Does your skinning time decrease over time?
 

Looking at the amount of skins that skinners like Jones or Forever have made (into the dozens), and the lesser, but not modest, amounts of skins many others have made, I wonder about this. At the rate that I make a skin, it would probably take me years to make as many as Jones or Forever have, for example. Have you guys (all of you, not just J and F) found that the time it takes to make a skin gets significantly shorter as you make more skins? Obviously, it is bound to get shorter, but I'm wondering by how much.

My first skin, for instance, took about 40 hours. My second - about 60 hours. My third (RED)- about 40 hours. BLUE and WHITE, since they are very similar, took/are taking less time, but still seem to drag along :(

yes, it decreases...or mine did, but i have been working on my main of my next (yes, another) skin for about 5hrs straight and it STILL isn't finished, i have just been tweaking it, playing around with colours, so this one is gonna take a long time, but my last skin was a 2hr job, the one beore that (s0nar) took about 2 days...

For me it has, sort of. I think when youre learning it takes longer as youre still trying to figure out whats possible. Of course I'm always trying new things, but the process of putting things together seems quicker now than it was when i started. For example, Atmo Amp was 40 hours work, yaxay was 11 hours and looks much nicer IMO.

I think after a while, for me anyway, the focus shifts from working out what does what to how can i make this look like that...

i suppose it depends what type of skin you make and how clear your idea is before you start.

some graphics just take longer to create. my last took about 20 hours, whereas the two before that took way over 50 hours.

one thing's for sure though - the more i make, the less time i spend scratching my head thinking 'why the feck is that winshade button not working?'

a skin i'd make today would take longer today than when i started because i put more time into them, airbrush instead of layereffects, stuff like that, so i dont really know about that tho i can say that the process of making them apart from the drawing part definately takes less time for me now as ive done it a few times...

Nah, I just have a day job where I can slack off a lot, so I spend a lot of time with photoshop etc open on my desktop at work, dipping in whenever I feel like it, it probably still totals up the same ammount of time, it's just not eating into my real world time if I sit on my arse at work doing stuff :D

The last skin I've just finished, I probably did about 90% at my desk, with the rest done at home.

For me, there's no correlation. Connect-X didn't take all that long. However, ironcore took a month. ironcore's more detailed and i had school things going on. I think it varies according to the skin, but obv as time goes on you know tricks of your graphics program. But it doesn't influence it that much. Most of the time, I trash loadsa stuff so it depends on my mindset, the level of detail, the volume of my music and the number of gallons of RedBull and DrPepper pumped into my veins ;)

(remember connect-x is a pretty simple skin really.)

i just skin when i can, and usually the things around me outside of the net and psp generally stop me in my tracks for a while. thats why some skins take longer than others. when you can only add a little bit here and there, thats when it'll take a week or two or some months to finish.

gotta go now ;)

http://members.aol.com/forevever/winamp/smile_grin.gif
I did 4 skins in one months and I did one skin in 4 months
in that order actually - it depends on my mood and my current rush of creativity
for the most part I can honestly say that my skins create themselves, I just put lots of hours behind it
plus I've been skinning for about 4 years - that only averages to about one a month

Depends completely on the project;

Mondrian amp, 2-3 hours-
Dada, 3 months.

;)

i takes me a long time now since i got a job i work @ the local theam park were i operate this thing Dominator i work there 9:30am~10:30pm tues-sunday monday is the only day i get w/ the puter & family(son)so i put about 3-4 hrs a week in my latest work

Nah, it's taking longer these days. Mainly because of higher standards telling me to work on it longer and because, well, I just don't feel like skinning as often.

Well, I'll be! I was going to make a Mondrian Amp! I even started it, although it wasn't working out and I put it on hold. I didn't realise there already was one (I think I did a search once which gave no results). I've made a few Mondrian Mikros though. <Subliminal message> Click the link in my sig to get all my Mikros, including the Mondrian Mikros. You will enjoy them.... </subliminal message>


;)

Xman keeps his initial foray into the world of WA2 skinning, well hidden ;)

he stole the skin i made!!! bI did one as my 2nd ever skin.
[edit] even though i made it ages ago i only just published it. and it's spelt Mondriaan (that is the correct spelling, not the american spelling)

It doesn't decrease if you skin as often as I do :D

it's different, but it general it increases, because
my free time is going against zero
I want my skins to be perfect
and on the other hand i start to hate them the longer I'm workin on them.

thats how i work, but i get thru ;)

I say, Mondrian evacuated europe and when he got to America he loved New York, especcially the club scene. So Mondrian it is! :)

Jones- remember it made that one guy happy... he wnet so far as to complete the custom cursors for it... :confused: oh well at least it made one soul happy.

BTW- http://www.stephen.com/mondrimat/ for all your Mondrian needs :)

I agree it kind of depends on what skin you're working on, my last skin , Rose tattoo, took me forever but it was really detailed plus I still have to get used to PS7, switching to PS7 mid skin really upped the amount of time I needed. the one before that attack of the Clones retro style, I did really quick, cause it wa really simple, plus I wanted to finish it in time for the release of the movie.

wow :)

I had no idea it was Mondriaan. It's sad when people's names are mispelt. Sadder still when they change it themselves just for the convenience of lazy foreigners. Don't know which was the case here.

can you post a link to it? I searched winamp.com, 1001, and deviant art, and couldn't find it.

I think there's a huge learning curve, which eventually stabilizes itself. My first skins took forever, not because they were complicated, but because I was always fixing mistakes whilst making new mistakes in the process.

Okay, it still takes me forever to make a skin. But I'm not that smart about logistical matters and I suffer from a trial and error mentality. My initial visions aren't that strong either (I usually build a skin around the Posbar. It's sad, really.)

I am getting quicker now that I've (belatedly) discovered templates. Bless those templates! :D

The most frustrating thing for me is finding more than two free hours at a time to work on skins. :blah: Work, marathon commute, ech. :rolleyes:

HEY! :mad: My skinPSaturnLinUtheGWintertime is probably the most "built-around-the-posbar" skin there is! :D ;)

Ive built a skin around the cButtons before.

Heh..Atmo Amp was built around the shuff/rep buttons...

On the topic of atmo amp what happened to the second version?

I gave up on it dam...but i used the lcd for yaxay.

The skin I'm currently working on started out as a totally unrelated 'thing'.

well, you live in america. shall i start calling you alx?

dbelja - it's in the review queue here. There is a thread about it, but it's probably long gone, i'll post a link when i get home.

Well... Whirling Illusion was built around the winamp-info button (bottom right). Beat that. :D

But what I'm saying is that PSaturnLinUtheGWintertime (hehe) wasn't just built from the posbar, but the posbar actually remained the most integral part of the skin, literally its spine. And it's proud of it! If it had a chest, it would beat it. Viva la posbar! ;)

I'd like to see a skin built around playpaus.bmp :p

My last skins was built around this......" . " a single pixel that started life in an ocean of blank canvas and grew at an expotential rate 'till all the windows were full of shiny spanky pixels, that one pixel tho remains the creative force behind the skin, without it, it would never have made it, easy really, anyone could have done it.

catually, the "." is 1*2 pixels (w*h)

Happy now?

I dunno, are you sure it was a black pixel?

Pedantic.

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