Matches_Malone Matches_Malone

Where have all the decent skinners and skins gone?

Where have all the decent skinners and skins gone?

First I would like to say this. I'm proud to be a paid subscriber to Stardock and virtually all of it's products even bought some as gifts too family members.
While scrolling the windowblinds section I've seen some ridiculous skins even some by those whose been skinning for awhile. Like i.e. 'Happy Fish c'mon. I think wincustomize is losing it's flair when it comes to high-defintion not too mention quality skins. And us loyal customers has to go elsewhere to find some good skins, like Flux by josephs, before that skin was uploaded here it was on of course on other sites first even though he stated that for his art award.
What happened Tiggz, Mike Brandt, and a host of others, the real skinners who dedicate their entire being, and lots of man hours, not to say those who make general skins don't but not like the professionals that puts true dedication to put forth a high-quality skin and not just downloading skinstudio and putting some bars together.
Please weed out those ridiculous skins, put wincustomize back on the map. I think it should be a skin-law the weeds out the good from the bad skins.

Bad-skin: defined as, too many bugs and have to keep uploading the skin
Good-skin: defined as, not as many bugs and upload twice for update
High-quality-skin: defined as, no bugs every part of the skin is skinned w/periodic updates to add more new tweaks if users ask.

-End of report
53,925 views 132 replies
Reply #126 Top
MyColors Website
Reply #127 Top
whats the diffrence between mycolors and Suites?? seems like the same thing
Reply #128 Top
From Brad's State of Skinning:

In the past year, Stardock has brought in much of the talent from Pixtudio and SkinPlant to form Stardock Design.  In just a few months, two huge projects were won from Microsoft and Dell.

 . . .

And for Dell, the single largest skinning initiative in history. By teaming up with colleges, sports teams, and more, end users have started to be able to purchase themed desktops of their favorite teams.

Reply #129 Top

Where have all the flowers gone

Long time passing.

Reply #130 Top
Tiggz hasn't left. I just checked his profile. He was on less than 10 minutes ago.


Yeah, I basically meant I hadnt seen a "community" skin from him in a while thats all. Good to know he's still around though...the others too.
Reply #131 Top
From Brad's State of Skinning:


thanks zubaz! very interesting stardock has come a long way its funny i actually thought of the that idea in 2003 of contacting universities and offering them themed desktops but i never did.
Reply #132 Top
Sorry, I read the entire thread and wanted to reply to all of it.
A submission may not be to my personal preferences, but that doesn't mean it's not good, or that I don't appreciate it's value. Someone else may love it. To me, the difference between a good skin and bad is the polish of the final product. How does it work? How useable is it? How many bugs does it have? Do the actual images need work? Making a skin is extremely time consuming. Not only do you need to have artistic skills for the images, skin studio isn't exactly intuitive in all areas. I respect anyone who can actually complete a theme, no matter how rough it turns out.

What is needed is constructive criticism. Being mean just makes you an ass. Skinning, just like any other form of art is subjective. Instead of saying it's good, or sucks define why you do/don't like it. Example: Wow! That text just pops right out at you. The color blending the start menu is awesome. using transparency on your buttons will remove those jagged edges. The colors kinda clash. The background is too dark for the text,etc.

This will take the submitting artist off of the defensive. Instead of wasting time justifying to themselves (and everyone else) how it doesn't suck, they can concentrate on the areas they need to improve. It would result in less conflict, a friendlier atmosphere, and skinners progressing much faster, and ultimately more quality skins.

I think we all miss not getting new themes from the above mentioned greats. If what Brad says is correct, maybe we will see some great new themes from them in the future