Angel_Wings Angel_Wings

Cry babies

Cry babies

Yes, it’s true…I’m one of the few, the proud…the cry babies.

So listen to me now, hear me later and think about it sometime…

Artists, CAN be a bit oversensitive at times (at least the type that grew up like me…without any formal training and starting with crayola and working up to the big gurl/boy stuff like oils and acrylics, clay etc. and later trying to work their way through a computer version of their own style and attempting to make what feels so unnatural with a mouse look as if they actually had their hand in the dang thing).

I grew up using art as my emotional outlet because I didn’t really have any other outlet that served me as well (okay, poetry and singing were good too). Perhaps it’s true that wincustomize is more strictly a skin site rather than an artistry type of site but I’d sorely miss the wallpapers that are here and let’s put this in perspective for a wee moment shall we? Wallpaper can set the mood for your whole desktop environment so to discount it as mere “fluff” that should *only* compliment the skins which define your OS elements seems rather dissident and ignorant in my opinion. I love to see a sunset on my desktop…I love to see the night stars and a city at night…I even love (gawd forbid) dolphins and beaches and palm trees…oh my

Food for question…

Is “skinning” even an art? And if we stripped *every* artist and skinner here of every filter or program known to mankind and made them do it without anything at all but a pixel by pixel…would this site even exist? And if we judge everyone by the program they use…(i.e. Bryce, Photoshop etc.) then…is our digital art just a fanciful example of one’s skill at that program? Does being a *digital* artist as a whole make that art feel as if it’s without soul and without feeling? Without the fingerprint that gives an artist his/her style? I think that a program or filter does NOT make the artist…but rather enhances his/her abilities… I liken it to…traditional artists from days of yore who considered using prefab colors in paint a *no-no* and felt that creating one’s own colors from a pot of the basic 3 (i.e. yellow, red, blue) were the only true way of creating art. They also seriously frowned upon black and white as actual paint colors because those are considered *shades* and one should be disciplined enough not to need those as long as one is careful…

Almost every windowblinds skin “screams” KPT 5 shapeshifter…and I love that proggy too…but does that mean…you are cheating? I hope not! I think the beautiful stuff that people do with that is reason enough to use it!

Did I just go off on a tangent?

Sorry, just ingore this post and move on to important matters! )
12,561 views 80 replies
Reply #51 Top
I hear ya, d_s, good night and sweet dreams!

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Reply #52 Top
JM..we're hardly going to advertise it as 'cruds-ville', now are we?...
But again, walls are a valued PART of skinning a GUI, but not the ONLY part...
Reply #53 Top
I understand completely, Jafo
Please don't take my remarks as a personal "attack"
It most certainly is not.
Good Night, sleep tight...

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Reply #54 Top
And btw, dark_seraphim, I bookmarked your website...
I'll be back.

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Reply #55 Top
D_S your commentary was well written and bound to get attacked but you are very accurate in your summation. For people who don't have the need for stardock products...the wallpaper section is a very much enjoyed section that wouldn't be visited by us "non-skin-users" otherwise. Keep your nipper up!
Reply #56 Top
Jafo...most of the words I use are made up My father had a pet peeve about how the yankees kept turning nouns into verbs...fixing to, deplaning, etc....My personal favorite is the way momentarily is used here....in a moment, as opposed to for a moment...I have invented at least one word, though...dynamicism...use it quite frequently....and noone seems to notice

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Reply #57 Top
In our football 'crowd'...[Aussie Rules], one horrid 'word use' has emerged......if it's a challenge to a side to catch up to the other's lead it would be referred to [by the commentators] as a 'big ask', where 'ask' becoms a noun.
Did I mention that Aussie Rules followers are a bunch of knuckle-dragging morons, only slightly better than Rugby Union/League supporters?...

/me runs and hides from a bunch of rampaging gorillas with a collective IQ of, ooh....about '3'....
Reply #58 Top
Hmmm...'becoms'....methinks 'tis time to clean the keyboard.... Spell checker
Reply #59 Top
Jafo...I believe the correct 'ebonics' translation here would be the 'big axe'....equally as frightening


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Reply #60 Top
lmao. Anyone here that I give a sh*t about knows the quality of the work I can do, and they've seen very little of the whole. I have the benefit of several years experience with Photoshop, and have been skinning since early 1999, so I don't think it would be fair to whip it out and compare lengths with you guys. I can say with complete self-assurance, though, the concept doesn't send chills of fear through me. When I feel like uploading to WC, I will, and most certainly not to prove anything to the thin-skinned.

In the meantime, though, I'll just go ahead and say anything I please, as much as I please, and to whom I please; with all the authority I feel comfortable with. If the WC staff sees fit to come down on me, hey, it's their site. You, though, won't really have much effect, sorry. I can obviously tolerate a lot more than you guys if this desperate tone of this thread is any indication.

Peff: the screenshot is of a Talisman theme running over automation via a PHP engine I wrote to parse and re-write the theme on the fly. A toy, sure, but one I find useful. The wallpaper has nothing to do with it, it is just an anime I like. Not Dragonball, but something just as childish in your estimation, I am sure.
Reply #61 Top
Children-No jousting on the playground please. No axs, knives, guns, spears, or other trinkets of destruction either. Go sit in your respective corners with your crayons and coloring books and we'll put them up on the show and tell board and vote on the results tommorrow.
Reply #62 Top
Ok...enough with the dodgey spelling, Old Crab...
'axes', 'tomorrow'...[at dawn]... Spell checker
Reply #63 Top
Have you seen my message on the board about the Russian bloke?
Reply #64 Top
Yes my spelling is dodgey. It's 3:04 AM and it's been a long, long, long, day ...zzzzzzzzzz.
Reply #65 Top
The world is full of ankle-biters who have fast mouths and little substance...ignore them, every site has one or two who become well known.

If people really did make stuff by hand perhaps we would see less of those damned glass buttons.

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Reply #66 Top
Fuzzy....no glass buttons with mine...and they are by hand, pixel by pixel, first drawn in '97...[the ball-like buttons I have used in 'most' of my skins and themes]...
Reply #67 Top
WOW Jafo! That you say this: "I agree that skinning is not 'ART' in capital letters, as I said, because it is more a craft, where the true 'quality' is in the handling of the medium and not especially the 'vision' behind it. Skinning, especially for Windowblinds has been around for years, and generally now you will see a 'lot of the same' and relatively few innovative efforts...and a lot of that is fuelled by the desire of many to become the 'greatest' downloadee, producing more of what 'sells' rather than what is actually creative"
That's amazing....

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Reply #68 Top
Lecrayon...are you saying I appear to have a brain, AND an opinion...and this is what, disconcerting?....

I still think skinning is an 'artform', but a stack of neatly folded blankets is 'bed linen', not 'art'.
I have a deep-rooted hatred of 'still life' otherwise known as dead flowers and/or fruit in a bowl, I don't care WHO painted it, apart for its technical skill of paint application to canvas it has zilch value as 'expression'.

Main-stream 'ART' is an acquired taste...if you are filthy rich, you can afford to acquire it.
Underground ART culture is for those who couldn't get rich quick by being noticed by quasi-intellectuals aka Art Critics [capitalized to fellate their egos], and banded together in a sub culture, slumming it to be kewl, instead [think the 'beat' generation].

Deviantart.com is an ART site. It has a few artists on it, too.
Wincustomize.com is a skinning site. Curiously it has artists on it as well...

In the Martin family, there is only one artist, and that's my sister. I may be able to handle various media, but I am an Architect, a drawer, and a skinner/themer, but not sufficiently self-absorbed to consider myself an Artist.
I leave that to the emotive, social wretches who daub splatters on canvas to define man's triumph over adversity, or these days with modern 'art', Piss Christ, or another stack of pillows...
Reply #69 Top
HUH? What's that for a strange comment.

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Reply #70 Top
lol

how did I miss this thread?
Reply #72 Top
well, i seem to have missed most of this

however, with regard to ART and "respect", this is my personal view.

at school in Art class, art simply seemed to only be painting and drawing. and not really geometric drawing at that.

now i would define ART as something "graphical" (eg, so not books) that generates an emotional response in the observer.

i use skins and wallpaper to make my computer a more friendly and happy place. a nice WB skin makes my windows more attractive and appealing.

surely this is an emotional reaction?

so my this (perhaps simplistic) definition skins and wallpaper are ART

as for wallpaper, i have seen some wallpapers gain considerable respect and admiration.
Reply #73 Top
Sorry, just ingore this post and move on to important matters!
by Citizen dark_seraphim - 11/10/2002 10:17:01 PM


I think I shall do exactly that.