New blood for skinning

How to bring them in?

from WinCustomize Forums
I have no art skill. Any doubt that I had any was dispersed when I tried to follow Mormegil's tutorial. I can repeat what he does but I cannot create new things with them.

When I first got into skinning, the skins were great but the skinning software was iffy at best. My first experience with WindowBlinds was on a Windows 95 box and while it worked, it didn't skin very much and my computer got flakey. And while IconPackager worked great, there was no such thing as alpha blended icons back then.

But back then, it seemed like there was a ton of new skins. Many of which were really good. There were always a bunch of icon packs being uploaded too.

BUT. lately it seems like things have slowed down. This month there are only TWO new icon packages for IconPackager in the library. There have been 38 new skins this month, not bad but there is no Dangeruss or Alexandrie or Treetog of this generation. I find myself waiting on pins and needls for what Apocalypse_67 is going to create next or what Snowman is going to bring over or hope that Essorant will hit another home run. Once in awhile greats like Gabriel, Z71, Hippy, and Adni will deliver something. But what about the NEW greats?

How do we, as a skinning community, attract, motivate, encourage people with art and technical talent to create the next generation of great skins and icons?
4,698 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
How do we, as a skinning community, attract, motivate, encourage people with art and technical talent to create the next generation of great skins and icons?


I think to let people know that skinning is fun. I think we should let people know about skinning and what it stands for. I have this idea I'm working on, to make a skinning magazine in .pdf format and my goal is that skinners but also non-skinners will find it attractive to read. Maybe that way we can motivate/encourage non-skinners to go and skin and exploit their technical talent. There are a LOT of people that have the qualitys to skin but they just didn't found this website/communnity yet, I say its a good thing to invest in these type of projects because it may bring the next 'Dangeruss'/'Alexandrie'/'Snowman' etc...
Personally I believe there are really great skinners in this community, maybe it's also a question of taste, Me myself like glassy skins, but others may like metallic skins...
Besides that, I heard that Longhorn will be a skinning-heaven so when longhorn get's released I think new skins will fast appear because than people will have new sources to work on...
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I will tell you:

WinCustomize needs a permanent "Essential library" of articles that is on every side-bar on every page. A set of must-read articles like the newbie articles, icon-a-day series, and other such things. There's a lot of information on WinCustomize but no easy way for would-be new users to get to it.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
New blood is rising...it might take a bit, but it's coming
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree with DoctorNick. There are alot of very young teenagers just staring out on this site. Many of them show great potential. I believe every art media have moments of lag time in creativity... the movies, music (especially music- I believe we are in the biggest creative quagmire ever experienced in the music industry!), etc... This (skinning) is the newest type of media on the planet in artistic aspects.

Patience. We need just a little more patience.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As more & more of the OS becomes skinnable and WindowBlinds expands to do so, creating a skin becomes a lot more work. When I first started skinning, SkinStudio did not exist, .uis files were relatively small and tidy and fewer images were needed. Now, fleshing out a skin completely takes a lot of configuration time and then more time to take a skin on a reasonable "shakedown cruise" to try to isolate its glitches. Not that it was quick and easy back then, but I think the growing complexity of skins is part of the reason for the apparent slowdown - there's just a lot more to do now to get an acceptable finished product.

Few of us have the knowledge and skill of a mormegil - he can knock out an icon a day, but most of us would be lucky to knock out one a week. Two years for an iconpack is a long time to invest.

There are other factors in play as well. As the market for skinning has developed, many of the popular skinners who've been around awhile have made the transition to commercial work, and deservedly so. Many who remain skin as a part-time hobby, so volume is necessarily low. I've been working with and tweaking a set of skins for nearly 2 years now and I'm almost ready to upload the update, but still without animations or toolbar icons - I just haven't had the time to put in to learning those pieces. What I anticipate is that we will see more skinners contributing fewer skins each over time.

I agree with 47songs - we just need to be patient. Some of the recent "first" skins published on WC have been outstanding, so I think we're seeing a new wave of skinners starting to build.

Cheers,
Daiwa
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I agree with all of you.  I do think we need to make basic tutorials more readily available.

I also think we need to have private galleries for people so that they can upload stuff for their gallery that isn't in the general public gallery while they get their skills going.