Friday, September 21, 2012

New glyphs are done!

So I spent a little time finishing off the glyphs for the app. I think they look "okay". At least "okay" enough to be in version 1.0. And, for me, they're "freakin' amazing". *sigh* As I said, my graphic artist skills leave MUCH to be desired. Anyway, without further ado, here are the glyphs I made for the app.
The glyphs for my app

Not bad, eh? Yeah, I think they'll suffice. I did spend quite a bit of time making them and hope that they'll be met with approval by the community. It was definitely not something I felt at all comfortable doing, but sometimes it helps to get out of your comfort zone.
I'll point out that these are the original drawings - I haven't cleaned them up at all. I will be extracting the individual glyphs and improving them before incorporating them into the application. From personal experience with other graphics exercises, this will take several hours. I just hope I'll be able to get enough time strung together to make it happen. I also need to get the description written for the application, so that's something else I need to get a block of time to accomplish.
So, there we are. Hope you like the preview here. Once I'm done and submit everything to the App Store, I'll post a link.

SLIGHT delay on Maya Calendar App

So as I was going through the submission process to get my Maya Calendar application onto the App Store (yes, that was actually happening!), I needed to create a description of my application. I decided to go see some of the other applications in the space to see what they had crafted for their descriptions - check for inspiration, really, not plagiarism. No, seriously - no plagiarism. I think I might just like typing that word...
Mine on left, theirs on the right
Anyway, as I was going through looking at "maya calendar" (as opposed to "mayan calendar") I stumbled upon an application - using the exact same graphics. In fact, their icon was the same idea (with a different glyph - see right for comparison). Well, *(^*&!@. And AS I WAS SUBMITTING MY APP! I found that the website I'd "borrowed" the glyphs from was the same site that had the application I found. *facepalm* O.M.G. Bad me for thinking they wouldn't be used somewhere else.
So what did this mean to my calendar app? It meant that I needed to have some new glyphs. I asked my daughter if she'd be inclined to draw them (there were 44 required) and she agreed. Then she drew the first one and decided "um, no thanks - that was HARD". So it fell to me to draw some new ones. I used some different sources to get ideas for what they looked like (including the ones that I can't use now), but I've redrawn all but five of them. Next will be scanning them in, then cleaning them up, then integrating them into the app. The nice thing is that integrating them is a piece of cake - I just need to replace the existing files with the new ones. Also, I'll have higher-quality ones to use for an iPad app (if I do that). While they will be similarities to other glyphs on the web, they're hand-drawn (by yours truly) and lacking the funding to fly to Central America to tromp around Maya ruins looking for samples, I have to do it virtually. Which means other peoples' pictures.
So I'm close to having that app in the store. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to get it done by the end of the weekend. We have a very busy time planned, but here's hoping that I'll have a little time during those two days to get this sorted out and submitted. In the meantime, I'm working on getting a description put together so I can just copy/paste it into the submission page and go from there.
Fingers crossed for a successful submission. Then it's the waiting game for approvals. I'll post more on that as we go through that process.