The Story of Simile

I love coding. I started on an Apple IIe when I was 11. My brothers and I worked for years coding various games - I still have some of my old game notebooks. In college, I studied computer science and loved every minute of it. I got a masters degree from Carnegie Mellon in CS, but that wasn't enough, I was still working on my games on the side. After college, I landed a number of interesting jobs including one working at Apple. I was a senior developer in the Siri Advanced Development Group, but I just couldn't keep the game ideas out of my head.

I Lived In a Van to Save Money So I Could Make Simile.

One idea, in particular, kept resurfacing. I just had to pursue it. To save money for the project, I moved my family to Idaho (because of the cheaper cost of living), and commuted to California weekly, where I continued to work. In California, I lived in a van. After almost a year of this arrangement, I had enough money saved to start the project.

There's a technique in art called the "Grid Method". It was used in ancient times by the Egyptians. Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, and M.C. Escher also used it, and it is still used by painters and taught in art schools today. To my knowledge, no-one had used it in an app. Additionally, rhythm games like "Donkey Konga", "Guitar Hero", and "Rock Band" had shown the power in both inspiring and teaching music creation using a game, but again I know of no equivalent games for making art. My idea was to combine both of these concepts and create a game like no other — one that can help you to draw beautiful works of art. Simile was born.

— Cortis Clark