After two long months. . .
 

I started working on etch a sketch again. It's coming along nicely. The biggest problem so far is that I have no idea whatsoever what to do about the winshade. Oh well, I'll figure it out later I suppose. Here's the pic. . .

http://img53.exs.cx/img53/7985/screenie2.png

Make the Buttons so they match the etch sketch. Coming along nicely.

As for winshade, thats always a pain in the ass, I suggest just using the red border and throwing on the buttons, but thats just me. Nice though, but still needs to be finished of course :P.

I do like it so far, although I do think you should try to give the cbuttons (and perhaps some of the buttons that are just letters) some more personality... I don't know if it was just me, but I'm pretty sure that smooth diagonal lines were pretty difficult, perhaps make them more obvious clunky combinations of horizonta and vertical lines. I would also suggest that instead of having that regular horizontal line across the bottom of the eq bars, have more irregular lines connecting them for variety.

A working .wsz for this thing will be posted on here over the weekend sometime assuming nothing else goes wrong. (I had to change the structure of the red outlines to accommodate winshade mode).

Finally.

Can somebody give me some input on how they think this is going? I'm actually starting to have some fun and just going around drawing squiggly lines all over the place. It is loads of fun, but I'm not sure how the skins turning out. I attacked the playlist so far and here is the result. (Didn't get to the right side stack yet, along with a few other things)

http://img111.exs.cx/img111/7288/ss17bm.png

Why squiggley lines? Have you ever used an etch-a-sketch? And last time I checked, they're only capable of displaying one shade of gray. ;) Actually, I see what you're going for there, turning both knobs at once does create some crazy lines. It's looking decent so far. I would say that the straight line below the A R S M could be replaced with one that goes in one side of a letter and out the other side, more irregularly. But it's up to you. As it is, it's certainly recognisable that it's an etch-a-skethc, anyway

Whoops! Two colors is most definitely a bad idea. My problem is that I'm not really sure what to do with that extra space in the playlist. The squiggles look kind of messy and take away from the overall look I think. Maybe I'll try and make some cleaner squiggles.

I still think you need to include the aforementioned knobs somewhere in the skin. Maybe as the list button? Oh, and your playlist says playist. Maybe change the playlist font to a more blocky one, too.

Crud. I can't spell.

Beta zip! Geocities wouldn't let me upload a .wsz. Just go to here and download the file named etch.zip http://www.geocities.com/rip_cd/skin

Lets see... Maybe add a touch of airbrushing around the solid part of the platlist to make that seem less sharp. Put the edges of the eq bars and balance slider outside of the actual area, so it doesn't mess up at the edges. In fact, i don't know if your eq bars need edges at all, why not just have them connect at the tops or bottoms, just outside of the actual bar? And the preamp bar might be batter off connecting to the on button and/or the rest of the bars, rather than to the edge. Just my opinion, but I don't think anything should turn light grey. Perhaps have the cbuttons grow, or shrink, or skew when pressed, and give the 4-frame buttons an in-between frame that makes it look like it's transforming. Your "PRE" in the presets button isn't connected to its box the way the rest of the text is, and your list stack has a similar problem.
Also, the big empty space in your EQ, the one that appears when you strech the playlist, and the vis area when the song isn't playing, could all house simple little etch-a-aketch style drawings, which would be a nice little touch.
And perhaps the bottom of your video window could be done as part of the plastic border? Then you could finally get those white knobs in there somewhere as controls. If I remember right, the colors for the text in the browser and video windows aren't used anywhere else, so you could make it gold-on-red or white-on-red.
All just suggestions. Keep it rollin.

Dont want to repeat what LuigiHann said, but I was thinking almost exactly what he said.
It looks good and stays pretty true to your theme, so dont get discouraged before you tighten it up. :)

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I really appreciate it. :)

Oh, and was the cursor a pencil? That really doesn't make any sense.

Yea, it was a pencil. I really couldn't think of anything decent to make it. So, I figured a pencil was at least remotely associated with artwork. I'm open for cursor ideas though. I put the ohio art logo in the EQ space and got rid of the edges.
http://img161.exs.cx/img161/9262/ss24lb.png

published: http://www.winamp.com/skins/details.php?id=144318

No eafence I DONT LIKE IT

Congratulations on a good well done. I saw they reviewed it this morning and figured i'll check your thread. It wasn't exactly the easyest choice you could possibly made but you pulled it off. Different shades of text or not, Thats where functionary comes in. It will Definitely be whored out.

Now if i can only find the courage to finish mine.

Thank you sledheads. I'm sure your skin will come out just as well as your last one did. As far as mine goes, I probably could have put a bit more into it, but I know myself well enough that I realized it was time to stop.