Beautiful, isn’t?
Haven’t seen many watchfaces discussed here so I thought I’ll explain a bit where Colofully Alive comes from.
It’s hard to compete with so many talented people! I also had to stay within what I knew I could actually achieve.
I gambled on • Easy to read, • Attractive and fun, and • Alive.
Some context first: I’ve joined Pebble in October after placing an order for a PT2. I then began looking at building a watchface using the cloud option there was at that time but I had issues with the emulator, like I spent all the CPU time or something like that and I could not access my code anymore! I was duplicating my code in Notepad++ so I had a copy, phew!
With the help of @Flynn I was able to install WSL and work locally on my computer. Then I installed VSCode and by the end of the year I had 4 watchfaces working but not features complete and decided to pause all that.
Before publishing anything, I wanted to have my watch and test. I usually care for small details and I simply wanted to have all my watchfaces completed like I wanted before making them available.
The contest was announced and I didn’t do anything for four days because I was sticking to my plan to get my watch before any relase. But you know, looking at all the propositions, I decided to see if I could make something interesting to submit. Of course all my watchfaces are interesting to me, I create for what I would use and that I will use.
Pebble appealed to me for a few reasons, and battery life was one of them. Apple and Pixel watches last about two days, I think, while Pebble claimed up to 30 days — let’s say 20. It’s when I began working on my first watchface that I’ve learned about SECOND_UNIT and MINUTE_UNIT and that the 20 days+ is only possible when you subscribe to MINUTE_UNIT but I like when a watch looks alive instead of looking like a painting.
Here we are, I decided to begin working on a 5th watchface for this contest, that will always look attractive and intrigue anyone who notices it. I really wanted it to feel alive — not necessarily by showing seconds, but with something pulsing, like a heartbeat.
- The battery challenge -
I was aware of the possible battery issue and had absolutly no idea how long it would run because almost nobody have the watch. PT2 just started shipping so I was in the unknown.
I thought that if the time between charges was reduced from 20 days to 8 days — for the price of having animations every second — that would still be better than the 2 days an Apple/Pixel Watch was offering.
After publishing, one person with a PT2 tested for 4 hours and from that I could extrapolate it would run for just over 2 days. 
I was at work at that time. As soon as I got home I looked at the code with someone who does not exist 
I uploaded v1.1 which litteraly doubled the time (!) with now roughly 1% every hour, so this mean 100 / 24 = 4 days. Not the best, I know, but still!
Again, the next day I come back home with an idea in mind, subscribe to minutes from 00:00 to 6:00 and finetune the « alive » animations to be more power‑efficient. I uploaded v1.2.
- Any volunteers? 
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I have no tests yet for this v1.2 release. I’m in Batch 3 before I can test myself.
But let’s do the math: 24/6 hours is 1/4 gained in a day and I was at 4 days so now I should be at 5, and if I add to this some bonus hours with the latest finetuning made on the animation happening every second I believe 6 days is realistic.
You know what — I’d be totally fine with 6 days! I know that it won’t be for everyone but to me charging once a week is a perfectly fine price to pay for the « alive » part it offers, and I will mostly look for watchfaces on the AppStore that offer a similar approach, because I really find this great to quickly glance at the time and see an animation without waiting for the next minute change.
P.S. I’ll sure get the suggestion to offer an option to subscribe to MINUTE_UNIT instead, but I called it Colorfully « alive » exactly because my intention was clear from the start to have it feel alive. Also, I wanted to be different and not offer a configuration page, and instead use flicks for options. I thought that would be cool to do on the fly without pressing any buttons.