random animals for you. If you dig around, it can also generate places, flags, food and lots more.
An amazing tool to create interactive games with a flow-coding interface, but equally could be used to make training materials. The primary use for this tool is to collect research data about what choices people made.
Free.
EasyLang is a web-based programming language that is simple and doesn't have arbitrary syntax.
This is how Python started, a language to help people learn coding. Really excellent.
An handy extension for the Chrome browser that lets you screenshot the page and save it with cropping or full page.
Brilliant tool, but paid unfortunately, but you can use it once (or clear your cookies and use again).
It turns a text phrase into YouTube videos with those phrases. Amazing.
If you need to tag, or codify some text, looking for themes in transcripts, this free web-based tool is great.
The Five Minute Poem gives you prompts, but also has a ticking clock.... "don't over think it!" Brilliant!
A slow, but create Google Colab Notebook that turns text into images.
Warning: Profanity! But, based on a training catalogue of lots of lyrics, this Machine Learning tool will take any subject and generate lyrics for you.
Oh my word! Amazing. A full audio workstation that works in the browser, on Android and iOS.
Another automated Haiku generator. I like this one because it shows its source (a wikipedia page) and somehow makes intriguing poems.
Unusual Russian tool for designing interactive narratives or story plots. You enter characters, and locations and plot points, linking them together.
At the end, you can export as a .csv file.
Brilliant text tool. Write, or paste in a few paragraphs of text. This tool then translates it to and from lots of languages, bending the words into similar but strange reflections of the original.
Interesting tool that searches Freesound, and lets you create soundscapes by clicking samples repeatedly, or letting them loop.
Although having some quirks, this tool let's you easily add backgrounds, characters and speech bubbles etc, OR use the in-built collection of graphics. Simple, but I like it.
Pay your own price for this great downloadable zine-making app. This has to be the winner of THE CRAZIEST APP ever. It's really good fun.
Select your mood and key, and Autochords does the rest.
p.s You may need Soundflower to record your chords...
Maybe use this tool with <a href="https://randomwordgenerator.com/">this random word generator</a> to create a new word.
Crazy livecoding tool for visual effects. Learn a few functions, chain them together, and boom! Crazy!
Musenet takes an "intro" and then "evolves" it with AI in different styles such as Beatles, Mozart or Bluegrass. Interestingly you can upload your own custom midi track and let it evolve that too.
I tried adding a file created by Computoser as a starting point, and I think it made it more Beatles-y but it's hard to tell. Doesn't have a download option.
The latest version of this fantastic image editor. Has fantastic tools for isolating a part of an image.
Not free, but you get 14 days trials and you can either select a character, or upload a photo and get A.I to generate a video of them speaking your text. Pretty freaky.
Give this tool a band and it will create a Youtube playlist of similar bands. It has a few extra params (like years) too.
A really easy and fun 3D animation tool. Draw a character, inflate it, then animate it by moving the points.
Minimalist distraction-free text editor. For when you just need to get on with it.
This tool also lets you save to Google Drive or to your desktop.
Open-source database/spreadsheet tool that offers something between a relational database and a spreadsheet, like NoCoDB.
Interesting Lenticular project, like Holbein's anamorphic skull, using a really interesting visual programming tool, Meemoo.
A collection of various text-to-image tools, often Google Colab files for creating unusual images.
Another few excellent tools here too (including a tool up upsize small images)
"Esoteric" generative music coding tool. Can be a challenge to set up, it works with midi, but is so intriguing to use.
Upload an image and this will create you multiple colour schemes based on the colours in the image.
Do you want to hear what your voice would sound like in the Temple of Love in the Taj Mahal? Of course you do. You'll need headphones for this.
A text to image tool. I put in "Digital Skills and Creativity at the University of York" and got this.
An online music sequencer that is pretty amazing AND A.I generation of tunes and chord progressions is built in. Amazing!
Enter some text, and it gives you your text in lots of weird fonts and characters.
This tech demo shows Style Transfer being applied to your webcam or a picture you upload. Lots more interesting demos <a href="https://streamlit.io/">here</a>.
Lovely free, web-based tele-prompter, or autocue. Really helpful if you're recording a voice track.
It even has mirroring so you can hold a sheet of glass, and reflect onto it, looking straight at the camera. Nice.
Another Style GAN tool that takes a sentence you give it and artificial intellgence creates your picture. Here I said "Boris Johnson looking like a pig". The result isn't always what you expected but they are always interesting in someway.
Lovely little flipbook animation maker (slight shame about the gridlines. See also Pencil, the desktop app)
Works on a laptop or mobile. Point your camera at something and AI tell you what it is (hopefully) AND translates it for you.
Another strange tool. Search for sounds, add them, and then draw on the timeline grid to play them to create unusual beats and soundtracks.
Strange tool that takes the popular sounds from Freesound and turns them into an automatic soundscape.
Brilliant map tool that shows which dynasties and empires have owned that land over time.
Choose the genre and mood and let AI generate a two minute track. 3 downloads with free use. Quite interesting. Could be used for a promo video.
I'm really not sure how to describe this image editor. Like nothing you've every seen. Just go give it a go.
Change some parameters and let Computoser generate you a music track, downloadable as midi or mp3.
This free desktop app can make some interesting noises, and if you use the arpeggiator (ARP) then you can create almost ambient loops.
Nimp is like Apple Quartz Designer, or Touch Designer. A web-based flow diagram image editor. Interesting.
Lots of high end GLSL graphics tools use this model to create special effects, this tool might be a good introduction to the concepts.
Not free, but you can use it developer mode to create compelling image-based Augmented Reality experiences. Great tool
A tool to compose or arrange unusual chords - and you can then save it in midi (maybe importing it into Garageband or BespokeSynth).
Strange flow diagram tool to create plants and leaves that can be saved as 3D models.
Totally crazy audio experience. Choose some words then travel in a universe made of those sound samples.
Disaster of an interface, but a nice tool that searches YouTube transcripts for what you want.
Brilliant site that is a mixture of a database of people and corporations and governments etc. and tools to "connect the dots" between them.
For example, take a look at How Fracking Special Interests Infiltrate the UK Parliament
See also: My Little Crony
Small pattern-oriented web synth with which you can create electronic music very easily. Lots of fun once you figure it out.
MIT App Inventor is a block-coding tool with which you can create downloadable Android applications as .apk files, FOR FREE!
If you select your problem type, Be Creative will then suggest creative methodologies for you to use.
An updated Creative Commons search engine (sponsored by Wordpress). Much better.
I'm in love. Bespoke Synth is a way to make music and sounds using a visual flow diagram metaphor. Never have I had more fun. This tool is fabulous and free.
This wonderful flag making tool lets you start from all the world's flags, or add Wikimedia commons graphics.
See also, this catalogue of imaginary flags.
Zine are small and often handmade, self-published magazines.
This tool is something I made so that you can draw all the pages and then download it and print on one A4 or A3 sheet. You can then fold it into an 8 page zine and colour it in.
The source code is here.
Like those jointed wooden toys that animators, or artists use to see what a body in a certain position might look like.
Not a tool, but AIAAIC's independent, free, open library of 900+ incidents and controversies driven by and relating to AI, algorithms and automation.
This tool selects a random person for you to use as a creative prompt, and then asks leading questions to help you develop your ideas.
Interesting idea. A.I turns your videos into 3D figure animations by uploading a video of you dancing.
Scribble on this strange Mondrian-like grid, click the samples below, and instant funky rhythms.
Grist is a spreadsheet-relational-database hybrid (like Baserow and NoCoDB). I like these no-code/low-code products because for most people (i.e not enterprises) a relational DB makes a lot of sense, but in terms of tools and UX they are awful, so people use spreadsheets and lose "relationalability".
The Cards for Humanity team have created this fabulous deck of cards to help you think about inclusive design.
Random concepts to help with creativity. Amazing what you can make with just three words
Canva's Comic tool, with loads of great templates is fantastic. Start from a layout and you can drag in your graphics.
Google Colab Notebooks are documents where you can mix notes and Python code.
They are brilliant for creating teaching resources, or, working on a project where you are figuring it out as you go, because you can create little fragments of code, and run them one at a time.
A really interesting collection of image tools to do really unusual things. Worth a play. Go make art.
Designed for kids (and very like p5js), BitBox is great for learning coding. It has lots of "stamps" and sounds built in.
Really interesting tool. You can upload an image, and that image becomes the landscape in a 3D VR world.
Create your own URL - I made myworldofnonsense, and you have a "live" editable grid you can share with collaborators.
Veed is an easy to use video editor, with which you can edit YouTube videos, along with your own content.
Is a fantastic tool to create zoomable presentations. When artfully used you can simply add a heap of pzazz to a simple presentation.
Find the latitude and longitude coordinates of a place here: https://www.latlong.net/ then have it make a poem about that place for you. Or just go to the site and see what it makes.