We have some amazing news! Its April 5 and Shut the Window is now available on iOS and Mac App Stores!
Our tiny team is eternally grateful to each and everyone who has continued to support and love us. Shut the Window is truly a little gem of a game and I hope you enjoy every bit of it.
Shut the Window is a one touch game where you have to close as many open windows as possible before the timer runs out. Inspired by real windows of Amsterdam, play through 10 handcrafted illustrations. Frustratingly fun, each design has its own charm. Try not to pull your hair out playing it.
Explore the whimsical architecture of Amsterdam in Shut the Window
Features:
Beautiful and addictive one touch game. Breathtaking Illustrations inspired by real windows of Amsterdam. Frustratingly fun. Makes you keep coming back for more! No IAP, no monetization strategy, no currencies. Share screenshots of your favorite windows and high scores with friends.
The game is based on the beautiful and whimsical architecture of Amsterdam. To take a journey with us into the place, please read our Shut the Window Diaries HERE.
So that’s it! It has been a pretty amazing journey so far. What matters most is that we have 2 amazing products out in the market that we are proud off.
I sincerely hope you enjoy Shut the Window. It really is one tiny gem of a game.
Today we will continue our remaining journey through Amsterdam and learn more about the historic places and their beautiful “Windows”. Be sure to read up on the first part of A journey Through Amsterdam before continuing.
Shut the Window is the final few days before its launch and I hope you have pre-orderd the game on iOS and Mac App Stores.
Right, So let’s begin!
1. Qubic Student Housing
This beautiful building is a complex containing 715 student dwellings, 72 temporary dwellings and a café-restaurant, built using a prefab system with standard containers. The containers are stacked in two or three layers and are accessed via a central corridor. The fronts have been combined in different ways, giving rise to colourful street facades. Isn’t it just amazing!
2. OZW VU University
The OZW health care and well-being training institute is a landmark in architecture. The softly shaped brick walls that bring to mind the Amsterdam School are in keeping with the nature of the training programmes. The window spacing emphasizes the main outlines of the exterior and immediately draws attention to the transparency and vitality of the interior. You can recognize the shape of the building on the satellite images. The design is a high-rise with atria flowing diagonally through it, like a waterfall. Just unbelievable.
3. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
Who has not heard or Ripley’s? Famous for bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that we might question the very sanity of it. Located in Amsterdam, The Ripley’s Believe It Or Not is a cabinet of curiosities showcases more than 500 exhibits and artifacts in its five floors. The items, ranging from actual Olympic torches to a very unusual Fabergé egg, are organized in 19 themed galleries. You better believe it!
4. Red Light District
The famous Red Light District consists of a network of alleys containing approximately three hundred one-room cabins rented by “workers” who offer their services from behind a window or glass door, typically illuminated with red lights. The Red Lighting on the windows is what gives this area its name.
5. Double Houses Residence.
Houses in Amsterdam are so special because of the combination of skinny profile, grand windows, and architectural quirkiness that you just simply aren’t going to see anywhere else in the world. Amsterdam houses are leaning forward, they tilt to one side, some look like they might fall over and they have to most beautiful windows!
And that’s it! I hope you enjoyed this journey through the beautiful and historic city of Amsterdam.
Till then don’t forget to Pre-order Shut the Window on iOS and Mac, it comes out on April 5, 2018. Pre-ordering ensures that the app automatically downloads onto your device on April 5.
Less than 2 weeks left till the launch of Shut the Window on iOS and Mac App Stores. We are super excited for you to get your hands on this little gem. Shut the Window is a one touch game where you have to close/shut as many windows as you can before the timer runs out. Yes, it is basically a game about shutting windows and yes it is amazing.
In the previous blog, we spoke to you on the inspiration behind the game from Jose Guzar and his project Windows of New York. For us, we wanted to select a place that had a mix of both modern and historic places and architecture. Of course it had to be super cool as well. We immediately thought of Amsterdam!
Amsterdam was the perfect location for our game.
Ranked in the top 3 cities to live in the world, rich in culture, heritage, history. Amsterdam was the perfect location for our game. So let us take you on a little journey through the windows of Amsterdam which you would be shutting in the game.
1. Anne Frank House.
I am sure most of you have heard about Anne Frank. She is the most discussed Jewish victim of the Holocaust, known for her war diary The Diary of a Young Girlin which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world’s most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
2. Rembrandt House Museum
The historic structure was home to the legendary Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Rembrandtis generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Rembrandt purchased the house in 1639 and lived there until he went bankrupt in 1656, when all his belongings went on auction. The auction list enabled the reconstructions of all his belongings which are also on display in the house today.
3. Moco Museum
Known most commonly as Banksy and Roy Lichestein Museum, this beautiful structure primarily houses these legendary artists work.
Banksy is a British artist who mostly creates streetart. Banksy started as a graffiti artist, his works are often humorous and political. Many of his street works are in the moco museum.
Similarly
Roy Lichtenstein is one of the greatest contemporary art interpreters and a master of Pop Art. The influence of Roy Lichtenstein’s art is still evident in many forms of artistic expression: from painting to advertising, from photography to design and fashion.
4. Java Island Residences
Java-eiland (literally, “Java Island”) is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands. This place is like an oasis of peace, nature and modern architecture (perfectly combined). On Java Eiland, five architecture firms each designed an apartment building. These houses are distributed along the south and north quay according to a seemingly random pattern. In the four smaller side canals, younger architects got the chance to design smaller canal houses.
5. Pakhuis
Pakhuis de Zwijger (De Zwijger warehouse) was built during the heyday of Amsterdam’s Eastern Docklands area and was used as a warehouse for refrigerated goods. Today it houses a café, multiple halls and meeting rooms, radio and television studios, and multimedia workshops. There is no place in Amsterdam like Pakhuis – an independent and cultural warehouse that is all about sparking inspiring discussions, connections, creativity, bottom up initiatives and innovation.
I hope you have enjoyed these places and their illustrations so far. We will continue with the next set of windows in the next blog. Please stay tuned!
Till then don’t forget to Pre-order Shut the Window on iOS and Mac, it comes out on April 5, 2018. Pre-ordering ensures that the app automatically downloads onto your device on April 5.
Hope the holiday season is going well. Welcome to Quote Codes Diaries 4. Picking up from the previous blog, today we look into the process of animating your Animographies using After Effects.
Today we look at some basic practices that will help you avoid silly mistakes in your After Effects animations
As I mentioned before, prior to this project we didn’t really have much experience in animation so everything had a learning curve. The entire project of animating the Primitive Font lasted just over 2 months, out of which a lot of time was actually spent on errors we encountered due to lack of experience. Hence, I would like to take this as an opportunity to list down some common practices that you should follow for your projects so you can avoid silly mistakes.
Setting up your designs for import in After Effects.
This is the most basic but the most crucial part. In order to keep your animations scalable and customizable, it is really important to set up your designs well before you import them in AE (After Effects).
AE supports import of AI (Adobe Illustrator) files really well. Though it does support PSD files as well, it is much easier and efficient to import AI (explaining this below). Additionally, since vectors are completely scalable, I would definitely recommend designing your font’s in AI from the start itself.
Now, after you finish your designs, it is time to set up your AI file for import in After Effects.
Set up each character in separate AI files and break the character design in different layers. It goes without saying that you should have a fairly basic idea of your animation before doing this. The point is to separate each part of the design you want to animate as a separate layer. So, if you don’t have a basic storyboard ready for your animation, I would recommend separating the design in as many layers as possible so you have the freedom later when you begin in After Effects.
Here is how we did it.
This is our animationNotice how we separated each shape we planned to animate into separate layers
Importing in After Effects
Create a new project and go to file –> import –> file.
Go to File –> Import –> File to import your AI file
Select your file and under Import –> Composition – Retain Layers. This will retain the layers we made in AI.
Select Composition – Retain Layers, so your AI layers remain intact.
Now, here comes the advantage of using AI. Select the layers –> right click and select –> Create Shapes from Vector Layer.
Right click on a layer and select Create Shapes from Vector Layer
Viola! your AI layer now becomes a shape layer in AE. Expand, scale, use it in any way, your design will not loose quality ever!
Shape Layers created from vectors are completely scalable and customizable in AE
And that’s it! You are now ready to animate! Maintain a different composition for each character.
Keep your AE project organized. Maintain different compositions for each character.
The separation of layers we did in AI ensures your animation is always customizable and converting them to vectors in AE ensures they are always scalable!
Plan out your animation on paper first before implementing in AE and go crazy with it. Animation is all about timing and once you start getting momentum it is a lot of fun.
Next time I will show you the final outcomes of our animations and also most importantly how to directly create sprite sheets for your games/apps, from After Effects itself – Yes it is possible!
Till then don’t forget to Pre-order Quote Codes on the Appstore here, it comes out on Jan 18, 2018. Pre ordering ensures that the app automatically downloads onto your device on Jan 18
