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Heyiboy

@heyiboy.com
131 followers 383 following 143 posts

I make fun creative tools. I’m focused on voxel painting for now. Check out my tiny pixel art sketchbook, Cob Paint, in the App Store.

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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 21/01/2026
Is this a thing? An infinite canvas for note taking that lives in the bottom 1/4 of the screen. The file system is just like Obsidian. Just a folder with .txt files and .jpg. When you zoom out, all the cards turn into emojis on screen. I think I'm calling it Bubblegum. It's actually really useful.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 17/01/2026
If someone swipes down with both fingers lol
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 16/01/2026
Cob Paint v1.3 is almost ready. It's sooo fluid now. Need to update the onboarding but I should be able to push to the App Store tonight.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 15/01/2026
Juice. Little by little.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 15/01/2026
Cob Paint v1.3 coming along. Switching between sketchbook pages finally feels seamless. Some flashes here and there but progress at least. The tiny details matter to me.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 07/01/2026
A beautiful web app where you can make App Store screenshots with squarespace-like templates, continually iterate with data, and export all sizes in one click? Is this a thing anyone wants? Because I feel like I need it bad.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 05/01/2026
🌽 Cob Paint v1.2, dropping later this week. Making sharing in the app 10x more fun. Holographic cards and quick custom backgrounds.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 05/01/2026
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 05/01/2026
I see @googleballs.com in Cob Paint.
Color Google balls of goodness all in Cob Paint.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 05/01/2026
Today is basically my first day back so I opened Notion and... like what happened? It's terrifying seeing all progress end on February of last year.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 01/01/2026
I made a new bamboo pen from a piece of bamboo someone threw out on New Year’s Eve. I’m in love.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 31/12/2025
The app is just tiny little embers but thankfully I haven't lost my discipline and touch as a designer.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 30/12/2025
guys I'm so proud of the Cob Paint website lol. it's cute as fuck. www.cobpaint.com I need to make the terms and privacy policy less in your face but the App Store needed it on a website so there it is I guess, Tim Apple.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 30/12/2025
I really love #pixelart so I made my own tiny pixel art #sketchbook app and I call it Cob Paint. 👉 It's supremely easy and fun to use. 😍 Pay to own it and no subscriptions. 🔮 I have a whole year of content dropping in 2026 every week. Tons of brushes, color palettes, stickers, just fun things.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 29/12/2025
looks cute but how did a trilogy happen already loll
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 29/12/2025
Rounding up my game of the year and as expected it’s Expedit- BAWGAW I CANT BELIEVE IT!!! FROM THE TOP ROPE, HES BACK, ITS GOOSE. LOOK OUT LOOK OUT!!! UNTITLED GOOSE GAME GOTY 2019-2025
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 28/12/2025
In January: 🌽 Cob Paint 1.1 will have sketchbooks that you can create and share. 📝 My previous app, Tinycrate will be renamed to chat notes or something similar. And get a full redesign for 2.0. II think it just needs to answer one question: How can a note come back to me when I need it?
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/12/2025
I’m so close.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 16/12/2025
Painting new icons for Cob. I still like Aesprite a lot on the desktop. I think Cob is going to be like the black sheep sketchbook lol.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 16/12/2025
I don't know what you're trying to optimize for but I think the quickest win is probably the post button. Prob higher post count and feels better. It's always been a tough screen. So uninviting that it probably needs a complete rethinking. (Desktop is probably fine but I'd have to look at the data.)
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 10/12/2025
Yeah it feels so good. Pixels are “wet” when they are painted and can get wet again when another water color stroke goes on top. I need to fix the age of a pixel. If I paint and paint again under a minute then pigment continues to move around. After a few minutes, pixels don’t move around as easily.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 08/12/2025
🌽 Cob: Pixel Art Sketchbook I have the water color brush working but it's still fairly basic. It's like washes of color on top of other dry washes. The pigment should flow between strokes. I should be able to see the pigment move in real-time. #pxielart #sketchbook #cob
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 02/12/2025
Months ago, I wrote an empty function called simulationTick() and then built an entire pixel art watercolor simulation engine around it. Today is the first time I’ve seen it work. Crazy.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 02/12/2025
I've decided to solely focus on a pixel watercolor sketchbook app and I spent the morning seeing watercolor paint dry on paper. In Kernel Engine, pixels already keep track of a ton of information. Wiring it up so that a pixel stroke looks like a real watercolor stroke. Not easy. #pixelart
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 26/11/2025
Updates to #KernelEngine 🖌️ I think the UX of changing brush size feels so good. There’s haptic feedback too. I hope the knob doesn’t get in the way too much. 🧰 Toolbox is on the bottom now with all tools laid out in a row. Should be super easy to find the tool I need. 🎨 Swatches! #pixelart
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 25/11/2025
⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️🔳
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 25/11/2025
I don’t have a ton of time today but 3 goals: 👉 Add a quick brush size slider 👉 Relayout the app for better ergonomics 👉 Start water color brush #KernelEngine #pixelart
Current screenshot of the app with the tool palette. From left to right, draw, erase, lasso, colors, undo, redo, share.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
I feel like I need a slider on the left side to increase and decrease the brush size like Procreate. It’ll get in the way though.
A drawing of a slider on the left side.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
YES. It only works with odd number brushes lollllllll. It's also just a circle but it should be like the exact shape of the stroke... ok. ok. ok. ok.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
it's like a firefly by accident. I'm trying to make a preview of the brush as I draw. Sometimes I think I'm good at this and sometimes I get humbled. #KernelEngine #pixelart
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
Adding on to this thread for tomorrow. This is my concept art... Like, I should see beautiful, crunchy tools. I should be able to draw on the canvas and it should feel and look special. Almost like a toy and not a professional tool. I'm making a toy. Toy. Toy.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
Adding layout ideas from past designs to this thread. I love colorful UI but the black and white one goes super hard. There's not enough space on the phone though...
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
It lives! It's also a mobile app now I guess? I want to take advantage of Apple Pencil eventually. I'll circle back to the android build after. I've built real pixel water color into my engine so that should be next in my app. Colors too. Tools. Undo. Grids. What else? #KernelEngine
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
The most basic thing ever but it's pixel art baby. Way harder than I thought to set up.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
holy GPU pixels. It's not pixel art but real pixels from Kernel are being rendered.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
I'm rebuilding and renaming my note taking app after getting tons of feedback. 📝 Think IG stories but like square and that's your notes. 👉 Creating is simple. Open the app, tap, draw, talk, camera. #️⃣ Simple # hashtags to organize your notes. 👯 Subscribe to hashtags and share tinynotes with friends.
Figma designs of Tinynote. Shows the main screens in the app.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
dude come on
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
I also spent this year building a few prototypes and throwing them away. This one took my little card app and added a full canvas and generative AI features. Putting aside my personal mixed feelings about AI, it was an interesting concept of building new stuff from your notes. Still mixed feelings.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
POV you're making a super high fidelity pixel art engine but you still have to learn GPU coding too. like what do you mean everything is a triangle.
Screenshot of my painting app but the GPU layer is rendering random ass triangles.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 24/11/2025
I built a pixel simulation engine called Kernel like the corn seed 🌽 I should now be able to paint with pixel art but at like the fidelity of real paint where you can see the texture of the pigment move around the water as it dries. Here's a stroke rendered with emojis in the terminal.
Example of a single stroke from the Kernel Engine rendered out in the console with emojis.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 14/02/2025
Researching for a new essay on widgets, spatial UI, and generative UI and I stumbled upon Andy Hertzfeld's essay on desk ornaments from 1981 around when the Macintosh launched. There's so much gold in there. UI evolves as a continuum and not as a series of disconnected fads.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 30/01/2025
Hey David! I launched a fun productivity app today on iOS. I call it Tinycrate. It's a notebook with fun, cozy vibes. 📸 Capture your ideas into cards. 🔗 Create links between them. 🤯 Find unexpected connections. 👉 apps.apple.com/us/app/tinyc...
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 30/01/2025
A flood of memories suddenly came back. It was like quake for kids lolll
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 30/01/2025
It's live on the App Store today. apps.apple.com/us/app/tinyc...
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 18/01/2025
It’s so funny seeing people write eulogies about Nintendo of old now that Switch 2 has been announced. “Where is the old Nintendo quirky we love?” They say every morning as their Alarmo wakes them up. A, checks notes, quirky product released by Nintendo 3 months ago lol. #nintendoswitch2
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 16/01/2025
Coming up with a color swatch tool that I can make quick. You can add up to 5 colors in a card. You can also assign these colors to be your theme in Tinycrate.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 15/01/2025
Yeah so it’s stupid simple lol. I couldn’t simplify further than tapping a button to link. There must be recommended links in the future or smart albums like Google photos.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 14/01/2025
I've been working on a new app called Tinycrate. It's a fun, cozy, and lightning fast way to create a new kind of interconnected creative library. The key is that every thought you have becomes an adorable little card. So think of it like a "thought" camera and you look back on your "idea" photos.
An image of an in progress iOS app with a hero screen in the middle with an interesting background mirroring the main colors of the app. It's supposed to evoke how I feel about the app when I open it everyday. Fun, cozy, and useful.
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Heyiboy @heyiboy.com · 07/12/2024
Looking through the picoCAD documentation and it's really resonating with me.
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