Oekaki

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Oekaki (お絵描き) is the Japanese term to describe the act of drawing, meaning "doodle or scribble".

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[edit] Oekaki internet forum

Oekaki internet forum systems on the Internet allow artists to draw pictures with a drawing program stored on a server and post their drawings on the internet forum. Artists do not upload their images on Oekaki internet forum systems; they draw pictures inside web browsers with a computer mouse, a graphics tablet, or a touch screen. However, some versions of Oekaki software do allow uploads, and usually the rules of that Oekaki will state that only x number of uploads in a week are allowed.

The underlying computer technology used in Oekaki can be a Java applet or ActiveX. Some Oekaki systems offer enough features to create professional-looking images. The resulting picture is usually in dimensions of a few hundred pixels wide or long. The most popular applets used on English internet forums are OekakiBBS, PaintBBS, and Shi-Painter.

If the internet forum and the program applet are both equipped for it, the artist can choose to use an animation feature which allows the internet forum users to watch a stroke-by-stroke animation of the image being drawn. Some Oekaki internet forums also have a Continue feature (also known as Retouch), which allows the artist to save the image to the internet forum and continue work on it later. Some implementations of Continue/Retouch retain image layers only when an image is saved as an animation.

Oekaki system is extremely popular among the anime Internet subculture. Anime fans can post their pictures by computers which do not have raster graphics editor programs installed. Oekaki system enables a community gathering to share fanart and offer critiques and compliments.

There are a remarkable number of Oekaki message boards, Oekaki Central being one of the largest. People can create their own Oekaki board at sites such [1], though this site is often hard to use for non-Japanese-speakers because much of it is in Japanese or poorly translated English.

[edit] Examples of Oekaki applets

OekakiBBS was developed by OekakiBBS. It was the original Oekaki applet and has smaller palettes and fewer screentones than modern-day alternatives. Its features include productive color blending, multiple layer support, masks and animation saving.

PaintBBS is a simple applet created by Shi-chan, which utilises two layers and a mask system. It has many different palettes that can be used for a variety of different effects. As of version 2.04, the program detects whether the user's computer is set to Japanese or English and displays the text on the tool buttons accordingly.

Shi-Painter and Shi-Painter Pro, Shi-chan's latest applets, are becoming more popular, but they have yet to become common on English Oekaki boards due to outdated BBS software.

There are many other Oekaki applets, such as PictureBBS and BBSPainter, but they are far less common. Lascaux Sketch, the featured applet on 2draw is not publicly distributed but is probably the most powerful Oekaki applet around. A flash based Oekaki board can be found at Imageboard.net.

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