Happy Holidays! I have some really exciting news for the fans of Aviary’s retired advanced flash suite – specifically for fans of the cult favorite photo manipulation tool, Peacock.

We granted its original developer, code artist Mario Klingemann, a license to continue development of Peacock independently. And in a show of holiday spirit, he got it ready for you on Christmas day. He has re-christened the tool as Nodewerk and turned it into an AIR application that can be downloaded and run directly from your computer, even without an Internet connection!

Just to give you an idea of the kinds of incredible images that can be made, check out this incredible Flickr gallery by former Aviator extraordinaire, Mike Peutz (better known as mpeutz). Click through for the full gallery.

All of these photos were generated from scratch using code alone.

And here’s a tutorial video by Mike showing Peacock in action (please note that Nodewerk no longer connects to the Aviary website to let users edit each others’ compositions).

Mike even built a beautiful website and forum to showcase and share your new Nodewerk creations.

On a personal note, I can’t tell you how happy I am to be able to see an incredible piece of software like this rise from the ashes. Mario and the team that worked on Aviary’s advanced flash suite worked so hard on Peacock and it’s great to know that a true gem like this will be out there in the world helping to make the world a better looking place once more. 

So what are you waiting for?! Go download it now and make beautiful things!