THERE’S ONLY 1 THING YOU NEED TO DO:

Follow Strapped to a Meteor on Twitter or Facebook and mention Go Go Giraffe game to your friends and followers to get 1 free Elecite theme.

OR get 2 free Elecite themes if you follow Strapped to a Meteor on Twitter or Facebook and start a new thread on any of the iPhone forums.

That’s it. Special promo code will be emailed to you shortly after.

TO GET YOUR FREE THEMES:

1. All submissions must be sent to im (at) strappedtoameteor (dot) com by April 1st.

2. The email must include your username and a link to a Twitter/Facebook post or a forum thread that you made.

3. However you mention the game just remember, you must include the names Go Go Giraffe, Strapped to a Meteor and “Available on Apple App Store April 1st.”

Thanks for all of your support guys, and don’t forget to grab a copy of Go Go Giraffe, April 1st on Apple App Store!

It may be a little too early to talk about it but it’s my day off and I need something to do. If you haven’t been following us on Facebook or Twitter, you’re missing out on some sweet action!

For the last couple of weeks, our team’s been working on a brand new theme concept designed to rock your socks off LOL; let’s give it codename: 2011.

You be the judge…

This theme will support BlackBerry handhelds running OS 4.6 and up. It will also feature Compro Dynamics (basically, super speedy performance), dual-screens (lots of ‘em), customizable slots, even a weather icon; heck, we might have a trial version too!

As for the release date, all I can say is sometime in Dec of 2010.

We might be looking for a few more beta testers so keep an eye on this post

What do you guys think?

Thanks for everyone’s support. Beta is now closed. All considered candidates have been emailed.

PHASE ONE (COMPLETE): Concept Phase one began with two areas of focus: 1) direction and 2) features. The following are features we will incorporate, based on your feedback in the comments.

1. DIRECTION:  Simple + Fast / Clean (No heavy-svg coded animations) / Feature rich + Customizeable
2. FEATURES:  4-8 Custom Icons on Homescreen / Spacebar for Quick Launch / Medium-Large Text / Bottom Zen / Time + Date launch their Apps / Wallpaper friendly / Profiles + Weather slot / No Precision icons, no transitions and definitely no FIXED icons.

Thanks for all of your input during this phase. I read through all of your comments and made decisions based on the most popular feature requests. As a note, many of you asked for the ability to change font size or color — I wanted to address this specifically and let you know that it is currently not possible. However, as for the rest of the requests, there was a general consensus among you and I’m confident that we are on the track to build your DREAM theme! PHASE TWO (COMPLETE): Framework The following draft depicts the foundation of your DREAM theme. This composition has been created with your input from Phase one in mind.

Your DREAM theme has two modes: full (first image) and minimized (second image) that you may switch between at any time using a button to the right of date/time. Full mode includes hidden today, weather slot, profiles button, 8 docked customizeable icons, spacebar quicklaunch (for non-touch devices), large date/time, and is is wallpaper friendly. Minimized mode includes hidden today, 8 customizeable icons in a vertical sliding dock, profiles button and is wallpaper friendly. Figures (N) and (M) represent area for the Notification items and unread Messages indicator, respectively. Based on your comments (thanks!), the large date/time will remain the same in both modes but the profile icon + mode switch button will resize. Many of you asked for a numeric battery/signal, so we are going that route.  You’ve convinced me to keep the weather slot for both modes. Also, there was a lot of talk about support for hotkeys so I will implement that as well.

PHASE THREE (COMPLETE): Design Onward! Based on all the feedback (the large majority of which was regarding the features of the theme), I’ve developed these two designs around the existing framework we came up with. The consensus was that you all wanted something with bold splashes of high contrast color, so here you go.

Design 01) Clean, smooth colors with a sharp touch of contrast. Design 02) Gritty, futuristic interface with sharp highlights. Both themes have the following features: dual mode (switch between 8 icon dock vs 4 icon vertical slider), weather slot, large date/time, profile icon, hidden today, numeric battery/signal, HOTKEYS for everything (lol!), wallpaper friendly (admittedly, design 01 is generally more wall friendly than design 02 – but both will support it). Note: hotkeys only available for non-touch devices (the reason I’ve numbered the custom icon slots is because I plan to make them accessible via hotkeys ALT + #, as requested).

PHASE FOUR (Complete):  Beta-Testing The battle over the theme design was divided, with many of you liking features from both phones. Ultimately, a modified version of Design 02 won out. Changes included simplifying the design itself to make it cleaner, look less cluttered, and a different clock font (apparently nobody digs Terminal, haha). The first image is regular mode and the second is minimized mode (with a vertical slider) – you can easily switch between modes using the icon to the right of the clock.

PHASE FIVE (Complete):  Thank you to everyone who chimed in with names, after much deliberation we have decided to go with ORION as the theme name (Thank you Handsett – you’ll be receiving a VIP code for a free copy of Orion in you mailbox shortly!).

WRAP-UP: WHEW! It’s been a very, very long and exciting journey as we broke new ground when we first came up with the crazy idea to build this theme. I think it was more than worth it. We learned a lot from all of the feedback, from specific features you need on your BlackBerry themes to your ideas on layouts and thoughts on color combinations. And, as promised, I’ll be randomly giving away free VIP codes to those of you who left comments on the blog… so be checking your inbox for those.

Finally, I am proud to announce that ORION, your Dream Theme, is now available at Elecite.

Thank you,

Rob

Thanks for the awesome response… I’ve gotten in touch with those selected and you should have received the details in your inbox! Thanks everyone!

I just realized that our last 83xx theme was released in late 2009 (holy crap!) so it’s about time we bring the love back lol.

We’ll be rebuilding some of our existing themes to support some older devices and OS versions as compatibility allows us.

We’re also prepping for the Pearl 3G 9100…any of you out there? Make yourself known!

A quick google search provides us with a plethora of amazing artwork and conceptual design surrounding Tron. So, when I envision a tron-inspired cell phone – I see glossy surfaces, large touch screens, bright pulses of color, and holographic video chat with built-in time travel. Maybe I’m asking for too much (not really) but it certainly ain’t no damn clamshell. Kyocera decided to revert the design and mobile community a few years back with this “beauty” – Kyocera Neo E1100:

I mean, really?! A “glowing 2.2 QVGA display”, “1.3mp Camera”, “Bluetooth”? A “breathing lightpipe?” Well, it needs more cowbell…err, lightpipes. Now, I know the phone is a year old – but the original iPhone came out way before that and, I’m sorry BB user’s, it’s a great phone.

Don’t you expect more (well, maybe not from Kyocera)? I do. If you can’t live up to the hype, maybe you shouldn’t be in the game.  Or maybe I’m just bitter that my BlackBerry Storm3 hasn’t come out yet. What are your thoughts? What would your perfect phone look like? What features would it have?

So us curious folks at Elecite thought: Let’s just ruin everything!

And that’s when Project “Pustulio” was born. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Project Pustulio, checkout this mini intro here.

We can’t tell you very much yet, but we are going to make this thing mind blowing! It’s going to be a combination of some crazy game concepts that you have never seen combined before so stay tuned. Elecite followers will get a chance to take this game for a spin before anybody else!

What do you like most about games? What games did you play back in the day (other than BrickBreaker)?

Definitely not the type of office prank everyone will appreciate…especially if you work at a place like IBM (no offense to all IBM employees or employers.)

I’ll keep things short and simple and let the pictures do the talking but when xRollinx walked into his office on a Friday morning; let’s just say he probably realized that it wasn’t going to be his ordinary Friday morning.

This is exactly why I love my job! When we say, “We want you to express yourself…,” we mean it!
PS: No one was hurt or fired.

Then of course, it was all thrown back into my office lol. Good thing we have a very understanding janitor…may the Lord bless her heart!

Sooo…who’s looking for a job? We’re hiring haha!

Then, we get structured: deciding what will work for the general direction of the piece and the message we want to leave you with. So, off I go to illustrate pages full of thumbnail sketches that will layout the composition and look of the piece. These are brought back to the team to look over and a final composition is chosen. I then take that thumbnail and sketch out the draft on a full sheet so we can better evaluate the piece. It also helps when I switch to digital so I can have a rough mock up scanned in a background layer to refer to.

Above is the initial digital wireframe. Basic shapes are created and placed in the scene for composition. The look we chose was vector but we still wanted it to have a sketchy feel. So, for these wireframes I used my mouse to create all the guide shapes… but towards the end, I started painting in the details with my Wacom tablet.

Next, I threw in some solid colors to fill in the image. As you can also see, some very primitive lighting is established with the gradients to get a basic sense of mood and tonal depth.

Then, I started filling in the scene with even more objects and revised the composition a bit. Some of the objects you see in the layout are actually here in my space at the studio as well Here, I’ve started adding slight details to the objects and brought in more color. This was discussed the team again to touch base on final thoughts before setting the lighting and final revisements.

Great lighting is essential to any piece, and here I try my best to establish the mood and atmosphere we wanted to convey. I chose a strong source, albeit with some artistic license, and developed the rest based on the scene objects. Last minute details are thrown in (can you spot my name?) and some adjustments are made to tie in with the site overall.

Well, what are your thoughts/questions/criticisms? Are you interested in seeing more making-of’s – more theme previews – designer interviews? Make some suggestions!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Project Fernando, checkout my earlier post here.

We can’t reveal too much goodness just yet but we’re definitely hoping to introduce a new innovation to the BlackBerry platform.

The application will be closed to the public at first and only a hand full of names will be invited to participate in our private beta program. We’ll be looking for a few hundred folks interested in trying out SLYNC and sending in feedback. If you’re interested, stick around and we’ll throw out some inside info soon.

Excited yet?!