Hatch, a consumer software innovator founded by entrepreneurs from Valve and Picnik, today announced the launch of Hatch Draw, a live drawing web design tool in their creative development platform. Hatch Draw allows users to draw on a browser-based canvas, add interactive effects, then publish drawings as live web pages, apps, games, personal messages, invitations, presentations, and interactive stories. The tool is ideal for artists, creators, and tech enthusiasts seeking more personal, hand-made, or unique web design capabilities.
Hatch Draw is free to use and anyone can access the tool inside of a Hatch project. New users can try Hatch Draw from this quickstart canvas: hatch.one/draw.
Features of Hatch Draw
- Drawings are immediately publishable to the web and can function as typical web design elements such as buttons, links, and images
- Drawings are grouped at an object level to support no-code behavioral triggers, reveals, and custom animations
- Individual drawing strokes are rendered as physical objects responsive to gravity, physics, collisions and other dynamic interactive effects
- Simple controls include pen color, outline, size, tapering, and thinning based on finger, mouse, and stylus strokes
- Pen uses Perfect Freehand, a popular open source graphics library by Steve Ruiz, to “draw perfect pressure-sensitive freehand lines”
- Free to use in any Hatch web project
Along with the new drawing capabilities, Hatch users can edit their projects down to the code, and add design elements, media, or functionality with drag-and-drop components native to the Hatch platform. To create custom interactions, Hatch Draw works seamlessly with Hatch AI, released in December. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, Hatch AI allows users to describe the functionality of their desired interactions then builds the code for a publishable web page or web app.
“With Hatch Draw, creators can truly personalize their online presence, from hand-drawn stickers and gifs, to illustrated games and websites,” said Hatch cofounder Darrin Massena. “We’ve seen creators building their no-code professional sites to include experiential details like immersive hallways, Rube Goldberg machines, interactive hidden objects, and scratch-away secret messages. We’re excited to see how Hatch Draw will help creators bring their unique expressions to the web.”
Registered Hatch users can create and publish pages to share publicly or keep projects private for sharing with friends and family. As part of the creator community, users can also make their projects “remixable,” allowing other users to duplicate and modify the content. Hatch creations can be standalone webpages, personal web apps, or embedded content in existing websites.
“We are seeing a renewed interest in the creative web– a web where people can build and play with personal software outside the confines of the social platforms,” said Hatch cofounder Mike Harrington. “We’ve added drawing to Hatch’s robust ecosystem so creators have even more ways to carve out their corners of the web without code.”
To try Hatch Draw in action, visit hatch.one/draw.
Create hand-drawn navigation menus, buttons, and links with the Hatch Draw tool. (https://lian.hatch.one/plant-page)
Create and share an animated drawing journal, all without code. (https://team.hatch.one/drawing-journal)
Add a live drawing feature and let people draw live on your project. (https://team.hatch.one/draw-editor)
Animate drawings on top of photographs to create a personalized gallery. (https://visdes-naomi.hatch.one/draw-art-gallery)
ABOUT HATCH
Hatch is an online makerspace for tech-curious creators to build and share unique interactive experiences on the web, no coding required. Hatch’s ecosystem includes a publishing platform, design tools, and a community of creators experimenting with interactivity, animation, physics, and generative AI. Through drag-and-drop kits, Hatch helps casual and technical creators make unique websites, link-in-bio pages, evites, portfolios, digital art, interactive stories, and creative experiments they can’t build anywhere else online.
Hatch is led by cofounders Darrin Massena and Mike Harrington, seasoned technology entrepreneurs and successful product leaders. Prior to Hatch, Massena and Harrington cofounded online photo editing service Picnik, which grew to 60 million monthly users worldwide and was acquired by Google in 2010. Before Picnik, Massena cofounded SpiffCode (creators of Warfare Incorporated) and Harrington cofounded Valve Software (creators of Half-Life). Since its start in 2021, Hatch has been dedicated to democratizing software for creative expression.
