PICTOGRAM

How Pictogram works

This site allows you to create your own incredibly complex works of art and share them with the world. Simply draw your masterpiece, enter a name for the artist, and post away! If you see someone else’s drawing you really like, feel free to remix it and make it your own. You can also compare the drawings two at a time to help create the global ranking of whose drawings are the best. If you see something inappropriate, be sure to report it and it will be swiftly reviewed by our team of unpaid interns.

How it was made

This site was created by Ethan Cline, Elijah Cirioli, and Matthew Attebery as a final project for a web development class. Although roles were shared, each member largely focused on just one section of the site. Ethan created the paint program, Elijah created the frontend, and Matthew created the backend. The site uses express and handlebars on the backend to dynamically generate pages. The frontend sends a variety of AJAX requests to get the data for posts and to update information on the server side. The paint program uses the HTML canvas to allow anyone to effortlessly create their magnum opus. The implicit ranking system uses an ELO algorithm similar to chess to adjust scores after a matchup and determine which drawing is the best. That may be overkill for a site like this, but that’s okay.