I've joined the dark side!

I’ve joined the dark side… with my first digital-only face. I came across old LED panel photos, and suddenly got the urge to try a 70’s style red LED face. So I made this extremely plain face, in 2 versions: fixed red LED, and selectable color LED. I do have an analog/LCD hybrid I started a while ago, but it’s unfinished and has become problematic.

Interestingly, this one’s work was 180° different than every single other face I’ve made: its very first step was laying out and sizing up digits directly in Creator, and then creating the markings for the cover/glass in Photoshop using a screenshot from Creator. Every single other face I’ve made started out entirely in Photoshop and then moved to Creator. As plain and simple as it is, I do like it! Large easy to read digits, good number of complications, nice red glow.

Maybe it’s because I’m sitting in a room with low lights which makes it look okay, but, is the AOD too dim on an actual watch?

Another interesting observation: the “Thank you for submitting” email from Facer was an hour late this time around.

6 Likes

Been thinking of something similar. Still have a Textas Insturmets TI-57 in my desk drawer with the cool red display:

Wonder how many syncs you get in the first few days…

5 Likes

My sidekick was an HP-41C way back from 1981. Sadly it died, and while packing to move in 2012 I decided to dismantle it. I had to go sifting through my Facebook photos to find its photo.

A colleague at work had the HP41CV. He also had a short fuse at times. Needless to say, his had quite a few phillips screwdriver indentations! :rofl:

2 Likes

I had the HP-28S, the foldable one, during my studies, really liked it, but it dies on me too…

2 Likes

nice, the plainer the better with this crowd - lol. Spending less than 30 minutes on a face guarantees a spot in the roster I heard. Haha!

1 Like

I’ve done a few of the “retro” LED style and they tend to be popular on Facer. Your version looks like those “high end” LED watches that everyone wanted but couldn’t afford back in the day.

3 Likes

It also looks like a gymnasium scoreboard :rofl:

2 Likes

I my school days I always liked when our teacher (master of workshop training) sent us on duty to the material warehouse for stocktaking. He had there some old calculator with magnificent blue glow. Something like this. I dont know if it was the VFD or what, but blue LEDs were not available back then.


btw my most popular face is this subtle digital one

3 Likes

I always leave DIM at 100% opacity, the watch reduce it to 60-70%…
For my eyes it’s just about right.

1 Like

I put this one up for scrutiny the other day…maybe I should have put it here…Just working on a old-school LCD type with offset oscillations to try to emulate cathode ray interlacing. Strangely, it’s a lot brighter on my watch than shown in the browser.

5 Likes

I find stiff brighter on my waych and iI have the Brightnes set 3/9. GW4 Clsssic 46mm

Wow, you got 1-9 options for brightness? I only got 5… brightness envy.:laughing:

1 Like

Now that I’ve done a retro LED digital, it was time to do an almost matching retro LCD digital. Surprisingly, the free red LED version has been the fastest growing face I’ve done.

4 Likes

looks good!

2 Likes

Thanks!

I don’t get a lot of syncs (which is all good, I do this because the work is loads of fun), but the LCD version turned out to be my single best performing face so far. I published 11 hours ago, and it’s already at 74 syncs (out of today’s 119 total). And ironically, I thought I would only do analogs.

3 Likes

I’ve found that switching up sometimes is good to prevent burnout. Get tired of making one thing, make something else for a while. I think that is the reason I like doing cheesy holiday watchfaces.

3 Likes

Going one more step further, I had to make an LCD version with a digital chronograph, featuring tachymeter and telemeter readings. Unfortunately, the delay in the response time of control buttons (at least on my GW4) makes the chrono’s accuracy fluctuate, which might be less easy to spot on an analog chrono. Regardless, I don’t like that delayed response.

3 Likes

I’ve noticed that on both my former GW4 and my GW5 Pro. Just figure it this way, if anyone was really serious about timing things, they would own a dedicated stopwatch and not be using their smartwatch. Plus, there is always the factor of your reaction time using the stopwatch. By the way, great job on the Chronograph and the speed and distance readouts are an interesting plus to the watchface.

2 Likes

Tachy Tele Digital Chrono LCD . Yumm Yumm Yumm.

1 Like

Just down the street from me…

screenshot

I seem to have hit a goldmine with this LCD thing. It generated 67% of all my syncs over the past 7 days, I didn’t even realize it’s halfway up the top chart until last night. Funny thing is, the idea came out of almost nowhere.

3 Likes