How the 24-colour tin are chosen in Nijimi: what has been tried, what the phone had, and the idea of one arc that flows from warm to cold.
Where this landed. Neither shape is in the app. The dial was built, painted with and dropped; the single arc was never built. What shipped instead is a card of five colours across the bottom of the sheet, swiped for the next card, with a line of size stops above it. This page is the record of the dial as it stood.
Each is drawn at true phone scale, 393pt wide, with the puck at the bottom. Drag across a dial. The circle above it shows the colour under your finger, and grows or shrinks with the brush width when you are on the rim. Lift to choose. The numbers show how wide each pigment is to aim at.
Three rings of 5, 8 and 11 pigments in the tin’s order. Every pigment is its own block, so each can be tapped directly.
A single band that flows warm to cold, earths included. It shows why they need their own place: every sienna and umber puts a dark, dull patch into the flow.
The seventeen bright pigments in one flow, warm to cold. The seven earths and neutrals sit on a short arc inside it, closer to the hand, since sumi-e reaches for them most.
Two tracks and nothing else. The arc is every colour, with water at one end and the brights at the other. The rim is a thin line for width: any width, with eight click-stops, each one a step of the square root of two, so they sit evenly along the line. The circle above grows with the width, so the line does not have to.
All three arc versions snap to the nearest real pigment. The flow between neighbours is only there to be looked at; the engine paints named pigments, and a point halfway between two of them is not one it has.
A half dial that opened while the thumb was held on the puck. Angle picked the pigment and the distance from the centre set the brush size, so one gesture did both.
Choosing a colour moved the brush size. Colour and size are two decisions and should not share one control.
Six wedges showing at a time out of 25, with the rest brought round by dragging in the hub.
Rolling the finger changed the colour, and only a quarter of the set was ever visible. The whole set needs to be seen at once.
Brush width moved to the outer rim as four sizes: Liner, Small, Medium, Broad.
Travelling out to the rim is a separate choice, so it no longer interferes with colour. Still in every version on this page.
Tap to open, a preview above the finger, Swiss styling, and all pigments on one wheel in a panel in the middle of the screen, with a row for dilution and a switch for other sets.
A misreading. The dial should rise from the puck, show only the 24-colour tin, and drop dilution.
A half circle from the puck. Water around it, the 24 pigments in rings of 5, 8 and 11, width on the rim. Tap to open and close, a preview above the finger, nothing chosen until the finger lifts.
Was on the phone. Every target is 42 to 47pt across and 36pt deep.
The same half dial, but the pigments flow warm to cold along one arc instead of sitting in blocks. It still snaps to the 24 real pigments, since the engine paints named pigments and a point between two of them is not one.
Below. It becomes something you slide along rather than tap, which suits a flow: about 24pt per pigment is too small to hit cold but easy to slide to with the preview.
The name bubble that followed the finger is replaced by one plain circle, centred above the arc, filled with the colour under the finger and sized to the brush width. On the arc versions the disc outline, baseline, tick marks and band edges are gone; the rim is one band with four dots, and water is a pale blue ring with no outline.
The circle says everything the bubble did without words, and it stays in one place instead of chasing the thumb.
Water, the neutrals, the earths and the brights all on one arc, and the rim made continuous: any width from finest to broadest, with click-stops where the four sizes were.
Chosen as the direction at the time, and never built. Two tracks and a circle. It only works because it is slid rather than tapped.
The arc is thinner and further out, 44pt deep instead of 92. The rim is a single thin line rather than a band that thickened, since the circle above already shows the width. Seven click-stops instead of four, each the square root of two wider than the last.
Moving the arc outward gave each colour more room, not less: about 17pt per stop instead of 15, and 20pt along the outer edge.
The finest stop went from 1.0 to 0.71, half the old Liner, making eight stops. The circle above now follows the real stroke width, where it used to have an 8pt floor that made even the finest size look fat.
0.71 is as fine as the phone can draw: the ink sits on a grid of about 1.5pt per cell, and a brush smaller than that draws the same line.
The direction changed. Not radial, and not all 24 at once: one stack of five colours at a time, chosen to go together, with a swipe to the next stack. The thin width line and the colour circle carry over.
Explored on its own page, colour-stacks.html.