Please, in future GUIO's (if your ever manage to set another one up), i think i speak for the experienced skinners when i say that we no longer want to be included in your petty games. Designing and coding a winamp5 skin is a long drawn out process, to make a good skin requires MUCH more knowledge and effort than to create a bloody icon package, hence why we had half the entries of the other catagories. D-Reliction and Resurgence rocked, end of story, and to be beaten by half assed noobie skins is utter crap. hence why there is such an argument. end of story.

I think in each category the sponsers have share. I think EVERY ONE even ME was agree that "Pirate OS Icons" must get the medal.I actually Wonder .

Well, I suppose it's time to add my thoughts. Comments from the judges are definitely needed. How Antares is not in the top 3 most creative is utterly mind boggling. And somehow AirLock got first, which by all means is a great solid skin, but surely isn't the most creative. My guess is most of it's so-called creativity stems from the title bar buttons being on the bottom, my point being it seems that this impressed judges who might not be as familiar with WB as the authors are. As far as the best themed events, I have no clue what's going on there. Personally I see a monumental difference between "following the same theme" and "looking the same". Anyone think it odd that 3 out of 4 of the winning Best themed WB skins black and white? As far as the WinAmp skins go. I disagree with the events themeselves Power user and most Usable, seems kind of redundant. However I do agree with much of the judging. I'd add a bit more, but as this is comment 100 something I highly doubt anyone will get arond to reading it.

i shouldv submitted a skin which looks like this: ::songtitle:: {previous} {stop} {play} {pause} {next} {pl} {ml} {eq} {crossfade} {shuffle} {repeat} b&w, boring, and utter crap. sure to win most useable!

hmmmm.... I doubt someone would even use it...

Mumiom, as requested I've removed your Winamp skin so that it doesn't have to participate in future "petty" events at the GUI Olympics. Let me know if you change your mind and want it put in for future events in this contest. Though judging will be coming up shortly so you'll need to decide soon.

Congrats to all winners!

*Humblely takes back comments about Airlock after FrogBoy cleared things up for me (In forums)*

I just want to quote bizzy's post.

Frogboy, i was talking about any further GUIO's, not any further events on THIS GUIO. i also said i 'feel like', that wasnt a request but a figure of speech. iv already gone to the effort of creating and entering the skin and it would be stupid to pull out now. hammerhead helped me create the skin as it is a huge task for simply one person to make a skin and it would also be wrong of me to pull the skin out without talking to him about it. you have misunderstood me and taking my words too far

I think the reason Winamp skinners are being so vocal on this issue is because they are seeing their category being misunderstood and somewhat misrepresented. Yet some of these people are indeed hard working veterans and dismissing their opinion as the usual "post contest denial" seems very near-sighted. There are different issues at hand here. One that irks me is the way the various categories are set up. At the beginning of the competition we had little information about what exactly each event was going to be judged on. And I have to agree most vividly with whoever said that if guidelines existed for the judges to base their results on, these should have definitely been shared with the community. On the flipside, if they never even existed, I would be simply in awe at how such a huge contest was even put together with so little thought put into the key points of its structure. So here we are, signing up our skins for events in which we have little knowledge of their organization. I personally thought that each category was first going to be judged on the quality of the graphics and the time put into every detail *IN ADDITION TO* how creative, usable or whatever the skin is. So to say "The best looking usable skin” instead of "The most usable skin". Because as Muniom makes a good point, I could just come along and make a skin with flat 100*100px buttons, play, pause, stop, whatever. Sure it would be usable but what good is that? My indignation goes further when I see what you call "usable". Quoting directly from the newspost: "That is, at the end of the day, which Winamp skin do you think you would actually end up using?" Now I have not entered anything in the most usable category, but I must say that that is not how I define usable. Going to my good old friend the dictionary, usable is defined as "convenient for use" that has nothing to do with which one I would actually use. Now for sure you can never make everyone happy, but you can try and make *most* people happy. That is the principle of democracy! You say that the judges took the comments into consideration, while that seems fair to me in the respect that it may help them find issues they had not noticed, this should really have been made more explicit at the start of the competition. With that in mind, and looking at the results, seeing that D-Reliction comes out with one bronze medal after at least 40 more comments of praise than all the other skins really strikes me as odd. That said I am sure kriptoner and Plague would have been more than pleased taking third place if it were to some other great skins, but I have to say EMP2 taking two golds seems abusive. I suppose that is what the User’s Choice event is meant to be, but now that you say only WC Premium members will be allowed to vote my hopes are not so high. I just hope this will be a fair representation of the popular opinion. (Only one vote per IP or account) Winamp is very different from icons or visual styles in that, to make them complete and full featured takes so much more time the work is usually split in two! And even then it can take months to get through. Many elements are not directly noticeable such as tooltips, the about screen and any extra windows. From my experience screenshots of Winamp skins rarely reveal their full power and are more of an appetizer. This is why we need judges adapted to this task, hopefully some who have skinned this engine themselves and understand all its intricacies. As a conclusion, I think the next GUIO should definitely include a Winamp category (along with maybe another couple of applications – Sysmetrix perhaps?) but with way more information about the way judging is done. That way if complaints are to be made at least they won’t be groundless. I would also suggest that the point system that you use be broken down to the community and a small paragraph about each skin would be most welcome

Well well well. Another GUIO, another another set of "the wrong person won!" diatribes. Congratulations to the winners! All the skins were of a very high standard. I'm disappointed that Rokey's icons didn't win, but they are still excellent! Unfortunately, some people don't seem to realise that when you enter a competition you have to abide by the judges choices. Although why people don't realise that I'm not sure - it's clear from the start. I don't envy the judges' very difficult job at all. Instead of being negative, the honourable reaction should be "well done" to the winner, and possibly "...but IF I'd been a judge, then my choice for the winner would be skin X". And that's all. (You are perfectly within your rights to pick up your handbags and go home in a huff, obviously. I'm sure nobody will think that you're just sulking...) And hurray to me! (sorry - I took my modesty restrainer off for a second there...)

well said a-t-o-m-i-c. well friggin said

(Oh - good points atomic. Very sensible arguments.)

Frogboy said, "It was not my intention to imply that judges were getting their directions based on news items." That's all I wanted to hear. I wish you had said it a while ago to save me a bunch of typing. Atmoic makes excellent points.

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CORRECTION....LETS ALL GROW UP!!!!!!!!!

No complaints here. I'm one of those 'noob' Winamp skinners and don't know a fraction of what some of the Winamp skinners know about Winamp skinning. BUT, I wouldn't have been inspired to try to learn Winamp skinning on my own if it hadn't been for this contest. Maybe I'm alone in this ... I don't think so, but it's about the skinning, not winning or losing. Maybe some of you guys don't agree with the choices the judges made, but there's no reason to not show a little grace and tact. You come across as juvenile.

As one of the 'back-room' boys helping vet the submissions to check their validity as acceptable entrants to the GUIO...[which excludes me from participating]...spending all that time and effort for a bunch of recalcitrants with inflated egos to spit and moan is a tad thankless. My personal solution to this perception of 'I be wronged' would be to limit any future Winamp category to the @x variety...and exclude anything that apparently requires the efforts of two people to even get it off the ground. In my mind Skinning has always been a one-man thing anyway...coding AND graphics. Perhaps we just have a section for Sonique and kJofol and Coolplayer and QCD.....leave the whiners to their own devices.

congrats to the winners. i also don't agree with the results, but there's no use bitching about it now. nothing will change. besides, it's not over yet. there's still the overall and user's choice categories. i wonder how you guys will react when you win in those.

What alot of people don't realise is that the coding isn't just the glue that puts the graphics together in Winamp skins. Much of the code adds to the visual appearance of the skin aswell. And it's even possible to build a skin ENTIRELY in code, with no graphics at all! So how can you say this Brother Rabbit: "the opinion of a stupid programmer, computer technican or whatever you bunch of tools do for a living, should NOT be allowed to critic or comment on a visual artform like this. What the hell do you know?" You obviously have no clue what you're talking about. It's really not fun beeing a skin coder theese days. You call us immature? What the hell are you then, going off like that!? Most Winamp skins are a 50-50 collab between a coder and a graphics artist.

I need a coder for my windowblind. Any takers? Congrats to all!;)

Yeh, i would love start to build Winamp skins but i need a coder too Congrats to the winners.

First of all, I'm not in any way affiliated or associated with Winamp/GUIOlympics and my comments are on my own. BUT, I just had to react to some of the outright abusive and insulting comments posted against Winamp skinners (and ESPECIALLY coders). Now, what the h*ll do you know (I'm not going to mention names, you know who you are, besides, just read the comments) about coding to be talking like that? Skinning Winamp is not like 1-2-3, clap your hands and there you go, new skin! It takes A LOT of effort to make it work as bug-free as possible on someone's PC. Now, maybe some of you don't have the guts to say it, but I'm not afraid of anyone/anything and I'm going to say it anyhow: How the h*ll can a Winamp skin WIN 2 SEPERATE categories and grab GOLD AT BOTH of these categories? (No offense at the author, this is purely directed against the judges of Winamp skins). But that's not all, no, the judges SIMPLY LEAVE OUT (in my humble opinion of course, but backed by thousands of winamp users) what may POSSIBLY BE THE BEST WINAMP SKIN OF ALL TIME, CALLED WOOHOO-FER. Now THAT is what I want an explanation for. WOOHOO-FER DIDN'T EVEN PLACE THIRD ON ANY LIST, I REPEAT AGAIN, ON ANY LIST!!! How in the name of sweet Jesus did that happen? I mean, did we miss something here? Now, I would like some clear and concise answers FROM THE JUDGES, WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER MESSENGER (no offense). What were the criterias that were used to judge the Winamp skins, and in particular the Power User category. Things like: does it have bugs, visual appeal (animated speakers anyone?) and other criterias which I'm sure they've taken into account. To put it suimply: we want an explanation why a skin deserve's 2 gold medals on 2 different categories and why WooHoo-Fer was left out. It's a very simple question. Next time an event like this organized (if ever again), PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE, and with that I mean: Winamp skinners AND CODERS should get mentioned in the medals list. I hope I have been clear in what I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see and hear.

I think we talked enough. Every thing was said and it is impossible to find any solutions for the problems here. As i know this is the first time GUIO supported winamp skins and acctualy it was ok for the first time. Since WB and icons are 100% different way of skinning some people dun know what it means to make a winamp skin. The winamp skins arent like WB or icons, they are like a programm in the programm. Each skin was made like an new app. So i hope you stop arguing now, to all the winamp skinners:" this was their first time they tryed to judge winamp skins and you all know winamp skins are a sience and for that reason let the people learn this sience and hopefully next time the olympic will be much better and i geuss they learnd alot from this time." The real olympic games needed more than 2000 years until they was as good as they are today. So in 1996 years this olympics will also be very good