The making of the Euclidus screensaver

Coming up with the idea and publishing it in the Brain Storage section of the studio’s website.

A couple of weeks later starting to get letters from developers who realized the idea with JavaScript.

Getting art director’s approval to create a screensaver. The next day the designer finds an unexpected letter in the mailbox.

Starting to work.

Making sure the hands don’t extend past the shape edges.

Cleaning up the clock face, coloring the second hand red, adding the logo.

The art director points at the fact that at night this screensaver will become a good lamp. Changing the colors to white on black.

Adding start animation and calculating the timings so that by the time the hands start to move, they show the right time.

Some types of screens leave burn-in traces if the same picture is displayed for a long period of time. Trying to avoid it by introducing movement. Abandoning the idea to have the clock moving randomly, coordinating its movement with the movement of hands. It also gives us the chance to increase the size of the clock. The logo is periodically inverted.

Looks cool, but not exactly like a clock. Noting that the shape is in constant motion anyway, the only static point is the center. If we get the center point to rotate along a circle several pixels wide, nobody is going to notice it.

Programming Mac OS and Windows versions and publishing.