Maker Faire Bay Area 2024
Graphite (open source 2D art & design app)
Home: California, United States
Graphite is a new volunteer-run open source software project making a free art and design app for the creative community of makers ranging from students to hobbyists to professionals alike. The built-in visual scripting system (called the node graph) makes it easy to create interactive designs that build themselves while you draw, letting artist-engineers come up with clever procedurally generated artwork. Just like Blender has revolutionized the 3D creative process for millions of makers, Graphite is doing the same for 2D digital content creation. Meet the team of designers and developers behind the project and learn how to use it to Make your arts and crafts.
https://graphite.rs
Maker
Keavon Chambers
Keavon is a creative generalist with a love for the fusion of arts and technology. Photographer, UX and graphic designer, technical artist, game developer, and everything in-between— he is equal parts designer and engineer. He also enjoys geeking out about spaceflight and aviation, photographing rocket launches, dancing Lindy Hop, and unicycling.
https://keavon.comWhat Inspired You to Make This?
During my years in school, I taught myself Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Blender. Only the latter was free and open source so I could install it on any computer. The others weren't as accessible and it limited when I could learn and use them. Sometimes on the school library computers, I needed something that would just run in a web browser like Google Docs. A plan hatched to build another Blender, but this time for 2D, and it would also run in a web browser. As I got into game development and more 3D art, I learned about the node-based procedural creation process that is so powerful but absent from the world of 2D art. My vision and inspiration evolved to encompass that workflow as the basis for what set Graphite apart from its contemporaries. Five years ago I began designing its user interface and features, and three years ago I assembled an open source team of Rust developers and graphics engineers who were just as excited about the concept as me.
