I happily started working for them to make a kick-ass icon. There was an additional challenge as multiple icons were required: a Mac icon, a menubar icon, and an iPhone icon, which required a metaphorical connection between all of them. Buck mentioned they had an idea for using a doghouse for the Mac app and a dog with files on the iPhone, but I recommended against using animal motifs. Not only do we have the classic divide between ‘dog people’ and ‘cat people’ to worry about; animal motifs are just not very suitable in iPhone icons.

And thus the conceptual phase began, which we kicked off with a bunch of sketches of various possible designs and metaphors that could work in the menubar, on an OS X disk image and on the iPhone. I wanted to focus primarily on the iPhone icon design, though, as this was the selling point of the application in the App Store.

Some of the concepts for the iPhone icon.

In the end, we settled for the companion necklace metaphor. Some of the other concepts were nice, but didn’t communicate the application purpose as nicely or had so much branding value. Now the challenge was to extend the concept and develop it further so it could be expressed in a consistent way in all three usage scenarios.

The iPhone icon was mocked up with actual shape layers, and sent to Buck for review. Buck loved it, so I proceeded to iteratively develop it into the final icon.

Above is the full iconparison™ of the first mockup to the last proposed final version. It went through quite a few revisions until we arrived at the final version, with all its nice details that are invisible in the revision history image. The little silver beads on the necklace, for instance, reflect the pillow and pendants accordingly depending on their position in the icon. They were all hand-drawn in Photoshop, though I occasionally did a quick 3D render to check if it was all ‘right’.

I completed the menubar and Mac icon, just in time for the release of the app. Buck did a kick-ass job on the website, using some parts from the iPhone icon’s PSD to make an awesome consistent branded look.

Here File File is available from the App Store, and while biased, I recommend getting it. It’s one of those things that can save your ass when you’re out and forgot a file.

However, I won’t be doing a lengthy post on its design process this time around. Instead, I made a video in which I tell you a bit about the process and show off some timelapses of the game graphics and icon. Consider this an experiment, and let me know what you think!

Viewing in HD at Vimeo is recommended!

The Captive Planet is a planet rich in natural resources, a valuable asset in any star system that’s just begging to have its riches extracted. Appearance-wise, it’s somewhat similar to Mars, but with its denser atmosphere and extremely hot temperatures, that’s about the only similarity they have. It’s mined by Hephaestus, a ‘wall’ that spans the entire circumference of the planet, and contracts into itself as it scrapes layer after layer off the surface of the planet, leaving behind little more than dust. Hephaestus is a crawling city, inhabited by miners and their families.

In the game, the player gets stranded on the Captive Planet at some point and is presented the harsh realities of living in ‘the Wall’ and choices that will determine the future of the planet and its inhabitants. I’m having lots of fun with this assignment, and I hope to keep you guys in the loop with several other very cool environments and designs I’m creating.

I’ve never really had the time to spend a week on a painting, so this, too, is one in a series of speed paints. But it was my first actual ‘commercial’ painted work on my tablet. These days, I’m spending a lot more work on design work for games for iPhone and other platforms, and I’ve actually been using my tablet a whole lot. Painting is very different from my usual approach to designing, which involves making vector shape layers for everything. I’m far from actually painting for a living, but I can recommend designers to try doing more ‘free’ artwork design as well every now and then.

Quite a fun departure from my usual work: I’ll be able to show off a lot of cool stuff in September! Also, this month I will resume my regular posting schedule, including releasing a few more wallpapers and icons.

With its .99 dollar sale price and upcoming 2.0 update, Groceries warrants a blog post. I’ve worked with Sophia to make a few icons for this great, polished iPhone app. I can’t go to the supermarket without it anymore.

If you’re not so sure about why you’d want to have a shopping list application on your iPhone, you can do what I did; go through your iPhone notes and discover a few dozen old shopping lists, and then reminisce about that last time you were in the store and wanted to add something to the list. Kind of annoying, isn’t it? Groceries has almost all possible items you can encounter while you’re out shopping in its database, and lets you add them to the list with but a few virtual keystrokes or taps.

Grab Groceries (link opens iTunes) for $ 0.99 during its sale.

And yeah, doing some testing of layout features of Cocoia Blog 3.1 here. If you see general weirdness ensue, please bear with me or report the weirdness to me via Twitter or email.