Snoopy leans on the minute hand of the Apple Watch dial
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Snoopy's new face was a reason enough for people to join in beta testing of the Apple Watch, but now everyone can get it — and see the results of incredible attention to detail.
The Apple Watch launched in 2015 with faces including Mickey Mouse's, but that was tame compared to the effort that went into the new Snoopy and Woodstock faces for watchOS 10.
It features Snoopy maybe come off the hour hand or throw something that bounces off the minute hand before hitting him back in the head. And when users turn their wrists and the watch face dims, Snoopy falls asleep in his famous red doghouse.
In an interview with British GQ magazine, the team behind the dial showed off the amazing amount of detail and effort behind the stunning series of faces.
“When you design an analog watch with Snoopy, he is a static character, right?” Paige Braddock, chief creative officer at Charles M Schulz Creative Associates, told the publication. “So all you really focus on is your hands and arms.”
“You wouldn’t believe the little things we go into to make them work from any angle,” Braddock continued, “but going into my first meeting with Apple, I thought, ‘I don’t even know if I’m smart enough to wear these. watch”.
It all started with a meeting with the Apple Watch team at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California. The end result was 12 minutes of animation work with 148 different animations.
“I'm usually a very organized person,” said Gary Butcher, a user experience designer at Apple. “So I felt: We have a limited amount of time together and there might be some anxiety, so I'm going to print out 148 sheets of blank paper and we need to leave the room after filling out each of those pages.” “
“By the end of the day,” Butcher continued, “we hadn’t touched the wall of A3 papers, but there were tons of sketches lying on the table.”
“The team started the initial brainstorming with typical sketches of him walking in the rain with an umbrella or something,” Braddock continues. “But there are some very specific Snoopy things that no other comic character does, like holding an ear and blocking the rain for Woodstock.”
And then there was Snoopy himself. In the 70 years since his creation, Snoopy has undergone radical changes in both character and appearance. The Snoopy on the Watch version is instantly recognizable, but is actually a compromise: the nose is shorter than his 1970s nose, and straighter than his 1990s version.
Even then, it wasn't just a case of drawing animations and showing them randomly. There were considerations regarding issues such as the repetition rate of the set. Plus, some are more suitable for certain times of day than others.
Consequently, and perhaps incredibly, this Apple Watch face is equipped with Snoopy's decision engine. It selects the best face of the moment and avoids repetition without making you sit for hours trying to see a particular face.
Snoopy's face is available in watchOS 10, which is now officially released by Apple.
