To skin, or not to skin?

from WinCustomize Forums
I have to admit, I'm tempted again. I have all these almost-complete versions of metalX2 sitting here on my computer after I managed to stumble across a backup I didn't know I'd made before 'The Big Crash of 2003', and I'm considering getting them finished and packaged together as the premium skin pack I'd always intended them to be.

I also came across the old designs for my oft discussed 8-ball skin, and realised they're actually not all that bad at all. With a lick of paint I could probably have a brand new skin ready in a couple of weeks.

The real issue is time though. How do those of you with full-time jobs manage to find the time and motivation to skin in the evenings?
3,399 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't have job. I could make a skin each 3-5 days, but I'm so lazy for what I hate myself. >
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am slowly working on my new skin too, when its almost complete the last part is the slowest, maby I should finish it tonight...
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I can really cope with you Grayhaze. I have dozens of unfinished proyects that I just cant find the time to work on them. I have a very busy schedule with my job.
I can actually make some time to work on them, but motivation it's a little harder after a full day's work.
Some times I come home and I dont even want to look at my PC >

But I do hope you find the time to finish your skin GH. I'd really like to see it.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I wait till holidays. After a normal working day I'm too tired to do anything let alone something as demanding as skinning.

I have several part finished skins I've lost interest in.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I did most of my skinning while I wasnt working.Once I'm back to work,skinning time will be greatly reduced and I'm already a slow skinner.Working on a WMP skin right now,must be at least 200separate graphic states.
[Message Edited]eq section alone is about 120 states.
[Message Edited]
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

You wouldn't believe how much unfinished stuff I have on my system.

I wonder if I'll ever finish it all.........?

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
That's why I "retired" some months ago. It's just so much work, and truely so little appreciation sometimes. But then I remodeled my home office, and I started to change a few things, little by little, to match my new office color scheme. From there, it just ballooned into some large monster that will never be finished. Or so it seems. I do manage to do most of my skinning at work, and while the wife is asleep. My insomnia is everyone else's gain, I guess. Lately I haven't been all that motivated. I've got about 50 or so skins, etc even completed and ready to upload, but somehow can't find the motivation to upload them. I think sometimes uploading the skins takes more time than creating the skins themselves. After this suite, though, I am more than just "retiring". It will be with a capital "R". Now I just wish I could RETIRE from my real job. hehe
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I sit behind the machine at work all day. Leaves you with little enthousiasm to do the same at home as well. Work is a real brain drain.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I got to the place that aesthetics bored the crap out of me. I tried to make a skin and it was just the same buttons with a different image on them, and I couldn't bear it. That was years ago now. Appearances just weren't really enough to keep me interested.

Even now, though, when I put something together in my own work I instinctively twist it around to see how it would be useful in customization. It is just hard to commit something that might be really useful functionally when others can absorb it into commercial software without a thank you, and there's always the looming annoyance that next week everything you have made is gonna be broken by the next version of the software.

How soon will it be before the entire library of metaphors we use for UI; "desktop", "icons", "taskbar", etc. are replaced? Is it worth pondering long and hard how to make things more beautiful or efficient when some muckity-muck at MS is gonna decide that the whole framework we build upon is ready for the "recycle bin"? That said, I still goof about with things. I have tons of stuff on my hard drive waiting for me to be motivated enough to glue it onto some app or another. DesktopX looks interesting, honestly.
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
yeah nothing worse then creating the perfect skin only to find out when you upgraded the software your skin no longer works... hehe!

me usually plays while working simultaneously throughout my day or night but I dabble more w/ skinning my Pocket PC then desktop these days and since my concentration is limited to my playing, I tend to download someone elses skins I like and rip them apart piece by piece and then glue them into a quickie pocket pc skins etc. so I rarely skin from scratch like most others do.