Tools to Make With

Free tools and platforms so you can tell stories, make experiences, and express what’s on your mind.

decoupling togetherness with real life I think I heard this as a quote somewhere, but I am not sure where.

While I’m reminding myself not to put any pressure of productivity on myself, I still enjoy making, expressing myself, experimenting, and playing as an activity. Rather than translating what I’d do in a theatre to a livestream, I’d like to talk about digital tools that build upon the skills I have as a performance artist. With them, I’m still using all the things I love: words, sound, color, images, movement, humor, story, character, etc to create an experience.

Some projects I’ve played around with come into the form of a podcast, animated video, game, or interactive story-experience.

Using digital tools presents some additional opportunities to moult traditional notions of roles by enabling stronger collaboration and iteration of what we make. Gwydion Suilebhan wrote of this back in 2013 on HowlRound in a series I just love.

Below are some platforms I recommend and my sense of how complicated on a scale from 1 - 5…one being like a Word document and five being “you need use JavaScript”.

Anchor, a podcast maker on your phone

With this app you can easily record and edit podcasts that get syndicated to all of the places people get podcasts. I have some hesitations about this platform now that it’s owned by Spotify. But, it’s just the most seamless experience to create and distribute. You can have people send you little audio missives, it has built in underscoring music, sound effects, and simple editing tools.

Storytelling

Check out Twinery, which I would put at a 2 or 3.

Animating

WickEditor is a total 3, in that you are presented with a canvas, simple tools, and a timeline. After watching some of the video tutorials, it’s straightforward to start making animations

Games Making

WickEditor can also make simple games! Check out this piece I made on WickEditor.

If you want to have some tight technical requirements, but the ability to make layered, complicated, GameBoy-esq games, you’ve got to check out GB Studio, which is what I’m using to create the

A Five

Glitch is a platform that instantly deploys web sites and apps, built around whole community of technically savvy makers.