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.
CalmlyWriter
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.
Wrong Covid (Timegraphics)
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.
Boomy
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.
Renderforest
Create animated explainer videos, animations and more easily. I made this movie ident in a few seconds.
Taguette
If you need to tag, or codify some text, looking for themes in transcripts, this free web-based tool is great.
MIT App Inventor
MIT App Inventor is a block-coding tool with which you can create downloadable Android applications as .apk files, FOR FREE!
Collection of Javascript Snippets
Single line examples of how to do all sorts of things with Javascript
Search YouTube Transcripts - Filmot
Disaster of an interface, but a nice tool that searches YouTube transcripts for what you want.
Colour Collage Maker
Upload an image and this will create you multiple colour schemes based on the colours in the image.
Text to Image Notebook (nsheppard's)
A slow, but create Google Colab Notebook that turns text into images.
UVI Workstation
This free desktop app can make some interesting noises, and if you use the arpeggiator (ARP) then you can create almost ambient loops.
ProsePainter
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.
Play Sound
Interesting tool that searches Freesound, and lets you create soundscapes by clicking samples repeatedly, or letting them loop.
PromptBase
No sooner does a new technology arrive, than someone tries to leech money out of it. A site to BUY prompts for A.I.
oTranscribe
This tool doesn't do it for you, but helps you make it easier to transcribe a video by hand.
DroneFX
Requires Flash. Really interesting drone/soundtrack generator... Creating a moody filmtrack? This might be useful.
Cables
Shaders are the code that runs complex computer graphics. Cables is a visual language to create shaders.
Meaning Generator
Random concepts to help with creativity. Amazing what you can make with just three words
Mixwords
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.
Zine Maker
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.
In-G
Interesting sonification example that takes Github upload data and turns it into "music". See this article.
Hydra
Crazy livecoding tool for visual effects. Learn a few functions, chain them together, and boom! Crazy!
ToonyTool
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.
Google Colab
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.
Marginalia
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.
Aphantasia Colab Notebook
Text-to-Image Google Colab notebook. Run all the code sections, add your text, and get an image AND a movie.
Computoser
Change some parameters and let Computoser generate you a music track, downloadable as midi or mp3.
Be Creative
If you select your problem type, Be Creative will then suggest creative methodologies for you to use.
Rasturbator
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.
Ampermusic
Not free, by any means (about $29 per 5 minute track), but an interesting music generation tool.
WayScript
WayScript lets you create webhook functions, like APIs, or workflows using a visual workflow editor.
You can use Python, Javascript and SQL.
Geo Poetry Generator
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.
Godot Engine
Free, open source games development environment. One day, I'll get round to having a go with Godot.
WikiHaikuBot
Another automated Haiku generator. I like this one because it shows its source (a wikipedia page) and somehow makes intriguing poems.
Teleprompter
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.
Flag Maker
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.
Faust Playground
Start audio processing with a flow diagram like language in the browser. OMG! Amazing!
Veed
Veed is an easy to use video editor, with which you can edit YouTube videos, along with your own content.
Monster Mash
A really easy and fun 3D animation tool. Draw a character, inflate it, then animate it by moving the points.
Thing Translator
Works on a laptop or mobile. Point your camera at something and AI tell you what it is (hopefully) AND translates it for you.
Portmaneau Maker
Maybe use this tool with <a href="https://randomwordgenerator.com/">this random word generator</a> to create a new word.
BaseRow
Open-source database/spreadsheet tool that offers something between a relational database and a spreadsheet, like NoCoDB.
Bright Sparks
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.
Charticulator
Fantastic data-driven drawing and visualisation tool. For when you want to extract data from unstructured text.
Evoke AI
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.
WebModular
Old skool synthesis, pulling out and plugging in wires. Interesting because you can type notes using strange notation.
Design for Inclusivity Cards
The Cards for Humanity team have created this fabulous deck of cards to help you think about inclusive design.
A.I Generated Spotify Playlist
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?
List of Idioms
A brilliant list of idioms. For fun, pick one at random and "bend" it slightly to give it a different meaning.
Mindful Harmony
A tool to compose or arrange unusual chords - and you can then save it in midi (maybe importing it into Garageband or BespokeSynth).
Acoustic Atlas
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.
Little Sis
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
Webpage Screenshot Free
An handy extension for the Chrome browser that lets you screenshot the page and save it with cropping or full page.
Textable
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.
ruDALL-E
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.
Studio D
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.
Pixlr Express
A more "Instagram-like" version of this fanstastic image editor with some funky effects
Vertex Meadow
Really interesting tool. You can upload an image, and that image becomes the landscape in a 3D VR world.
InkleWriter
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.
Meemoo
Interesting Lenticular project, like Holbein's anamorphic skull, using a really interesting visual programming tool, Meemoo.
Google Sites
Create a web site for free, that integrates with other Google content like Google Drive folders for example.
Morph Thing
Designed to blend, or morph, faces together, I added an elephant's eye and got this strange output.
Bespoke Synth
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.
OpenAI API
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.
Autochords
Select your mood and key, and Autochords does the rest.
p.s You may need Soundflower to record your chords...
Molecular Music Generator
Give this app a short piece of midi and it will generate a repeating generative version of it, Philip Glass style.
ChordChord
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.
Study Crafter
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.
Tuneflow
An online music sequencer that is pretty amazing AND A.I generation of tunes and chord progressions is built in. Amazing!
Talk To Transformer
See how a modern neural network completes your text. Type a custom snippet and see what is generated
Things
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.
Kinetix Studio
Interesting idea. A.I turns your videos into 3D figure animations by uploading a video of you dancing.
Penzu
Private Diary or Reflective Journal. Emails a useful "nag" message every day, which can be a useful reminder.
Canva Comic Maker
Canva's Comic tool, with loads of great templates is fantastic. Start from a layout and you can drag in your graphics.
Nimp.app
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.
PhraseMe
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.
FlipAnim
Lovely little flipbook animation maker (slight shame about the gridlines. See also Pencil, the desktop app)
SoundTrip
Totally crazy audio experience. Choose some words then travel in a universe made of those sound samples.
Wikitude
Not free, but you can use it developer mode to create compelling image-based Augmented Reality experiences. Great tool
Easy Lang
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.
Point In History
Brilliant map tool that shows which dynasties and empires have owned that land over time.
Tonespace
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.
mscompose95
Scribble on this strange Mondrian-like grid, click the samples below, and instant funky rhythms.
Pixlr X
The latest version of this fantastic image editor. Has fantastic tools for isolating a part of an image.
SoundBox
Small pattern-oriented web synth with which you can create electronic music very easily. Lots of fun once you figure it out.
UltraOutliner
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.
Style Transfer App
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>.
DALL·E mini
A text to image tool. I put in "Digital Skills and Creativity at the University of York" and got this.
Artbreeder Collage
Draw your design with simple colours and have A.I turn it into a more realistic image.
Weird Text Generator
Enter some text, and it gives you your text in lots of weird fonts and characters.
Web Audio Sequencer
Another strange tool. Search for sounds, add them, and then draw on the timeline grid to play them to create unusual beats and soundtracks.
These Lyrics Do Not Exist
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.
Constraint Systems
A really interesting collection of image tools to do really unusual things. Worth a play. Go make art.
Tynker
A coding-for-kids environment, with Scratch-like block coding, or indeed Javascript and Python for more ambitious projects. Also has "Parent" mode. Free
FlickGuy
I'm really not sure how to describe this image editor. Like nothing you've every seen. Just go give it a go.
Grist
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".
Freesound Timeline
Strange tool that takes the popular sounds from Freesound and turns them into an automatic soundscape.
Random Animal Generator
Generates a number of random animals for you. If you dig around, it can also generate places, flags, food and lots more.
Face Morph 2
A brilliant tool to morph between two images. You plot the points, it generates a gif file.
Magic Poser
Like those jointed wooden toys that animators, or artists use to see what a body in a certain position might look like.
Solitude
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.
BandLab
Oh my word! Amazing. A full audio workstation that works in the browser, on Android and iOS.
Openverse: Creative Common Search
An updated Creative Commons search engine (sponsored by Wordpress). Much better.
AIVA - AI Music Generation
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.
Minimator SVG
Nice little SVG doodling app. A sort of join the dots way of working, maybe for making plans.
Your World Of Text
Create your own URL - I made myworldofnonsense, and you have a "live" editable grid you can share with collaborators.
Music Historian
Give this tool a band and it will create a Youtube playlist of similar bands. It has a few extra params (like years) too.
MuseNet
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.
Electric Zine Maker
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.
Orca
"Esoteric" generative music coding tool. Can be a challenge to set up, it works with midi, but is so intriguing to use.
Prezi
Is a fantastic tool to create zoomable presentations. When artfully used you can simply add a heap of pzazz to a simple presentation.
Collection of ML Text To Image Tools
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)
Plant Generator
Strange flow diagram tool to create plants and leaves that can be saved as 3D models.
