05.09.2008

Drama Breeds Drama

Yeah, okay, seriously - this weekend I'll work on updating to the new look. I've been putting it off for months and I'll most probably just wipe the slate clean and slowly re-add updated posts with goodies.

I'm not sure what to say about the whole Facade drama on MTF. Although I think it'd of probably been best to not hype things up until they were more settled. I thought I'd take the time to talk about a few things. First off, I'm not really "sided" with anyone concerning Architect-vs-Other Theme Apps. I stopped visiting MTF because it was balls and was growing frustrated with the community and moderation. I don't mean the moderators, I know most of them and they're all awesome guys. I just feel things aren't strict enough, through no fault of their own.

Anyway, Johnny basically hit me up one day and showed me what they were working on and it got me interested. I recently helped them with their website preview. It's not as excellent as I'd of wanted but I didn't get much time to refine it. I liked how the bars, rope and frames turned out however.

So, long story short - too late! - I'm working on a theme. No hype or silly previews or anything. The Facade preview site will feature a preview but that's about it. Hopefully folks will like it. One of the decisions to try Facade and Architect was because of the idea of themes for money. I wanted to explore this. A lot of themers spend a lot of time crafting themes and, to be frank, they don't get a heap for it. The idea of paying for themes is a bit alien. I'm sure there will be a lot of folks who complain and stomp their feet but then you could turn around and say "You don't think a month of work from me is worth the cost of a coffee?" One idea I thought would work well would be for the theme-app developers to charge for the app and then hire themers to create themes. This would keep themes free to the end user, besides the initial cost of the app, and give more top quality themes to market the app with.

I've no clue how much Qui will be. This is more an experiment in seeing if people are willing rather than trying to gouge them. No more than $3 was my first thought. Opinions via comments are welcome on the matter.

Hopefully things work out and it'll breath new life in to Mac theming.

Oh and yes, if things go well, there will be a Niqu 2.

09.06.2008

Such Smiles She Sought

Taking a trip back to the past, I remember one of the first popular releases of mine -- five years ago! -- was the "A.B.S.T." series of wallpapers. They weren't very technical or hard to make (they lagged my 400Mhz Pentium II to hell though), but some folks enjoyed them. By the time I was finished there were over one hundred and ten wallpapers in the series. The progression from abstract and blurry to funky psychedelic was evident.

Abstii was a thought to go back and revisit older ideas, but in a better way. Almost by mistake I was playing around in Quartz Composer and just thought "That looks pretty neat". My favourite of the pair is the gloomily named 'Dead Souls', pictured above in the preview. With almost lava-lamp like black liquid floating upwards. Thanks to the #TUMT folks for bugging me in to creating a slower, different version that turned out to be much better.

Last up, I've not forgotten about things. I'm still plodding along with the Leon HDD2 set as well as some other icons I'm finishing off. Hope everyone has a fun geeky day with Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC08) - I'm trying to resist the urge to do my Apple event ritual of lurking on MacRumor's live IRC feed and instead just watch the keynote when it's put up.

22.02.2008

Floating Lemons

Quick entry. It's been a really tiring week and I'm glad it'll be over soon. Hopefully next week I'll find time to finish the new VS front and GUI pages and use them. Happy nineth month to my tangy lemon pie!

Polished black plastic, glass and glowing under-light indicators. Comes in four colours.
Download Float (3D) Dock iContainer (Resources)

14.02.2008

Metallic Valentines

Two main things today. The first thing is; it's Valentine's Day! That means you're supposed to be all lovey and shit, swoon your girl and then waggle your eyebrows (that last one might just be me though).

A different style, it took me a few days on and off to get this done. Was fun to do, hope you enjoy it. Either way, I hope you have a nice day with that special somebody.
Download Drift Away Together: 1280x800, 1680x1050, 2560x1600

Next up I want to talk about Lutetium (collective groan). I've been working on eon for quite some time now, I actually started the folder icon back in november. Obviously I haven't made speedy work for lots of reasons. It didn't help that I changed how I do most of my icons and sizes nowadays, or that I wanted "proper" icons for each folder, meaning many hours.

So I sat down and thought about what to do, because I really do want to get this set done, out, and enjoyed. End result; redoing the folder icon. There are two reasons for this; the first is I want to separate Lutetium more from Minium. One of the first things Cary said to me when I showed him back in November was "Unless you out-Minium Minium, it's going to look very inspired by it." I didn't want the angle or similarities to loom over my head and make me paranoid about the whole set being too me-too-ish.

The second is the folder additions. Frankly they took a lot of time for each one. And when there's a heap to do, it makes it slow going. Now, some artists can do that; Take Lanham's Agua for example, I love that set, but a lot of the folder additions are quite simple. I'm quite certain if he'd been going for photo realism with the set, it would of taken a lot longer.

And so this is what the new folder looks like. You can see the angle is much more like classic Aqua folders and has more references -- with the seam -- to the old Lutetium theme. It still needs a few touch ups, but hopefully I'll have a few more previews to show you this weekend.

And here's the current what-if styles of the folders. I think I'll be going with the second or third for the first release (to actually get them out), and perhaps work on the first style. Rather like the previous additions, but simpler.

Hopefully you like it and it'll turn out to be more usable and help get eon out before '09. (Wink wink nudge nudge)

03.02.2008

Up to Speed

Catching up on icons releases, nothing new if you've been lurking MTF.

Notes

Transmission (Second Gear) is for pre-1.0 versions, so ignore everything except the icons if you're using 1.0+. Yes the HTML is horrible.

28.01.2008

Insert a Witty Leon Quote

Iconirific icons today ladies and gentlemen. First up, Lutetium eon. I was really tempted to slap a "The bitch is back" somewhere but eh. I'm slowly working my way through the main bulk, so I can't say I have a definite answer to when they'll be out. But enough of that, pretty pictures time.

Download Lutetium eon HDDs

About the set

Folders. The original idea was to use some of the materials and fashion Apple is using at the moment, notably the iPhone. Black plastic, glass and aluminum. I spent a huge amount of time sketching and trying out different folder angles and styles. In the end I decided that the whole set would -- apart from notable ones, like the Finder -- use the same angle as Apple's hard drives.

Folder, "Naughty" folder and Desktop folder.

The next decision was whether to spend a lot of time and do proper objects for each folder, or just symbols. In the end I decided objects, for a higher quality (although I might still do a symbol version, depending). I thought it would make them more usable, easier to notice and be more interesting. The desktop one breaks that rule of thumb, being all spacey and swirly but... Well. Hell. It looks nifty.

Finder, Full trash, Disc.

The trash can was a rather annoying one. I wanted something fitting, a bit different... I'm still working on it, but I like the idea of it. Cary had a chuckle about the pun, with the aqua inside it, I think. Anyway. Tomorrow I'll shove the rest of my recent icons in here and we'll see where we go from there eh?

28.01.2008

Dock Frenzy

And so here are the dock modifications I've done. Three dimensional docks are packaged as iContainers, and should be used by Panic's wonderful CandyBar for risk free swapping. Two dimensional docks are supported by it yet, so each of those are packaged as the resources and instructions. Please, please always remember to back up your Dock.

Smooth polished black plastic with built in LEDs, meant to match the Niqu style. It was my first three dimensional dock style.
Download Niqu (3D) Dock iContainer

A rather unique two dimensional style. I wanted Lätt to be out of the way, but have a different feel to it than the other 2D docks around. I think it works rather well.
Download Lätt (2D) Dock Zip

My first dock style. Not overly flashy but less distracting than the default 2D style I think.
Download Niqu (2D) Dock Zip

Pretty much the sequel to my Niqu dock, N2 is sharp with very minimal indicators. This dock works extremely well using Max Rudberg's indicators from his recent dock release, if you fancy trying that out.
Download N2 (3D) Dock iContainer

And now for something completely different. A mix of SIRO-like lights and smooth metal. Please remember to use alt+drag when resizing to snap the dock to default sizes, otherwise the lights won't align properly.
Download Eos (3D) Dock iContainer

Another quirky style. Textured white plastic with cut-in indicators, a bit whacky.
Download Aele (3D) Dock iContainer

I wanted to have something utterly simple with Aele. I wanted the pre-Leopard dock. However, because you can't change the hard-coded middle colour, we end up with a black version. If you're after a simple dock that reminds you of the good ol' days - here's your girl.
Download Aele (2D) Dock Zip