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The best weekend of the year…Startup Weekend!

Published on September 12, 2012 by

One of our favorite weekends of the year is coming up on September 28…COLUMBIA STARTUP WEEKEND!

If you are near Columbia, Missouri and have an interest in anything entrepreneurial, this weekend is worth every second of your time.

buy generic cialis online

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tp://columbia.startupweekend.org/”>Startup Weekend brings together developers, designers, marketers, product managers, startup enthusiasts and even first-time entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups. Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups.

One of the 18 companies formed during last year’s inaugural event, Zapier, went on to be accepted to the “Ivy League of Startups,” Y-Combinator, and has recently made national news (TechCrunch, Wired, ReadWriteWeb) with their innovative approach to data transfer. Don’t worry, they’ll be back to mentor. Bottom line is that this event has already proved that Columbia is an ideal place to launch and build companies.

Columbia Startup weekend will kick off with a bang on Friday evening at 6:30 p.m., when participants begin pitching ideas and forming teams. The event will culminate on Sunday evening when the teams present their ideas before a panel of judges. The top three teams will be awarded prizes valued up to $5,000.

Even if you are not interested in participating in actual Startup Weekend, you can come to the “Awesome Party: Columbia Startup Weekend Opening Ceremony” on Thursday Sept 27 at Bleu Restaurant. Come enjoy food, drink, music and fun with the Startup Weekend crew to celebrate the 54 hours of awesomeness that is Startup Weekend! This event is free for Startup Weekend participants and $10 at the door for the community.

I cannot tell you how much fun you’ll have at this event…so you’ll have to find out for yourself! Check out columbia.startupweekend.org for more information and register!

See you there!

- Matt

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One of our favorite weekends of the year is coming up on September 28…COLUMBIA STARTUP WEEKEND!
If you are near Columbia, Missouri and have an interest

in anything entrepreneurial, this weekend is worth every second of your time.
Startup Weekend brings together developers, designers, marketers, product managers, startup enthusiasts and even first-time entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups. Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups.
One of the 18 companies formed during cialis last year’s inaugural event, Zapier, went on to be accepted to the “Ivy League of Startups,” Y-Combinator, and has recently made national news (TechCrunch, Wired, ReadWriteWeb) with their innovative approach to data transfer. Don’t worry, they’ll be back to mentor. Bottom line is that this event has already proved that Columbia is an ideal place to launch and build companies.
Columbia Startup weekend will kick off with a bang on Friday evening at 6:30 p.m., when participants begin pitching ideas and forming teams. The event will culminate on Sunday evening when the teams present their ideas before a panel of judges. The top three teams will be awarded prizes valued up to $5,000.
Even if you are not interested in participating in actual Startup Weekend, you can come to the “Awesome Party: Columbia Startup Weekend Opening Ceremony” on Thursday Sept 27 at Bleu Restaurant. Come enjoy food, drink, music and fun with the Startup Weekend crew to celebrate the 54 hours of awesomeness that is Startup Weekend! This event is free for Startup Weekend participants and $10 at the door for the community.
I cannot tell you how much fun you’ll have at this event…so you’ll have to find out for yourself! Check out columbia.startupweekend.org for more information and register!
See you there!
- Matt
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Getting in the (Brainstorming) Mood

Published on July 10, 2012 by

Now that you know HOW to brainstorm app ideas, it’s time to figure out WHERE to brainstorm your app ideas.

Where you go to unplug (emphasis on UNPLUG) and think

is important.

Everyone is different, but most people do not find brainstorming in the office very effective. I find that my best ideas come to me while in the shower.

From traveling the world to running around the block, purposefully take time out of your day to simply think. Stay away from distractions (i.e. emails and text messages) and think.

If you’re a member of a team, group dynamic impacts this step of app creation greatly.

Many Rockupied app ideas have formed at social events over a few beers. We went to a local bar’s Happy Hour last week to develop a few app ideas. We strive to make brainstorming fun.

This is yet another reason positive company culture is so crucial. If your team isn’t comfortable around each other, they will be afraid of suggesting “bad ideas”.

Dave (our lead app developer) takes

target practice on most of my app ideas like an artillery specialist aiming at clay pigeons. But every time he shoots down an idea, I don’t take it personally. Ridiculous suggestions from one group member can spark great ideas from another.

Our different perspectives of the world can combine to create something special. Empower others around you.

How is your brainstorming going? Where do buy viagra online you go to get in the (brainstorming) mood?

- Matt

 
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Bring Your Drawings to Life! The Grand Finale: Adobe After Effects!

Published on July 6, 2012 by

Our experiment into the world of animation is almost over. Lil’ Bob is ready to move, and he’ll do it in the name of science!

During the course of the last two blog posts, we have created and separated into layers our orange-headed character, Lil

‘ Bob (shown below). Now, he is going to join the world of the living by taking his first steps into the realm of animation!

Animating a 2D character is actually a lot easier than it seems, especially since we already separated all of his moving parts. To complete this task, we’re going to use the non-linear editing program known as Adobe After Effects.

After Effects is one of the premiere Adobe products for the composition and animation of layers (same as the Photoshop layers we covered in the last tutorial). With After Effects, we can give the illusion of buildings shattering, type on text one letter at a time along a path, or animate layers to different positions over time (we’ll be doing this one). It is an extremely versatile tool.

Upon opening Adobe After Effects, we’re greeted with this gray monstrosity of a screen:

The first thing that we need to do is get our Photoshop project file (.psd) from the previous tutorial into After Effects. There are many ways to do this. I like to right-click on the “Project” panel and go to Import>File… (this may look slightly different depending on which version of After Effects you have) as shown in the image below:

This brings up a familiar window asking me which file I want to import. Navigate to your project Photoshop project file (.psd) from the previous tutorial, select it, and click “Open.”

After Effects then prompts us with a window asking about how the project should be imported.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In order to be able to edit the layers the way we want, the project file should be imported as a “Composition – Retain Layer Sizes” with “Editable Layer Styles” as shown in the image below:

Once we click “OK,” After Effects creates a composition featuring all of our layers from the Photoshop file.

For this composition of Lil’ Bob moving, I’m going to make my timeline (the amount of time our animation runs) to be 12 frames in length. To do this, all I have to do is click on Composition>Composition Settings… from the navigation bar at the top.

In the “Composition Settings” menu I can make my composition have a 12-frame timeline by changing the “Duration” as shown in the image below (we can also change the Background Color, if necessary):

Now, I finally have a project file with a 12-frame timeline that is ready for me to begin animating. Each of Lil’ Bob’s layers can be animated within the 12 frames I have set out for it. This is what the layers of my project (with their respective timelines) looks like:

To make a simple walking animation for Lil’ Bob, I’m going to set keyframes (points between which a layer animates position, rotation, scaling, etc.). Let’s start by getting Lil’ Bob to look like he’s walking. The first step is to select the “leftFoot” layer I have (ordered correctly thanks to my alphanumeric naming system).

After expanding the layer (by clicking on the arrow to the left of the layer name), I can click on the “stop watch” (shown below) and receive a keyframe on my timeline. This keyframe basically tells my layer that it needs to be at the exact position (or rotation, scaling, etc.) my keyframe says at the exact frame that it’s at on my timeline. After Effects automatically creates the frame(s) between the two positions that I define so I don’t have to do each frame by hand.

Thanks, After Effects!

To create more keyframes (positions where Lil’ Bob’s oddly-colored foot should go), I drag my playhead (yellow, pick-looking object at the top of my timeline with the red line extending below it) to another frame along the timeline. Once at this new point in my timeline, move “leftFoot” to the its new different position (as shown in the images below) to set the new keyframe.

After Effects creates the frame(s) between the two positions that I want so I don’t have to do them by hand. Thanks, After Effects!

Right now his foot moves forward over 6 frames and stays there. Once the 12-frame timeline animation ends, his foot returns back to its original position. This animation will go on a continuos, 12-frame loop. Our feet don’t move like this though.

To make Lil’ Bob’s movement smooth and natural, I need his foot moving back to its original starting position on the timeline. I copy the first keyframe in my “leftFoot” timeline and paste it at the end of my timeline to ensure complete walking motion.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Keyframes paste to wherever the playhead (yellow pick) is on your timeline. Knowing where the playhead is at all

times is extremely important!

The image below shows my full timeline for “02 leftFoot” (one of Lil’ Bob’s foot layers). The left-most keyframe is his beginning position, the middle keyframe’s position is moved to the right, and the right-most keyframe is just a copy of the left-most one. With my keyframes arranged like this, Lil’ Bob’s foot will move forward and then back to its starting position as long as my animation is running.

IMPORTANT NOTE: In After Effects you can preview an animation by hitting the spacebar. Also, you can get a fully-rendered preview of the composition by right-clicking in the actual workspace of the composition (middle window) and go to “Preview>RAM Preview.”

Repeat this process for his right foot. Creating a similar, but opposite, animation will give the effect that he’s walking.

Lil Bob’s body needs to rotate, resulting in a bobbing motion as he walks forward.

I need to expand Lil’ Bob’s “03 headBody” layer and activate the Rotation “stopwatch.” Set this keyframe at the

beginning of your timeline. Then, move to the 6th frame (the middle point of our timeline as well as the frame where each foot comes to the end of its path) and place a new keyframe by slightly changing the headBody layer’s rotation. Try not to go overboard with this rotation; I only ended up giving Lil’ Bob’s body a rotation of 2 degrees.

Just like Lil’ Bob’s feet, I want his body’s movement to look complete. Copy the first keyframe (the headBody layer) and paste it to the end of the timeline.

The “01 swordHand” layer is going to be the trickiest layer we animate. This is because we need to change its “anchor point.” An anchor point is the x,y coordinate from which that layer derives its movement, scaling, rotation, etc.

For example, if my anchor point is at the center of a layer and I rotate that layer, the layer will rotate around itself from this center point (much like Earth rotates around its own axis).

For this layer, we want Lil’ Bob’s arm rotating from what would appear to be his shoulder joint. Since he doesn’t have shoulders, his movement looks a little more abstract. This will actually work in our favor.

Using the “Pan Behind Tool” on my toolbar, I can select the “01 swordHand” layer, click and hold on its anchor point (the circle at the center of the layer as shown in the image below), and move it to where the arm’s movement should originate (his fake shoulder).

After using the Pan Behind Tool, this is where I moved my anchor point:

The final step of Lil’ Bob’s walking animation is a quick rotation of his arm to make it look natural with the rest of his body’s movement. I expanded his layer, activated the “stopwatch” for that layer’s rotation, and got to work.

Much like Lil’ Bob’s body, his arm only needs a slight rotation with a keyframe of the arm’s beginning position at each end of my timeline. I ended up giving him a 4-degree rotation at the 6th frame (our animation’s midpoint).

If you’ve followed along with everything I’ve done, your timeline should look something like this:

Right now, my animation of Lil’ Bob is just a composition in After Effects. We want this in a form that can be used in a game. In other words, we need to “render out” our project to something more useful. To do this, I need to send my project to the “Render Queue.”

The Render Queue is where compositions go to become real things. By selecting my project tab in the timeline (shown below), I can select “Composition>Add to Render Queue.” This opens the Render Queue tab in what was my project/timeline area.

Since I selected my “lilGuy” composition and added it to the Render Queue, it’s ready to be rendered out. Now I must select what I want it to become, what files I want to render out of After Effects. This can change depending on what you need to do with the animation. For example, in a game, you’d want to have individual images of each frame in your timeline so you can use them in your code. For something that I just want to show off, like a video, I can just render out my animation as a Quicktime or AVI file.

We need frames, though. So, I clicked on the orange-highlighted word “Lossless” next to “Output Module” to get to the menu below where I changed the Format to “PNG Sequence” and the Channels to “RGB + Alpha” and clicked “OK.”

These settings will give me 12 images because my timeline spans 12 frames.

The only thing left to do is tell After Effects where I want these files. By clicking the orange-highlighted words “Not yet specified” next to “Output To” in the Render Quere, I get a basic explorer menu where I can place the files (much like the “Save As” option in almost any program).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since After Effects will render out more than 1 file, it’s a good idea to create a new folder on your desktop (or wherever you want the files) in which the images can be rendered.

Nothing is actually rendered yet. We’ve only told After Effects where we want the files and what they will be. To render our animation of Lil’ Bob into images, we need to click the “Render” button in the top right corner of the Render Queue tab.

Success! This is the end of our adventure creating a character, cutting him out and layering him, and then animating him. Lil’ Bob is now a real boy!

You can see him animating perpetually below:

- Bryan

 

 
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7 Keys to Brainstorming App Ideas

Published on July 3, 2012 by

All of your hard work learning to code needs to have an end goal, right?  It’s time to come up with the best app idea EVER!

Alright, maybe that’s putting a little too much pressure on you.  But in all seriousness, the possibilities for what you can come up with are endless!  How we use our mobile devices today won’t look the same in a few weeks…where will we be in a few years?

How we see it, every change in mobile technology is another brilliant business opportunity staring us in the face.

We have a constantly growing spreadsheet of

app ideas, the quality of which range from “What was I thinking??” to “This has potential!”  We make it a point to set time aside every week and just think.

Is there any method to our madness?  Why yes. Yes there is.

 

 

 

Rockupied’s 7 Tips for Brainstorming Mobile App Ideas:

1. Always analyze the market

Know the apps on the App Store Top Charts at all times.  When you wake up in the morning, your routine

should look like this: shit, shower, shave, study (the App Store).

Don’t just know the names of the apps on top, use them. Analyze them. Why are they popular?  How did they get on the top of the charts?  I have a handy dandy notebook full of what I have observed.

2. No hunches

Use what you find at the top of the charts as a guide.  It’s a cheat sheet into the minds of the consumer.  Past successful app models and features, when applied in different ways, lead to brilliant “tested” app ideas.  Don’t put weeks of your time into a hunch of what you think might be a good idea.

Can any top app out there be made in a different (and improved) way?  You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  Brainstorming is just the output of many combined inputs anyway, right?

3. Solve problems

Entrepreneurs view the world in this way.  They identify problems and see them as opportunities.  Do this.

How can your problems be solved with an app?  You aren’t the only one who has trouble with eating healthy or overspending or time management.  Solve these for yourself using an app, and you might be able to solve this for millions of people…with millions of dollars.

4. Create experiences

Tell a story.  Someone very smart once told me the only ways to monetize an idea is to either teach me something, make me laugh, or tell me a story.  Get your users emotionally invested in your app.  It doesn’t matter if your app is a game or a mobile dictionary…how you present it is everything.

5. Be Your Target Audience

It’s a simple question: Would you use the app you are making?  If the answer is no, you should probably try something else.

6. Find the “It” Factor 

Every successful app has given its users some reason to spread the word about it.  While some luck is required in getting your app to take off (there are 650,000+ apps on the App Store for crying out loud), why not make your own luck?

Find that special reason people are going to tell others about your creation.  Find your differentiator.  Your “It” factor.

7. Don’t delay…go for it!

If you are waiting for the “perfect” idea to pop into your head, you will never start.  Follow these rules the best you can, pick something, and GO FOR IT!

- Matt

 
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Bring Your Characters to Life! Part 2: A Quick Guide to Making Characters Using Adobe Photoshop

Published on June 28, 2012 by

It’s time to rip our Lil’ Bob apart! Don’t worry, we’ll do this in the most humane way possible.

Following up on a previous blog post, this short tutorial is about separating pieces of our previously-created character, Lil’ Bob, so that we can bring him into After Effects and animate him in our next post.

Here is the character we made last time.

We made him using Adobe Illustrator. Before we take him into Adobe Photoshop (a popular digital image manipulation program), we need to take his body apart in Illustrator.

To make this easier, parts of Lil’ Bob that should move together as one piece (eyes & eyebrows with the head, for example) should be “grouped” together. To do this, simply select the pieces you want to

group by clicking on them, right-click, and select “Group” as shown in the image below.

With our pieces grouped, we can now separate them in preparation for bringing him into Photoshop. So…now we’ll start ripping him apart! Don’t worry, we will be doing this in a way that will make it easy to put him back together.

In the image below, I moved his parts directly up, down, left or right of where they are located in the finished product.

Now we can finally move on to Photoshop!

After opening Adobe Photoshop, I opened the .ai file (Illustrator project), chose “import file”, and confirmed the default project settings.

Here is what your Photoshop screen should look like:

It looks big and scary at first glance, but to do what we’re doing, we won’t need to use a lot of Photoshop’s intricacies.

To have Lil’ Bob’s parts move independently of each other, we need to make them separate layers. Right now the entire image is one layer, as shown in the bottom right corner of the screen-sized image above.

Adobe Photoshop is based on the concept of layers. Layers are many overlapping images, combined to make something that looks convincing as a cohesive composition. Apart, layers may look like random pieces of a whole. Being able to layer objects behind something (like a sheathe for a sword or a rocket pack) also gives a character more perspective and depth.

Now, let’s cut Lil’ Bob up into pieces that are a little more manageable.

To do this, I’m going to select his pieces individually using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (go the menu bar on the left side of the screen, it is the second tool from the top). The Rectangular Marquee Tool is used generic cialis no prescription to select a port of a layer so that it can be cut or copied.

After clicking and dragging out the area that I want to separate as a new layer, I can then right-click and select “Layer via Cut.” As you can see below, this option will give me an entirely new layer that has only Lil’ Bob’s hand and sword together in it:

I now have two layers instead of the one layer, featuring the entire image of my .ai file as shown below:

Go through and do the same exact thing for his other body parts that we plan on animating, creating five layers total.

IMPORTANT NOTE: For each new layer you cut out, make sure the layer you’re cutting from (the layer of the full image) is selected….otherwise you’ll be “cutting” nothing!

Now that I have his pieces cut out, I can finally put him back together so he doesn’t look like Mr. Potato Head. Some of his layered pieces might be out of order, but this can be easily changed by moving layers up and down in the “Layers” panel at the bottom right. Just drag and drop! The top-most layer is at the “front” of my composition.

This last part is entirely optional, but it will make our job a lot easier when it comes time to animate Lil’ Bob in the next blog post.

When we import our Photoshop file (.psd) into After Effects in the next tutorial, the layers of Lil’ Bob are going to arrange themselves alphanumerically. If our layers aren’t named with this in mind, we’re going to have to rearrange them to get Lil’ Bob back to his current state (otherwise, an arm or foot layer may end up behind his body).

I like to name my layers in a way that lets someone else easily know what it is. In addition, I want to make my job as easy as I can when I get into Adobe After Effects. Here is how I named my layers:

As long as I don’t have more than 99 layers, this numbering system will work perfectly.

The next blog post is the home stretch of our animation adventure! We will finally see Lil’ Bob take his first steps as a real boy (who has a sword for some reason)!

- Bryan

 
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Bring Your Drawings to Life! A Quick Guide to Making Characters Using Adobe Illustrator

Published on June 26, 2012 by

Unless you’re playing the text-based adventure game “Zork,” games need graphics.

At Rockupied, we take a three-pronged approach to animation: we create a character or object in Adobe Illustrator, cut it out and separate moving pieces using Adobe Photoshop, and animate characters using Adobe After Effects.

This is the first of three posts where I’ll be showing a super quick demonstration of the type of animation that we do. It’s an extremely quick and dirty foray into graphic design.

Adobe Illustrator is one of the best programs out there for graphic design. It uses vector-based graphics that allow images to be scaled bigger or smaller without losing quality. Basically, it’s a great program to draw stuff in, and it’s what we exclusively use at Rockupied.

Here’s a final image of the character that I’m going to make in Adobe Illustrator:

I call him “Lil’ Bob.”

To make Lil’ Bob, I started with a circle that I created

using the ellipse tool:

Lil’ Bob needs facial features, so I used the brush tool to give him eyebrows, a mouth, ears, and a chin dimple. These features aren’t actually going to actually move, but they give our circle more character. If your marks aren’t showing up, they might simply be the same stroke color as the image you’re drawing on. Your brush marks might also be going behind the object since Illustrator uses a layering system relatively similar to Photoshop.

Layers allow us to put things behind or in front of one another. For example, if I had a backpack on and you were looking at me from the front, you probably wouldn’t be able to see much of that backpack. You could see the straps (a layer that would have to be in front of my body), but you wouldn’t be able to see the backpack itself. Although, you would be able to see the top of it. With layers, we can create that image convincingly by piling things on top of each other with the top layer first.

I quickly scribbled out a hair piece using the brush tool and then joined the two ends to complete the shape (more on that later). With the “Fill” selector shown in the top left corner of the image below, I made the hair brown. I did the same sort of operations to make the eyes.

Lil’ Bob needs a body because he’s not supposed to

be a disembodied head. So, using the brush tool, I drew a simple body and arm. The feet are just ovals made using the ellipse tool.

The image below shows the joining of Lil’ Bob’s body so that I may then fill it in (the same type of operation I did to complete the hair piece and eyes from earlier). Illustrator uses vector graphics. This basically means that the area of my image is calculated by using the points that make it up. The curves that these connected vectors make gives me a basis for filling in the shape. Therefore, Illustrator has no “paint bucket” tool like many other popular graphics design programs.

This means that, to get a shape fully filled in, the shape needs to be completely closed. So, I’ve selected the endpoints of my body section using the Direct Selection Tool (shown in the top left corner of the image below), right-clicked and selected “join.”

To color Lil’ Bob in, I clicked on each individual section of him and used the fill menu (shown in the top left corner of the image below) to give each of his parts different colors. Here, I’m just about to fill in the color of his feet.

These last two parts are entirely optional, but they will definitely liven-up our character.

By going to the Object menu (top menu bar) and clicking on “Create Gradient Mesh” I can give completed shapes of an object that I’ve selected specific highlights that make them look more 3-dimensional. Using this tool can mean the difference between having a character that looks like a cardboard cutout as opposed to having a character that looks entirely flat.

Also, I added in a sword for good measure (it will be easier to see Lil’ Bob’s hand animate in a later post if he has something in it).

Again, this is a really quick and dirty way to get started, but we need something to animate! The next graphic design blog post will be about separating Lil’ Bob’s pieces and bringing them into Photoshop.

Go make your own Lil’ Bob and get ready to tear him apart (quite literally) in the next post!

- Bryan

 

 
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Setting Goals When Coding

Published on June 21, 2012 by

Have you written any code yet? How’s it

coming?

In case you missed it, this will help you get started.

It is always motivating to be wor

king toward a goal. Even if you don’t have an idea right now (we’ll help you brainstorm one later), aiming to do something as small as creating a calculator app will fuel you.

Our first Rockupied apps were simple brainteasers. Technically, these games were relatively simple. But sometimes it’s the most simple ideas that are the most amazing.

While our skills have evolved to the creation of more complicated games, we still revisit simple app ideas (see Craptions).

To create our larger

games, we use primarily a game framework called Cocos2D. Check them out, it may spark some inspiration.

Happy Hacking!

- Matt

 

 
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Do you want to make iPhone apps? Time to get started

Published on June 13, 2012 by

Creating an app is hard.  Period.

It is not for the faint of heart.  But bringing an idea to life is one of the most rewarding experiences.

Our lead programmer, Dave Oster, and a team of interns currently build our iPhone apps.  They are a talented team of CS/IT majors that already

had previous experience with multiple programming languages.

But how Dave got started in coding is an inspiring story for anyone with determination and a passion for learning, regardless of their technical background.

Dave started learning to code using two simple resources: Google and YouTube.

He had a Mac and an iPhone for development and testing.  He joined the Apple iPhone Developer Program for $99 and installed the latest version of the iPhone SDK.  And then he started watching a variety of free, online tutorials.

A few months of hammering away in XCode using these tools as guidance, and he had created his first iPhone app using the programming language of Objective C.  And then he created another app.  And another.  And another.

Some learn better by

reading books.  Others prefer video tutorials.  The point is, STEP ONE toward developing your first app: stop making excuses and start learning.

 

 

Here is some awesome links to get you started:

thenewboston YouTube channel

Stanford University’s series on iTunes U

Stanford iPhone App Development course lectures

Objective C textbooks

Codecademy

There is no hard and fast way to approach it…just get your nose dirty, stay focused, and don’t give up.

If you have questions on anything specific in this post, please reach out to me on Facebook, Twitter, or in the comments!

Stay Rockupied!

- Matt

 
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Rockupied's Mission

Published on June 8, 2012 by

Rockupied was started by a group of students at the University of Missouri who wanted to make awesome games together. After building our first few iPhone games, we realized something: we weren’t the only ones with this dream.

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The great thing is, if we could do it, so can you.

We are in

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an incredibly exciting time where, for the first time, you don’t have to work with a professional publisher to make your own game ideas come to

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life. The power is finally in the developer’s hands.

It doesn’t matter where you live or what you what training you’ve had. All you need is passion, drive and focus.

It isn’t easy. And this is why we are refocusing this blog. We want this to be a place where we can all build awesome apps together.

Come on our journey and we will show you how to start. We will give you an inside look at Rockupied so you can see how to do it too.

And if you have made your own games before, even better. Let us know so we can show them off. We want to help you break through the clutter just like we are trying to do. We are on the same team.

Please suggest any specific app dev topics you would like us to address. We would love to give you insights into any particular part of our process! Reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter, or the comment section of this post.

Be on the lookout for our first post on getting started with app development!

Matt

 
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Rockupied 2.0: A New Focus

Published on May 9, 2012 by

I hope you have all been rockupying your time with our newest game: Blind Ninja! It has gotten great reviews so far, a

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nd viagra we working hard on releasing a power update with immensely improved graphics and game play early this summer.

 

Do you have any suggestions to improve Blind Ninja? Please leave them in the comments below!

It is an exciting time at Rockupied. We are getting ready for an amazing summer, and we are greatly expanding our team to do so.

 

We are also refocusing what this blog is all about.

* * * * * * *

Rockupied was started by a group of students at the University of Missouri who wanted to make awesome games together.

After building our first few iPhone games, we realized something: we aren’t the only ones with this dream.

We are in an incredibly exciting time where, for the first time, you don’t have to work with a professional publisher to make your own app ideas come to life. The power is finally in the developer’s hands.

It doesn’t matter where you live or what you what training you’ve had. All you need is passion, drive and focus.

It isn’t easy, but that’s why we want to be your guide. We want this to be a place where we can all build awesome apps together.

We plan on giving you an inside

look at what we are doing so you can see how to do it too.

If you have made your own apps before, even better. Let us know so we can feature them on here. We want to help you break through the clutter just like we are trying to do.

This community vision is all about you. We can’t make this work without you.

Please reach out to us with questions about creating apps. Tell us if you have created an app so we can show it off for you. Let us know how you go about making apps.

This will be a place to share and learn together. Stay tuned!

 
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