Hide the children and the chimichangas! Deadpool is coming!
The Merc with the Mouth is finally getting the screen time and saucy treatment he deserves! And in honor of our favorite fourth-wall-breaking super-powered anti-hero, we at AC want to help you deck your phone in Deadpool awesome. Today's theme is a little refined, a little playful, and all Android amazingness. Here's what you'll need for today's theme:
- A launcher capable of a large desktop grid and widget overlap. If you have , use it! The sub-grid placement is going to come in extra-handy with our deadly precise widget placement.
- ($1.65)
- ($2.99) for our customized widgets
- A file manager app to move font files into Zooper Widget and ringtones into desired folders
- (Free, $1.99) is optional but recommended for multi-player support and its ability to play well with a variety of themes
- hosted here for your convenience
Note on device sizes: There are big screens and small screens and some screens in between. The numbers given below are based on a Nexus 5X and a HTC A9. Adjust up as needed, and don't be afraid to experiment!
Main theme
- Download theme elements:
- of your choice
- Copy the Back Issues font family from the folder at the top of this article and paste them into sdcard/ZooperWidget/Fonts on your device using a file manager.
- Set the scratched metal wallpaper with the logo dead center on your home screen.
- Set as your icon pack in your launcher's settings. For an added bit of merc magic, set the Mercenary icon as the app drawer icon. It tended to hide from me in the paginated picker, but in the Nova picker, it was easily found in the Ts. When setting the icon, tap Mercenary, but DO NOT tap the icon to open the Mercenary app. Wait a few moments, and all of Mercenary's icons will load in one big, long, alphabetized list. Scroll down to the T's; you'll find it near the rest of Tha Phlash's app icons.
- Go into Nova Settings. In Desktop, scroll down to Advanced and enable Widget overlap.
- Now, to add a bit more color to Nova. Scroll back up in Desktop and tap Page Indicator Color. Select Red (hex code #cc0000). Go back to the main menu in Nova Settings, select Folders. Under Window, tap Background (not to be confused with Folder background in the Icon section above), and select Red (hex code #a6cc0000).
- (Optional) Add to the bottom of the home screen, set to clear.
- Set your ringtone and notification tone. I like the katana swipes for my notification tone, and from the trailer, 'X Gon Give It To Ya' makes a catchy little ringtone. Hollaback Girl by Gwen Stefani is also a good choice, and subtle nod to the test footage in 2014 that was leaked in order for fans to demand the full film.
Zooper Widget — Progress Clock
- Drag a 3x3 Zooper Widget onto your homescreen and resize it to cover the Deadpool logo. Once you have the size where you want it, tap to enter widget configuration.
- Select a Builtin template, the ProgressClock template. We'll begin by deleting the inner digital clock and details. Next, on each progress bar (Hour, minute, and battery strength), we'll make the FG (foreground) color transparent.(hex code #13fffdfd) and tap the new color preview box to set it. Leave the BG (background) color as transparent. We'll then scroll down and set the progress Color to #ffb00000.
- Tap the first progress bar in the layout listing, scroll down to Edit Progress Min Max Value. Tap the drop-down under Examples and switch it from Hours (am/pm 0-11) to Hours (am/pm 1-12).
- Next we'll adjust our scaling/offset to try and align the widget in the middle of the Deadpool logo. To make the progress bars bigger or smaller, scroll halfway down the main widget configuration page to the Scaling controls. To move your bars up/down/left/right, tap Layout, select all three progress bars using the checkboxes on the right side, and then tap the move icon (four outward-facing arrows) in the control bar above the widget preview box, X will move it up and down, Y will move it left and right. Enabling Fast Move in this screen will allow you to move your selected modules by a factor of 10 rather than 1. Hit the home button as needed to go back out to the home screen and see how close you are, because even if you turned on Real Background, chances are you won't see how it's actually lining up with your wallpaper. You can tap the widget to re-enter the configuration mode until you think you have it just about right.
- Next, we'll tap the widget one last time to enter the configuration page, and we're going to change the Widget OnTap Action from Zooper Configuration to Disabled. This way, we won't open the configuration page every time we accidentally tap the widget on our home screens. Do NOT do this until you have the widget exactly where you want it, as once you switch the OnTap action to Disabled, you'll have to open the main Zooper Widget app and tap Configure Widgets.
Zooper Widget — Thought Box Weather Widget
- For our next Zooper widget, we're going to switch weather data providers. Open the main Zooper Widget app and tap on Weather Provider. Switch from Open Weather Map to Yahoo Weather or Yr.no for more consistently phrased weather conditions (Cloudy instead of Clouds, etc) in the widgets to come.
- We'll grab another Zooper Widget, a 3x1 Zooper widget. Resize it to fit over the left 2/3 of the top of your screen, then tap to configure. Start with an Empty widget. We'll begin building our widget in the Layout section. Click the add module icon (the plus) in the top corner, and add a Rectangle.
- We'll stretch our new rectangle (the white square in the middle of the preview box) by scrolling down and increasing the Width and Height to cover most of the widget. We will change the Color to yellow (#fffff78b), the classic color of a Deadpool thought box.
- Next, we'll add another rectangle module by hitting back and tapping the plus icon in Layout again, selecting another Rectangle. Expand it to the same size as our yellow box, changing the Color to Black (#ff000000) and the outline from 0 (filled) to 5, so our comic box has the traditional black border on it. Note: depending on how big your screen size and widget size are, you may need to increase the outline size in order to get a good black border.
- Go back to Layout again, this time we'll tap new module and add a new module type: Rich Text.
- We'll scroll down to change the Color to Black and the Font to Back Issues Italic.
- We'll Manually Input Text to change what our widget says. Deadpool is an inventive guy, so feel free to get creative with your text, but I've gone with "Great chimichangas! What the hell am I doing in #LLOC# when it's #WCTEMPN# degrees?!" Note: the two variables surrounded by #s are in the Available Fields below the preview box. There are variables for your device stats, time, weather, location and even Tasker variables to choose from, so if you don't need a weather widget, you can make this widget useful some other ways.
- Adjust font size and horizontal margin as needed (some of your widgets will need it, some won't). Increasing the margin will force the text to stay inside your box, and changing the font will allow you to make the text fit better within the space.
- Back out of the layout menu into the Widget Configuration page. Change the Widget background from transparent to completely clear (#00000000).
- Return to the home screen and see if your widget renders to your liking. Adjust as you see fit until you're satisfied.
- Now we're going to grab a third Zooper widget, a 2x1 that we'll stretch over the right portion of the screen, overlapping the bottom right corner of our last widget.
- Start with another empty widget. Change the widget background to clear (#00000000). Enter Layout and build this widget much like the last one, with a yellow rectangle, a black border rectangle, and then Black rich text. This time, we'll set the font to Back Issues Bold Italic.
- For the text here, you could get creative with your exclamation. For mine, I've chosen to add "And #WCCOND#?!!" but you could utilize a different variable, or just have a witty exclamation. The Current Weather Condition variable was chosen in the Available Fields below the text preview box.
- Adjust the font size and horizontal margin as before, keeping your text inside the thought box.
If you have an Android Wear smartwatch, you can theme that to match. Tha Phlash has a newly-redesigned ($1.99) to match his icon pack. Stay tuned for more awesome themes and share your alterations below!
