Advice for new skinners!

Do a Sysmetrix first. That will get you into skinning slowly and easy.

Beatnik is also easy to start out with.

The most important resource for skinning I found was right under my nose...other skins!Find one that works the way you like and look at how they solved problems.Pay close attention to misc. settings and margins.(not telling you to copy anything)The only way i got winamp buutons to work was to open a skin where they already worked and learn from that.

Great tip Brainiac.  I always have 2 skins open in SkinStudio............ the one I'm working on, and the one I'm using as a guide. 

My first ICQ Plus skins, were other skins, with the graphics replaced, one at a time, and the settings tweaked to fit the new graphics.   It was a great way to learn what, did what. 

Koasati!..you need tips?What's the world coming to.

#3 - Thats exactly how I learned too! I still do alot of stuff like that.

i tried to skin stuff, justnever worked out really well, i guess i just dont have the patience, i do make ls themes though which are more code than anything... and u know thats what i like

but start small, beatnik, color pad, ect the small stuff, thats what i tried

Skinning a shell is no different to skinning a single proggy....though it 'can' be far more complex....

Dont be in a hurry to release a skin.Use it for awhile.I released my first skin thinking it was as complete as I could make it.Was I ever wrong!A major update followed and guess what?I still found stuff that either I missed or needed fixing.Minor update later and STILL found more!Now there are Nearly 15'000 people out there with an inferior version.Do your users a favor and make your skin as complete as possible before uploading.Major updates on down the road are cool but lots of little updates just put more work on the staff here(sorry staff ).

To expand on that last tip, don't fell you 'have' to upload a skin either.
It's a sad state of affairs, but probably about 80% of people actively skinning today create their next skin simply to upload it and get comments, etc etc.

And if you fall into that 80%, don't do that iritating thing of making a skin you don't like, then uploading it saying 'This is kinda crappy, but I thought I'd upload anyway. comments plz'.
If you think it's crappy, nobody is gonna come along and tell you otherwise, no matter how much you hope for it.

Also, have fun. Skinning isn't a contest, it's a hobby.

Well said Hippy, that is the #1 rule to follow.

this may not be as usefull as other ve stated, but...

number of downloads dont count (dont get demoralised with low DL counts),

there will always be people who do OO's & ahh's, momentarally get excited by it , then shut out them & pay more attention to those who give u bad comments & think why did they do that & try to improve..

finally its how u fell when u r creating a skin thats more important than anything else, (the high of creating a skin is what really matters to me)..

its not the amount of skins u make that matters but its the quality that sets u apart.