Pretty is important. But look at the mess!

After spending tons of time stealing icons off the net to keep things moving, I finally had to break down, buy some graphic editing software and learn how to “Roll my own”.

I knew the look I wanted. I just didn’t know how to achieve it. I’d never really learned how to dissect what I was seeing. And, why it looked like it did.

I bought Autodesk Graphic. Pretty good vector drawing and has never crashed on me yet. Good job Autodesk! Their tutorial taught me a lot! Mike Rundle’s flyosity.com website taught me a lot as well. Much of it, for me, was how to achieve the “look” I was hoping for. This was really fun because, by the end, I was able to get exactly the look I wanted. And, now that I can do it myself, I can make all sorts of designs that I’d never be able to find online.

I did make all the icons sit on black or at least dark backgrounds because I don’t yet have any sort of alpha channel for my drawing. So I blended them all to a black background for now.

These really snazzied up the keyboards and number pads!

Look at them cool colored glass looking icons. Colored glass with inset white symbols on top. I’d seen things kinda’ like this on the net. Now I can make my own at wild abandon. Too bad you can’t see the detail on the handheld screen. But I still know its there and that gives me a warm fuzzy.

Next : The new look.