Mouse Path Artwork

**imSuck** · 01-22-2010 11:26 AM

I found a really cool article on Gizmodo about a graphic designer by the name of Antoly Zenkov who used a small Java applet to record his mouse movements while working in Photoshop for 3 hours.

The results is an etch-a-sketch esque webbing of mouse trails and dots. The circles are where the mouse "paused". The bigger the circle, the longer the delay.

This little application is available for both Mac and PC so you can create your own mouse trail artwork, so-to-speak.

The program creates the paths on a flat white background in tiff format with no transparency. Atonly most likely did a color range selection and removed all the white from the image and simply overlayed it over a screenshot of his workspace to achieve the image below.

I didn't bother doing this as I was working in multiple programs; what you see in my results is about an hour of telecom auditing, a little bit of web surfing and a little bit of Photoshop work. The big circle in the bottom-right was my lunch break ;)

Download the Java applet:
mousepath.exe.zip (PC)
mousepath.jar (Mac)

How to use:
Simply open the applet, and tab into whatever you're working on. It will record and draw all your movements in the background. When you want to save a snapshot of the progress (does not reset work), press the "S" key. To wipe everything and restart, press the "R" key.

Atonly's results (3 hours) click for full resolution:

My results (1.5 hours) click for full resolution:

Source: Gizmodo