Customize your own desktop companion for free
Shimeji-ee is a free, open-source project that entertains Windows users with animated characters on the screen. Whether getting into mischief, or getting a smile on the user’s face, Shimeji-ee animations interact with icons, windows, pop-ups, and other UI elements. The Windows personalization tool provides a change of pace akin to what you’d get from the Lively Wallpaper pack or Rainmeter.
Shimeji-ee was originally developed by Yuki Yamada, and later improved by Kilkakon to improve its assortment of options and further open the code to the users. The end result is not only a wide compendium of characters to choose from but also an open-source code that is available for further tweaking and customization.
Personalize your PC with characters
Shimeji-ee isn’t the most important program you’ll ever download, but it’s one of the most enjoyable. While you browse the Internet, these little animated buddies play idly around in the windows of your browser (like Google Chrome). You can pick them up with your mouse and deposit them where you wish. In a way, it feels like hanging up decorations in your house. With these features, Shimeji-ee adds a layer of personalization to your computer, allowing you to fully create your own PC.
Shimeji-ee characters can walk, crawl, and climb all over your screen, responding with various elements on web pages. There are downloadable packs that offer variants from a wide Shimeji directory. It includes characters from popular media like Death Note, Pusheen, Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, Undertale, X-Men, One-Punch Man, and so on.
The program’s interface takes time to get adjusted. To make or edit your animated friends, some minimal coding knowledge simplifies the process. Once acclimated, it’s a straightforward, simple, and clean program. Coders and artists from all over the world have also lent a hand, sharing their creations with the public. Since it’s open-source, you can start with a provided template.
The simplicity of Shimeji-ee’s concept belies the huge amount of inherent customization options. Once you’re familiar with the app’s editing pipeline, you can easily change your characters’ appearance, add sound effects, change their colors, etc. Inspired by the work by Yuki Yamada of Group Finity, this latest version of Shimeji-ee, ‘Shimeji English Enhanced’, has also been completely translated into English.
How to use Shimeji-ee
You will need to download and install the latest Javascript on your PC, download the Shimeji-ee zip file, and extract the components to a new folder. From there, just run the Shimeji-ee.jar and the customization program will quickly install. Right from the start, you can play with the desktop companions, dropping them within your screen and moving them around without any manual input required.
To personalize the behaviors of your companions, you’ll have to use the Windows customization tool in your computer’s task tray. Right-click on the icon to open a menu where you can select from multiple settings. This requires working with XML files, and while the code editing isn’t difficult, there is a learning curve to surmount before tackling the more complex functions.
Essentially, the coding process breaks down into three steps: A Shimeji-ee broadcasts what’s called an ‘affordance‘. This is basically an environmental factor that determines how an object (like your companion) will be used. A ‘ScanMove’ is when other Shimeji-ee detects an affordance and move towards it. Once they successfully finish their interaction, they either continue normally in respective sequences or their interaction spurs on some new behavior.
If this sounds complicated, you’re not alone. Luckily, Shimeji-ee comes with various tutorials, instruction guides, and its own useful FAQ page so that beginners can more easily learn simple functions. Prior knowledge of editing XML files is handy but isn’t necessary. There are also several responsive forums that can help resolve some Shimeji-ee’s more common questions or bugs.
While bugs are rare in Shimeji-ee, its main drawback is that many of its features are not intrinsic to the main menu. Rather it just provides basic functions that only beginner users would find useful. Since most of Shimeji-ee’s features are situationally specific and generally more complex, many of the program’s tutorials from the developer are available outside the app, and instead on their website.
Shimeji-ee vs Lively Wallpaper
Shimeji-ee is definitely in a class of its own with what it provides, but there are alternative programs that can customize the desktop in different ways. While Shimeji-ee allows for cute companions to pop onto the screen and interact with various programs, Lively Wallpaper is a simpler, less taxing option for PC users who are still longing for some modicum of customization.
Lively Wallpaper is a library of animated wallpapers ranging from swirling colors or stars zipping by to vibrant moving undersea creatures, or a green crawl of binary numbers like from The Matrix. While Lively Wallpaper doesn’t have the range of utility and interaction of Shimeji-ee, it can be personalized in some ways. It also has hardware-accelerated video playback that can sync with the Directshow codec.
Shimeji-ee offers a different suite of utilities that are similar, but wholly different aesthetically. Shimeji-ee is more specific, more up-front and personal, and more complex. Lively Wallpaper is still one of the most popular personalization apps on the market, making your computer screen look interactive and engaging. You can even use Lively Wallpaper to turn GIFs, shaders, videos, or clips from games into animated wallpapers, but it’s still not as cute or as flexible as Shimeji-ee.
Lighten up your work environment
Shimeji-ee is a fun Windows customization software program that makes endless work hours in front of your PC more tolerable, albeit more distracting! With some programming knowledge, you can personalize the characters on your desktop to interact and perform any way you like, and the simple interface makes the process quickly manageable. It’s not beginner-friendly, but once you know how to edit XML files you will have loads of fun!
