Launched*:* Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 9 AM Pacific
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There still isn’t a white wine emoji. Nor is there a Bernese Mountain puppy emoji, crow on skis, or your grandmother eating Bitcoin. Newji can create them all in seconds.
**Newji is a new, free toy-app** from Shapes & Stories (Ryan McLeod – Apple Design Award winner for the iOS hit Blackbox, and Robert Long – 6 year veteran of the WebVR space) that brings AI generated emojis into any app, including iMessage. Create and send anything you can dream up, weird emojis, never-before-seen emojis all without leaving your chat. Want to make custom stickers for your Discord, work Slack, or even a new group chat icon? Your creations are yours and can be exported with transparency at high resolution.
During launch anyone who downloads the app will receive 25 emoji credits for free! After that you can buy packs of credits for as little as 3¢ per emoji or spend precious seconds of your life watching a glorious video advertisement for a credit. In addition to just covering costs we’re hoping Newji serves as a funding source for larger more serious artistic endeavors like Blackbox for visionOS.
Ryan McLeod: Robert and I are both very curious and cautious when it comes to working with AI, especially around art. We’ll be the first to admit Newji is anything but perfect, but that’s half the fun. When I started thinking about the design of Newji I immediately thought of the vending machines I grew up with in the Mexican restaurants. My eyes would get set on an obscured glimmer of a certain toy through the glass that’d only dream up more with the help of the colorful art pinned to the glass, and of course after begging my dad for quarters and turning that knob most of the time I’d happily open that little bubbly capsule to find something slightly different but kind of close to what I wanted. I wanted Newji to have a similar toy vibe with anticipation and play and a nod acknowledging that this is AI and you don’t always get what you want but for a couple cents a pop, that’s half the fun.