Hey! Have you guys been to Home Depot lately? You really ought to go! Sounds like you guys need a vacation! ;p :LOL:

I was once a download whore. One day, it just didn't matter anymore and that's when I started to impress myself and others. I am working on a skin that has over 400 hours put into it so far. I'll probably put another 400 into it. It will sit around til the GUIO starts and I am excited to have it on the shelf until then. I am in a good place from a skinning sense. I wish everyone could be me. Is that so wrong?   

edit: at the 600 hour mark, they will release a wb update that will break my skin.  ;p 

Ah man! That sucks! I'd hate to be you right now NT! ;p I hope its not broken beyond repair! Oh and hey! If you need a tester (if its for xp that is) you got my addy. Then I could start on some docks for it too!

Imagine a world where Skinners measured their pricks by how much time they spent on a skin....  ;p

This Patron Gold stuff is delicious.  :HOT:  

It really hasn't been the most efficient time spent though... see there I go getting distracted again.   

omg essorant wrote in my post!! *squeeee!!!!* seriously bro....wicked tips.... (have memorized them) :LOL: 

Funny you should mention that, I just got a home depot gift cert gift from the parents of the little league soccer team that I coached this year - so I definitely have some home depot cash burning a hole in my pocket waiting for me to get off my duff and drive down to the store.

NT... 600 hours.... if you skinned 24 hours a day without any bathroom or meal breaks, would take you 25 days straight. I'm assuming this is the holy grail of skins ... WOW!

Feel free to disregard my opinion but i think a lot of people are fed up with certain similar skins getting bumped to page 1 every day...

Its like vista clone in black, vista clone with blue bit, vista clone with a white windwow bit instead of a black bit - and everybody is like "wow man thats AMAZING!"

A lot of people obviously want to download them though and its good to have this option but mabye put them all as substyles on the one skin and not bump it every day - thats all.

Ive not made any windowblinds yet but im sure it wouldnt be too hard to alter some of these skins to make them your own and it'd be so much more rewarding for the artists.

Anyway my 2 cents

Since this is actually a thread asking for comments/input from 'Masters'.....shock-horror.....I, too was a 'Master' once....way back in 2001....[clearly the standard was way lower].

I actually have WB skins to my name, even.....though to many/most [if not all] they are seemingly horrid, unfinished things, when actually they were/are quite complete and functional when applied to a shell other than Explorer.

I 'skun' [new word] for myself....and still do [a bit].  I'd NEVER contemplate the notion of selling them [as a Master can] ...simply because they were for me....and I was egotistical enough to assume others just 'might' like them a little [even just to laugh at....as Neowinians did in one thread I saw].

There are people who will want to strive to be better than they are [at skinning]....there are people who are happy with whatever level they are at.  But what makes Wincustomize.com different to most other sites is we ascribe degrees of 'competence', [for want of a better word] through the promotion process....where generally a 'Master' will be a darn good skinner [or at least have been doing it for an eternity] but the levels 'beyond'....[ Admin/Wizop] need not have even any actual skinning competence at all....more importantly a 'devotion' to skinning as a community/entity.

Masters will typically be publicly acclaimed as 'good at what they do'...but they are not exclusive [or even necessarily inclusive] when it comes to 'popularity'.

I remember Tiggz popping onto the scene....he didn't enter a Master....but from day one his works were 'Master-class'.  [I bet what he did was sit on the sidelines for years perfecting his craft and muttering 'not yet...not yet'].

Now here's a question ....should, or MUST every Master-skin be absolutely total and complete....with nothing left undone/finished...and if so, why? ...;)

Traditionally a master is someone who has gone through a long apprenticeship, completed a master piece and is able practice their trade and very importantly, to take on apprentices.

By the time one reaches that stage they've already set a standard for themselves that precludes anything but their best work.  I'd expect them to only produce absolutly total and complete work.

What I think is missing here at WC (to a degree) is the active (or apparent) apprenticeship of newer skinners.  A master should have teh elite skills but should not be elitest.  Their goal should be to practice their trade and spend time training up the next batch of skinners.

I wonder if we had a forum or method to ask for help from the masters if that would help bridge a gap.

This post is a good start and opportunity . .   :CONGRAT: 

That is the best idea I have heard in a long time. There are times when I am skinning something, I would love to ask a master what the heck I'm doing wrong, instead of struggling for hours alone trying to figure it out myself. Yes, I can ask in the forums already...but having a direct way to get help would be awesome. A forum would be ok, but an IRC channel would be better. An "Ask a Master" channel or something.   

I remember back when me and IR and NT were but mere beginners, it was like pulling teeth to get any information from the 'experienced' skinners when we had a question or had a hard time with some issue with a skin. As a result, we pretty much had to figure it out on our own.

Because of that ... at least for me and I believe for IR and NT as well ... I have always tried to help anyone learning to skin; whether it was finding bugs or giving tips on how to achieve some effect. That led to the old Skin Workshop at Skinartistry.

Passing on knowledge and helping others is good for skinning and good for the skinner.



Disclaimer - I am not a Master, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express one time.  ;p 

Now that thar's funny! I don't care who ya are...  :LOL: 

Regrettably, I haven't come across any "tips" in this thread at all, not even my "Refine, refine, refine..." suggestion, which is too vague to be considered a "tip" in my book and I hereby apologize for having posted it.

"Here's how to skin this element..." and "How to fix the dreaded corner notch in rolled-up titlebars:..." - those are the kinds of tips I was hoping might appear. Maybe we need a Master Skinners' Roundtable forum (or some such) - someplace where you can post a question & know that a Master Skinner will see it & likely respond. Nutcracking can be certainly build character, but being shown how to use the nutcracker can build character faster.

Edit: Oops, Picto - you beat me to the punch. Your reply hit while I was typing mine. Now at least 2 of us are thinking along similar lines.

That is sooooooo...... true. :LOL:

And you know what you're doing! Imagine how it is for the rest of us.

If memory serves me, I think NT had a class on SA that taught skinning to whoever wanted to come.  I think also starone had one on skinnil.  So there were experienced skinners helping out the new ones that wanted help.  I know personally of quite a few skinners, some journeyman, that got help from starone, I know that other skinners also lent a hand in helping starone.  Now because a lot of people don't see it, doesn't mean it never happened.

Jafo, you'll always be a master on this site, I couldn't imagine WC without your presence.   

I've watched this thread go from extremes of uplifting advice and encouragement to 'heres what we are sick of'.

The title of this thread is Masters...have your say...not Give us warm fuzzies.Despite the posters protestations to the contrary...the issue that prompted the posting was a negative one...griping was what was expected.It's not playing fair to ask us to tell you whats wrong and then say thats not nice because you dont like what you hearing.

If you dont really want to know...dont ask.

For some of us,it was a no win situation to come in here(knowing better than to rise to de-bait)...if we had been a no show,we look bad for not backing up what we said.Come in here and say what we feel and oops,there goes our brownie points.  

If you need specific advice...all you can do is search for postings on issues that have already been addressed or ask again in the forums...many questions get answered over and over...thats just the way it is.

We tried a Thread just for tips in skinnning and it was kinda successful,but it was difficult to manage and the info sometimes got old as things changed or was iffy to begin with.We did try tho. ;p 

I've posted questions and tips numerous times...some are still valid and some died ugly because I only THOUGHT I knew what I was doing.  

Some tips are hard to share...they may be tricky,or only work part of the time,or worked once,on my system,on that version of WB...etc...

Just when I think I have every section of WB figured out,I run into something I forgot,thats changed,is new,newly glitched up or just plain counter-intuitive.

So heres your warm fuzzy...good luck to you all,its amazing that skinners get as far as they do sometimes,cuz good skinning IS HARD.To those that make it past mediocre...YOU ROCK!  

From Kitty's article:


From #92:

Perhaps you have background info we don't, IR, but the rest of us had to take this article at face value. Bitching & griping are synonymous where I come from, so I wasn't expecting either.

From GreenReaper's excellent article (thanks to Bichur):

And SD, God bless 'em, seem to be constantly moving the target. :SURPRISED:

For me, Jafo, GreenReaper & essorant remain the Holy Trinity of skinning, with Mike Bryant and vStyler threatening to make it a Holy Pentacle. Just thought I'd throw that in, FWIW.

Been reading this thread with great interest and I'd just like to add my twopennies worth into the mix.

Judging by IRB's Post (#92) I assume, (and if I'm wrong please accept my apologies), that the Masters are reluctant to a "MasterClass" Thread so I'd like to offer up a suggestion that would benefit anyone like myself (working on my 1st WB here), thinking of starting to skin and the less experienced skinners in the community.... How about an experienced/Master skinner creating a series of articles/ general tutorials for submission to the Wiki ???? Would it work ????

Please let me know what you think   

Regards to all,
Peter

Yes..thats funny. :LOL: 

It would work temporarily until they update or change things. Then everything becomes obselete. Every once in awhile, someone makes a tutorial but how long they are good for is unknown.

Any new skinner can email me for assistance. I always try to respond quickly but sometimes I forget. It gets confusing when you are helping more than a couple of people so try your best to be clear and precise with the assistance you need. Screenshots are always a big help. Also, I will not download anything from anyone until I know them.



Heres a good source for inspiration/ motivation..

Go to your favorite Author's libraries. Look at their first works. Chances are it doesn't look anything like the quality they are putting out these days. You'll see that they were once just like you and you can soon be just like them.   

I cant believe I left out my 2 best pieces of advice.

Grab any psd's you can from the graphics section and see how they are done...not just look,but dig.Look at how things are layered,blended,shaped...etc...
TUTORIALS!!!they are bazillions of them.

The single most educational source for skinning...ARE THE SKINS THEMSELVES.Find a skin that works the way you like and open that sucker up and dig in.You will find solutions to problems you didn even know you had.

Even 'masters' do that...think John and I dont look at each others skins when we see something unusual?We look at all the other masters work...even nonmasters...you never know who's going to come up with a nifty solution to some odd issue.  

:SURPRISED: What? Isn't skinning suppose to be fun and sharing what you like... Why skin need to be soooo high standard to be posted and share around. I totally don't get it. You can set your own standard as high as you like but please don't expect/force everyone to be at your standard or don't bother having fun...

Basj,thats not really the standard we are referring to...more like a standard of effort and completeness and doing your own work/ideas..Still all fairly subjective and not easily 'enforceable'(if not near impossible or even wanted apparently by some),we were just asked what we thought would make people better skinners.