My WatchMaker Journey

I first got my smart watch, a Moto 360 v1, back in December 2015
It was a Christmas present, so I've had it just over 6 months.

My wife was getting a FitBit, and I had thought a smart watch could do similar while still looking like a watch. I had no idea of the mild addiction that was about to begin.

I quickly found the Watchmaker app and associated G+ community (after a few false starts with other watch apps).
I tried the free version first, and tried my hand at making my first watch - what joy, at seeing my simple creation on my own wrist.

As my confidence grew so did my ambition. I wanted to fit it all on the watch face (battery level, weather, steps, heart rate, stopwatch etc) the more the better.
I look back now on those crowded faces with a little embarrassment, but realise it was a learning stage I had to go through. I see many newbies coming into the G+ community doing the same thing.

It was after I found +Terry Zahn's watchawear.com that I started to scale back the information on the watch, I picked up many tips and and started to incorporate the hands, face-plates and shadows that are available there.

I learned that watch hands need layers to give the illusion of depth and that a shadow hand is absolutely compulsory. It was slow going, but mostly my watches were still on the amateurish side. I began to loose faith in my ability to make a watch as good as some of the great artist out there.

In all this time I had also gathered a huge collection (close to 1000) of watches mainly replicas, that I had to organise on my Dropbox account. I'm glad I did as every now and then you need to delete the app and associated folders from your phone. This is because even when you delete a watch the app still keeps the images, and eventually clogs up your phone.

Around March I started to see if I could modify some of the many watches I had collected, this was another learning process, and I got an insight to the codes that some designers use. It was evident that complicated coding was not going to be my area (although I learned some basics).

The easiest thing for me to try was to add a dim or lume, as I had seen +Jim L do this with great success and I was very impressed when +Rob van Rheenen dimmed one of my humble creations.

I was inspired, and quickly realised that watches made entirely in watchmaker were the easiest for me to dim - this is because the layers can be duplicated and moved easily, and I dimmed many dozens of +artur r's work.

With some basic coding I added auto-dims to the watches, so the dim layer only shows after sunset and never after sunrise.

I was once heavily criticise for ruining work by "adding awful dims!"

That hurt. Naturally I thought about trying to please everyone, the idea to give an option to choose if you want dim or not appealed to me. After much searching I found a code I could understand on a watch by +DJ CellFace that I could incorporate into my dim work.

I was pleased with the way the watches were looking and thanks to +Ashley Hansgen, (another respected Dim Artist) I was able to give the user the option to change the dim colour.

Now, I sometimes get requests to add my dim technique to other watches, and have struck up good working relationship with +Mark Askey who has a love for INVICTAS and other big bold watches

The Watchmaker app is truely impressive, so much can be done and learned with patience and a willingness to explore the Watchawear and Watchmaker communities

When I look back over my first 6 months, I realise just how far I've come. I've learned so much and have made many good friends across the globe - Who'd a thunk it !



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