I’m delighted to announce the immediate availability of Yellowtail, a mesmerizing, family-friendly iPhone/iPad app for drawing animated, wiggly lines. Just drag your finger to draw an ever-changing display of lively, worm-like textures. The software repeats your marks end-over-end, allowing you to author a line’s shape and its quality of movement at the same time. A simple menu lets you clear the screen, or choose between two different animation styles. The app is available through the App Store ($0.99) for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, and currently requires iOS 3.2 or later.

I’ve been developing Yellowtail in various versions since 1998. At its core, it is an interactive software system for the gestural creation and performance of real-time abstract animation. Using a playful animated transformation of the user’s gesture, the software produces an ever-changing and responsive display of lively, worm-like textures. More general information about Yellowtail is available here, and a whole heap of really technical and historical context is here.

Acknowledgments
Yellowtail was originally developed as a skunkwork project at Interval Research Corporation (1998) with support from Michael Naimark, and later at the MIT Media Laboratory (1999-2000) with support from John Maeda’s Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG). The iOS ports were developed in openFrameworks and were created with the assistance of Max Hawkins, Lee Byron, Jonathan Brodsky, and enabling support from the OF iPhone crew (Memo Akten, Zach Gage, Theo Watson, Zachary Lieberman, and many others). Thanks to all who have supported this project.

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