it's depressing to think about this, but it seems as if the art of skinning is deteriorating in our beloved community and more art such as wallpapers is taking over. look at all the new uploads here. they are mainly screenshots and wallpapers. any theories as to why this may be happening? do you think this trend will continue or when things are settled activity will pick back up?
11:28 pm, Monday, September 17, 2001 (8 years ago)
I had this super-leet trendwhorish skin suite ready to upload, but I saw this thread and deleted it, and just uploaded a bunch of mediocre wallpapers to spite you imike (and you too miriku)...
seriously.. I think its due to several factors
1) alot of people submit stuff just to get feedback.. they want to gauge their talent.. its like fishing for compliments... and wallpapers are a quick and easy way to get such feedback.. much quicker than skinning. since custo has a lot of 'newbies' due to its recent re-opening, I think skinning will pick back up eventually
2) the skinning community seems to go in cycles ... there will be a lot of crap, then quality of submissions will improve, then the good skinners get real jobs and have no time for skinning.. and a new "class" of skinners joins the community....the cycle continues... growing pains...
I think it's getting a bit more complicated to skin, it's no longer replacing the graphics on winamp2x... now you have to code and try to make everything work... and with upcoming formats getting even more complicated using their own script sytax, i think it'll just intimidate most of new kids trying to get into it...
I have been around for a while, and i think the main reason is skin languages.
Take this, you hardly see anyone do LS skins, for the fact that so much scripting is involved and its a language in itself. A lot of ppl dont feel like learning new languages. I myself have fallen victim to that. I would love to skins WA3 or WMP, but i dunt wanna learn XML or whatever language it is. The class has somewhat cycled and everyone is waiting for the next big skinner to come out from hiding, the problem is the newbies prolly dotn wanna learn a long tedious skinning process. I know when i started skinning, it was with LS and i was determined, which is good, because that is the one program that prolly takes the most coding of them all. Im used to it, but now you have everyone starting up, and jumping to stuff like Wallpapers and quicknotes skins. THings that take about 3 lines of code and 2 bmps. If skinning would go back to being simple again i bet we would have a nice amount of skins pop back up.
I'll glady skin WA3 but and WM7 but where the hell do I start? I cant just sort of guess. ( I already tried that for WA3, didnt work out.) Deskmod had a WA3 skinning tutorial, but now it doesn't. And I cant find one. I cant find a WA7 one either.
I'm too slow. And being a perfectionist doesn't help either. I still have Reveal and K-jöfol on my list of apps to skin. Mozilla is up there too (been reading up on XUL), but skinning these apps takes a lot of time and effort.
Now wallpapers are very unlike skinning. Not trying to sound 1337 here, but it's so easy and takes so little to whip up a (bad) wall as compared to skinning.
I believe there are still some good skins being produced every now and then....skins arent being produced less... on the contrary i might say.. skin suits is becoming a trend nowadays.
The thing is that wallpapers outnumber skins ... so you usually get to notice 'how many more walls are compaired to skins" which is true.
Skins , and most importantly , GOOD skins are still being designed every now and then.
Long live skinning ! ;)
PS : that does mean that skinners arent exploring other ways of art/design ...nor that the old skinners still skin [unfortunately].
i really don't skin stuff because i suck at art. well, i'm not that bad, but i'm not that great either. although, if anybody wanted to skin wa3, i'd gladily write all the code to make the art work.
All that is needed is for SKINNING sites to place far less emphasis on Wallpapers, or more 'common' art forms. If you want to promote skinning...differentiate it and separate it from filter frenzy trend-whores of wallpaper art of the likes of Britney's tits photo-montages....etc. Allow only a few 'good' walls slected purely to suppliment the skins, not dominate as the can very easily do, as any peanut with a hax0red Bryce proggy can churn out Dolphins quicker than the Japanese can turn them into sushi...;)
1. You would see big name skinners come out with skins every now and then, which would actually motivate newbies to make skins for themselves. But the skinners at the same time would make wallpapers. They probably made like 10 wp's before they completed a skin for winamp or so. Newbies see this and get motivated by that because they are exposed to more wp's than skins.
2. There are only a few programs that actually let you skin for them. Those are the majority of the skins there. And after awhile, everything has been seen and it's hard to out do old skins.
3. Everyone seems to be praising great digital artists more than skinners now. But that's what I can see from it.
4. It's easier to sit there in one program, like Photoshop, and make something instead of creating something, then coding, then testing, then debugging, etc.
I do see skinning dieing out, but I also see it coming back after people get tired of seeing the same wallpaper's and screenshots. It's a cycle.
Wallpapers tend to offer more instant gratification...
skins take a while to come together after scripting and testing and making sure everything's in its right place... the last skin i worked on had over 140 separate images and a massive script file. i'm guessing the patience is just not there for all the new kids trying to create their first skin or second...
i was originally whine here, but then i saw that set that someone uploaded and i had faith in humanity again
in a way, it's all worth it with all these walls as long as you get to these full collections of customizing, skinning goodness at the end. it wasnt even a fantastic package, but it was solid, simple, and yeah. thats what custo was meant to be about. total, 100% conversions of your box :)
i personally have a totally opposite oppinion. For me wallpapers are hard as hell, i can't do them, especially a good looking one, sure i could whip out some lame 3d render in bryce add some random filters in photoshpo and call it art, but that's not what wallpapers are about. So i stick to skinning, mainly litestep, i personally don't consider skinning to be art, it's just designing for me, but i love it nonetheless, and i'm somewhat good at it.
escopedo... That's why we moderate wallpapers at WinCustomize.... Bad ones are easy to do....good ones require talent and application. LiteSTEP 'can' be totally non-artistic....you don't 'need' to have graphics in LiteSTEP at all if you wish...[although there is an 'art' to coding the step.rc well]....but to make a genuinely 'good' 'STEP theme, you need a very high degree of artistry. It can be, in fact, interactive 'art'. Don't sell themeing and skinning short. It is simply a modern creative art. If you fail to see that, perhaps you are not as 'somewhat good at it' as you claim....;)
i kinda agree on all of this. Whats really sad is that kjofol is completely dead (well duh! at least the best skinners were making a couple more after its death, but now its all gone)
i got started in the community with kjofol, and had many ideas before custo went down for a good skin.
i kind alost interest but now i will continue on my long lost kjofol skin project in school kind of on and off. right.
jafo you be sayin i suck? man that's a low insult, i be cryin now :-) naw, i dunno, some litestep themes are artistic, and pleasing to the eye, it's just my personal oppinion that it's not as artistic as some wallpapers you can see. I know most of my themes are visually appealing, yet i don't consider it art, as i said before, for me it's just design, i lack the skills needed to create a great piece of art that can be used as a wallpaper (sad but true, i weep)
like most of us i got into skinning when winamp was first released, it was the first time I experienced gui customization at an end-user level and this inspired me to get involved in the community sites (customize primarily), which has since led to me learning even more about this type of design. the collapse of custo v1, skinz.org, deskmod.com...all kinda left me lurking around not doing anything due to lack of interest or inspiration, and even a dedicated news source.
since returning here it's great to share screenshots again and be inspired by that others are creating, i think with time and the release of winamp3 and netscape 6.1 theme builder (fuck ie!) *g* there will be some good stuff happening.
software developers have to realise that open source and customization are the ways of the future. hmm I think I've lost the plot. bed time.......
escopedo... No, not at all...at least no more than me, anyway...;) You need to look closely at 'STEP themes from way-back...the ones that weren't blinding you with tricky coding, but just showed creative styling....People like Doodle, and his Turtle Soup, or old classics like Thug Life. If a GUI is stylish and imaginative...and its functionality is likewise, then it can truly be a work of art. Every now and then, a 'STEP theme comes along and all you can say is 'wow'. There aren't as many like that these days....at least not to veteran 'STEPpers who maybe have 'seen it all before'...and only those new to the genre are impressed. I myself am slowly getting away from all my 'greyness'...the Community Skin projects were a perfect way...using others' graphics to make your themes... If and when LS.net gets up again....check their archives [if they survive]...there are some truly magnificent themes around that are definitely 'art'....;)
Oh, yes...I forgot.... Britney Spears boobs as a photo-montage with some wild font underneath saying 'Britney Spears Rox'......my god, now THAT IS ART....;p Check out an un-moderated wallpaper section some time. Most of the 'art' is very definitely untalented dross....pre-pubescent imagery, or just plain crap.
Then there are some works of true inspiration...digital masterpieces, but unfortunately they are being swamped by the mediocre.
jafo, yeah i remember turtlesoup, that was indeed by far the single most artisitc theme i've ever seen (but not practical for me). I too miss the good old days of ls.net, if you go to ls.com you can check out the old themes section, pretty much everything from ls.net is still in there (ls.com hosted the files after ls.net crashed, that was before the HUGE crash though). I also remember the days when the wharf was the center piece of ls, people did some nice stuff back then, sigh..
heh. everyone still visiting the skins section on winamp.com? 99% of the one's being submitted today are pure crap. Stick a backdrop here, color some buttons and boom. That's bullshit. Winamp.com USED to carry good skins. What the hell happened? I want everything to go back to the way it was! Especially custo!!
having xml and scripting as a mandatory part of making a skin is just stupid. especially since there are no wysiwyg editors for i.e. wmp afaik (correct me if i'm wrong). all it does is give a couple of little fun tricks for more code-savvy individuals to pull with the skin, and a helluva lot more headache for normal people.
hehehehehehhe...see, this is kinda funny. i am watchin those "X guys" do brill stuff all the time, and finding new respect for new artists. the point really becomes: Pull your head out of winamps ass and have a look around. anything Xcaponius has done in teh past few months is awesome, and thibaud, and even johnny5, who i hadn't heard of til last week or soemthing. (yeah, that's all coolplayer-centric, but you can find all sorts of stuff when you de-ass your head). hell, i don't even know what AMI news is, but hippys WWIII skin makes me want to...
perhaps, if you lose your faith, you should just browse soem..here, LOS, SB, other places...
reports of skinnings demise have been greatly overestimated
Liquisoft...not all of the ones who 'loved to skin and were good at it' have left.....unless of course, you think people such as treetog cannot skin 'good'. There are many others, and they are still around...;)
boo, no one knows how to zoom on screenshots from the litestep themes on custo? makes me sad. oh and audion has some really NICE stuff, too bad it's for mac (i love the alpha blending they use in it)
I don't think skinning is dying. I think it's just becoming harder to skin and that people don't want to take the time to learn it.
Someone, or some company, needs to make a product that is a lot easier to skin. Right now I think Winamp is the easiest, with LiteStep being the hardest.
I actually built a skinning system into my site, if you guys want to take a look at it that would be great. It's very hard to skin it right now (you can't dload the whole zip of skins, but one image at a time -- which is going to change soon).
I need some ideas. I'm considering releasing the source code, and a full installation program for this forum -- which in my opinion is better than UBB or yaBB or vB.
Orgality... WinAMP is very definitely not the easiest...if you think that, you are using a skin-maker proggy which is only good for photoskins, which are crap. CD Stomper is infinitely easier...as is sysmeter or Beatnik and a squillion others...XXCalc...XXLog...etc.
LiteSTEP 'can' be hard....but WA3 or Sonique....they are things I'd consider to be 'hard'...;p
I find Litestep to be rather easy, considering I understand the language. WB is just ridiculously time-consuming (Notepad or SkinStudio; I prefer Notepad, less memory). Winamp is the hardest for me, because you have one format, and it's hard getting around all the bugs that the dips at Nullsoft are too fucking lazy to work out. (Their excuse is lame, IMO.)
Skinning isn't dying, but wallpapers are becoming more popular. Yes, it's a cycle. ____________ wyattg "Where people go, politics follow." -Bruce Sterling ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
What I'd like to know is if people here, older veterans of skinning are still/would be interested in the CommunitySkin project (I know Jafo is ;). CS is definitely something that can bring life back into skinning, or at least promote collaboration, skin suites, stuff like that. Also it could have a broader mass appeal if it kicks ass, and we know it does/will, and it just encourages the younger generation.
About the problems of scripting and such for skins, how about more people make skin templates for the things that need scripts? I personally suck at art, but can script cleanly and efficiently. So, once I get some time and motivation, I think I'll find one of those apps that needs scripting, make a blank template skin, and invite others to replace the graphics. Anyone with me?
someone probably already said this but... wp are 10 times easier to create than skins are. alot of people don't want to fiddle with placing the button in this part of the bmp and the main window in this bmp.
kind of a bummer... my winamp, beatnik, and wb skins haven't changed for a year
Me likes skinning litestep a lot, gives me so much freedom for what i can do (even though i restrict myself to more minimalistic stuff). WB is a pain in the arse to skin (i've used notepad so far because skinStudio plain sucks). And yeah, more collaborative skin suits would be great, and i'd love to be part of one of em one day, too bad i'm only good with litestep (of the more advanced apps, everyone can skin kewlpad, mypad, and all them other easy apps)
hmm.. i used to skin a lot of apps, but since devart came along and stopped moderating my wallpapers, i stopped. I'm starting again by trying to skin wmp 7 and maybe, but just maybe, winamp. Those that are bitching about having to learn xml, take into account that those of us who ever skinned litestep had to learn how to use each and everyone of the modules we wanted to use and the basic stuff that litestep did, and it wasn't so hard. Learning is always good.
