Tag: Artwork »

Oh no, it's not that kind of 'skin.' I'm talking about the kind of skins you can put on electronic devices to dress them up a bit.

These oversized stickers come with a backing that makes removing air bubbles easier, are custom cut to fit whatever device you order them for, and are available in all sorts of styles. I mean a lot. It's Redbubble. The site is full of all sorts of interesting artwork, and if you don't like what you see you can always make your own like I did.

These new skins should be rolling out later this week and will be available for a number of different devices, including the iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5s, and 5C as well as the iPad Air, Mini, and Gen 2/3/4.

It's a little cliched to say but Starry Night Interactive Animation is utterly beautiful to look at and interact with.

Taking one of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous pieces of art, Starry Night, iPad users can watch the creation move as well as interact with it themselves.

It's positively delightful, both peaceful and wondrous with a similarly attractive musical score. Supporting multi touch, users can interact with Starry Night with up to ten fingers at once, making it an ideal app to use with others.

Using a finger to ripple through the artwork is a mesmerising experience, even despite the occassional moments of blurriness.

While I've yet to get a chance to see the real Starry Night, this app is a great substitution in the meantime. It'd be great to see other works of art implemented in a similar way in the future. It makes art accessible for the masses and brings it to life for children.

Check out Starry Night Interactive Animation now, priced at $1.99.

Delayed but not forgotten! Ok, so this is the most people I've ever had to apologize to at once, well except for that night in Vegas...on stage with Cirque Du Soleil...I've said too much. Regardless I must apologize for the delay of our Design A GelaSkin contest, as it turns out even we are not immune to the technical difficulties of the interwebs. Alas it's all done, our galley is set up and awaiting submissions, our voting plan is setup, and I'm just itching to see what kind of creativity you, our readers, are really made of.

If you haven't a clue as to what I'm talking about here's a brief recap of my blog post a few days ago. Today we are beginning a new contest called Design A GelaSkin, if you're not familiar with them, check out their site, each case is truly amazing and we need you to design one for us. If yours is chosen not only will you get a free skin for yourself and your very own 148Apps T-Shirt but also your design will be on a limitless amount of skins that we will be sending out for promotions and giveaways around the world!

Even if your not an artist we still need your help on picking out the best design so please come vote!

More contest details after the break...

It's official, 365 days & 1.5 billion App downloads later 148Apps has officially turned 1 Year old, Hurray!!!!!!! Now that you know, mark it on your calendar for next year, this year is your freebie but if I don't get a birthday card from you on July 16th next year we will sooo be fighting!

Seriously though, can you say "wow," just look at how much we have changed and grown from that very first Aurora Feint: The Beginning Review Jeff started us out with. We've reviewed hundreds of apps, added a staff of over a dozen writers, launched our sister site (148apps.biz), and have a Web Fourm section up and kicking, it's amazing, we are now easily the best gosh-darn iPhone review site this side of Mars.

We have you, our readers, to thank for all of it, so thank you. So in the spirit of thanks I want to announce a new contest. While I know we all love the App & ITMS Gift Card giveaways, we thought that this called for something special, Design your own GelaSkin. Let me explain, for those of you who aren't familiar with GelaSkins you definitely need to check out their site, they describe it as "Protection with style. Not Bulk." And it's true, their skins are ultra thin with amazing print quality.

Alright, I'm getting to the point, we are asking you guys to design a skin/logo for us. I'm not talking about a design for just a few skins, we'll be ordering tons of these things for different contest and promotional giveaways. Think about it, if you win your artwork could be on iPhones around the world, how cool is that! On top of that we'll obviously be giving you a free skin of your design and also your very own 148Apps T-shirt.

So heres how it's going to go down:

The Design
Your design can be of anything, App related or not, but it must be tasteful. You can get some great ideas and inspiration from the GelaSkins gallery page. Although it need not be directly related to iPhone apps we do ask that you work our 148Apps logo into it somewhere. If you check out the GelaSkins gallery you'll notice that many of the iPhone skins are cropped down from larger pictures, we can definitely do this as well, in the end the picture printed will need to be cropped to 1500 x 1500 pixels. You can grab a large version of our logo artwork here. You'll also notice that they recommend designing an optional wallpaper to go with the skin which if your skin is chosen we will post the downloadable artwork on our page.

Choosing the Winner
We're going to be stealing a page from the American Idol book here. The judging panel will consist of 3 148Apps representatives, each counting as 1 vote and then all of the readers will be allowed to vote on their favorite design. The most popular choice of the readers will count as 1 vote in the final panel. If there are enough submissions then there will be a semi final round where the designs are narrowed down to the top 3 to choose from and a new vote will be taken.

Viewing and Voting
There will be a submission gallery page setup where readers can browse through all of the submitted artwork for their favorites. The official voting and design submission procedure is still being discussed and details will be released soon.

Run Dates
While the contest is being announced today it will not officially begin until Monday, July 20th, 2009. Submissions will then be accepted until 11:59 pm Friday, July 31st, 2009. Votes will then be counted at 11:59 pm Monday, Aug 3rd, 2009. Results will then be announced on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009.

**One note about the artwork submissions. At 148Apps we fully appreciate artistic nature and encourage everyone to follow that nature and design anything they would like. But because of the wide demographic of readers we have we request that all submissions remain tasteful and reserve the right not to post any which we consider to be inappropriate or offensive. Thank you and have fun!

Welcom to the Design A GelaSkins Gallery Page. All submissions are added the night of submission so if you don't see yours right away don't fret, it will be there in the morning. To keep things honest voting will not take place until all the submissions have been made. In the mean time feel free to make comments about them at the bottom. Click here for more contest details. Spread the word!

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