3D Bookshelf is our second independent app for iPhone and iPod touch. When we started the project, we made a very conscious decision to spend a lot of time getting the look of the app just right and that includes the icon.

Although both myself and Kevin started out as animators and graphics artists, producing games in our early teens, we’ve pretty much focused on writing code for the last 14 years. So, we’ve had to re-learn a lot of the design trends and also the current tools, such as Photoshop CS 4 and Blender.

We brought all of this to bear on 3D Bookshelf. Aside from the book texts, the content production for the app can be broken down in to four categories.

1. 3D Content

As I mentioned in an earlier post, after some initial experimentation, we chose to write a real-time 3D book engine to generate the 3D book mesh so this meant we had no 3D content requirements specifically for the books. In the end, we only required one 3D model to be produced, the 3D bookshelf itself. This 3D model was produced in Blender and exported using our UtopiaGL exporter. The bookshelf model appears on the main menu screen where you can choose a book to read from the bookshelf.

2. Textures

Each book has a book cover texture. These were produced with Photoshop CS 4. In addition to this, the bookshelf model required a wood texture. This was generated using Filter Forge and post processed in Photoshop. You can see a selection of some of the front covers below.

3. Presentation Graphics

Since the central image in the application is a bookshelf, we decided to go with a wooden theme for the app. As I’m sure you know, this is not unusual for iPhone apps. All backgrounds, including the splash screen, were produced using a wooden background. Again, these were produced with Photoshop and Filter Forge.

4. Icon

For the icon we continued with the wooden theme. But the focus here is on a 3D book image. This was produced entirely in Photoshop using shapes, gradients and effects. The icon was modeled at 1024×1024 and it has quite a bit of nice detail up close. It also scales down to 57×57 very nicely. Below, you can see two sections of the icon up close. When this is reduced to 57×57 all of this detail disappears. But it can still be used for other promotional requirements, such as the web page and Google ads, for example.

As I mentioned before, we’re currently adding polish to the app so things may change. It’s an exciting time and although we want to get the app out, we’re determined to keep the quality level as high as we can get it.