Cassini - Limited Drawing App

The Cassini ECS-1 Electrographic Creation Suite is a fixed-format drawing instrument for iPad and Apple Pencil.

It provides a 1000 by 500 pixel canvas, a 12-colour palette, a single undo state, and no layers. These constraints are not provisional. They will not be expanded in a future update. The system is designed to limit the operator's choices in order to encourage deliberate, creative work.

INSTRUMENT SPECIFICATIONS

• Fixed 1000 x 500 pixel canvas at 2:1 aspect ratio
• 12-colour palette model with 16 built-in palettes
• Single undo/redo state
• Single-layer drawing surface
• Apple Pencil required

DRAWING TOOLS

Eight tools, each with a small number of configurable parameters: Brush, Pixel, Eraser, Rake, Shape, Fill, Select, and Drop. Brush shapes, stroke widths, and fill tolerances are selected from predefined sets. There are no sliders with 256 positions. You choose from the options provided.

PALETTE SYSTEM

Sixteen curated palettes are provided in firmware. Additional palettes may be generated from any selected colour via monochromatic or hue-shifted distribution, then recorded to device memory. The camera tool can extract a palette from a photograph. Custom RGB colour entry is not supported.

REAL-TIME EFFECTS

Six destructive pixel processing effects: Kaleido, Split, Chippy, Gaussian, Telematic, and McMaster. Each effect may be tuned via parameter controls or applied at random. All effects write directly to the canvas. There is no preview mode and no non-destructive pipeline.

BLANKING PANELS

A configurable masking overlay that shields portions of the canvas from all drawing operations. Available in frame, stripe, checkerboard, and circle patterns. Position, region, and inversion are operator-adjustable. Functions as a constraint-based alternative to layers.

PATTERNS

Fifteen procedural fill patterns including checkerboard, hexagonal tiling, Hilbert curve, Sierpinski triangle, brick wall, and binary-tree maze. All patterns are deterministic.

CAMERA

Capture a photograph and insert it onto the canvas, automatically rasterised and conformed to the active 12-colour palette. Optionally extract a palette from the captured image before insertion.

FILE SYSTEM

Each file contains three canvas memory slots. Files are assigned system-generated names. The operator cannot specify custom names. There is no automatic saving.

EXPORT

Finished images are exported in PNG format at 1x, 2x, or 4x resolution via the on-device print slot.

The Cassini ECS-1 does not accommodate every workflow. It has its workflow. You work within it.