You're totally right about the Celtic connection, that is true. I think if he was 'proper' Cornish it would explain things a wee bit! :) I'm just glad no-one picked me up on my geography - Cornwall is in South-West England not SE as I said before.

UPDATE
 

Well, I've spent many more hours on this, even though it probably doesn't look like it. I just keep shifting, altering, changing colour, to try and get everything right - and I think I'm slowly getting there. The most noteable changes are:

-New and improved EQ bars. Much better, I think, but are the colours ok?

-put circle around kHz, and so had to move the big logo towards the right 3/4cm. Has this created too much empty space in the centre circle?

-new preset button and 3xdecibel buttons

-slightly curvier cbuttons

-new posbar

Here's the attachment:
 

That was strange. I thought I was in winamp, but I was in IE, so I pressed alt-s, and it posted. Anyway, here's the WSZ. Please comment.

WSZ (146k)

the eq is fantastique :D



it must have taken you ages to do the animations....



About the volume:



it is possible that it looks a bit empty... maybe a very bright and small circle between the other 2 circles would look good.. or make it look overcrowded ;)


I like what you did to the playlist. it just needs a border, imho (i like borders ;) )







There is a menu item like "resize canavas" (don't know how it's called exactly, it must be somewhere below or above the resize image thing). It leaves your layers as they are. To add space to the bottom, you only have to uncheck the center horizontally/vertically boxes and fill out 0 as the top border.



:)

Looking great, the new equalizers are damn good, great job animating them.
the eq vis fits in a lot better now that it isn't blue, though I'm wondering if the the playlist will look out of place with those blue playlist stacks? maybe you could trow a bit more blue in the main/equalizer windows.
playlist looks a lot better with all those circles, are you planning to give it a border like the main/eq?
posbar still looks a bit iffy cause of it's square shape, but I guess you can't do anything about that
is that blue/greyish stripe at the top of the clutterbar supposed to be there?

Help!
 

:mad: :mad: :mad: :cry: :mad:
I got up early this morning to do some more work on the skin. But My PSP trial version has just unexpectedly run out (even though that should have been taken care of)! It won't let me reinstall another version - so I don't really know what to do now.

do a system rollback to a previous state? (if possible)

registering it?

Use another psp version?

Change system time?

GIMP?

http://home.iprimus.com.au/dbleja/Happy_Jumper.gif


*blows kisses at Nini* http://home.iprimus.com.au/dbleja/Blow_Kisses.gif


Thankyou,

Regards,
¤db¤
July, 2002

Neat trick that, isn't it? I have a beta version of Macromedia Director which only works when you put the clock back to last February. It's like the computer equivalent of pretending to throw a stick and watching the dog run into the distance. :)

Like the new version. Usually I'm quite strict about limiting colour schemes but what you've done to the EQ bars definitely adds to the skin (and helps blend with the PL). Like the new animations and button positions. Thought the x-box when you click the posbar was a nice touch too. I'd agree with Nini that the PL could maybe do with a border, I'm not a particular fan of them but I think it would work here. Keep it up. :)

:)

i love this skin,
now for the criticizim:)
the eq bars are wonderful, so why not have the "rotation" also present in the c-buttons,
i don't know why but the playlist menu is driving me crazy, i'd scrap the bottom and start fresh.
i just think it's very distraction from the rest of the whole and lacks the quarkiness that the rest of the skin has.
why not insteed try something with those circles that u have present through the skin, it could be an interesting direction to take instead of where you're going now.

good work thought, adding this to my list of skins

i like it, agree with eraser with the cbuttons tho

The rotation in the cbuttons has already been done - you'll see it in the next update (the last WSZ still had the pressed states from my button extractor program).

Sorry, I like the PL stacks quite a bit - so they stay. :) Maybe some more circle action would be good down there though.....hmmmm...gives me an idea.

------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------
http://home.iprimus.com.au/dbleja/!eqsliers.png

(sorry about the bugs in the screenshot - I haven't dressed it up nicely as in the WSZs)

#1, it matches the play button, and shows the possition of the slider more clearly.

I like the second one better without the circles, looks a lot cleaner

UPDATE
 

Added/Changed:

-Shuffle/Repeat
-EQ/PL buttons
-cbuttons pressed
-On/Auto
-decibel buttons x3
-2 Balance Easter eggs (slide slowly in EQ-WS mode)
-\//\X buttons
-Playlist
-some textures changed
-cursors.

Still needs work: clutterbar, eq-vis, PL stacks...

In other words, quite a lot has been added/changed, so please check it out and comment :)

WSZ (190k)

Special Bonus! Will actually download as a WSZ file!!

looks a lot better, the pressed cbuttons are great, and the playlist looks a lot better, and looks a lot more like it belongs with the main/EQ, cursors are cool when they are over one of the images, though the black against the white background is a bit too black IMO

Love the negative cursors.

The easter egg in the balance is cool too.

Will you be adding -X buttons for the eq??

ohhh, ahhh .....now thats nice.
you've gotta tell us how you got the cursers to do that.

Thanks :)

I only learnt you could do that with the cursors recently, when someone else posted a skin with similar ones. In MicroAngelo, the cursor program I used, there are two 'special' colours on the palette. One is -transparent-. The other looks similar to the transparent one, but is actually -inverse-. Simple as that.

k, good i have that program, and know i know what that other colored pixle is next to the transperent one, thanks

I still have to try inverse cursors with Whirling Illusion, I thought about that when I was working on them, but I forgot it...

About the equalizer, I like number 1 better, but I don't like the empty space around the slider, you should fill it somehow, maybe with fading circles. I don't like the discontinuity in the big round shape between main and eq, though I guess it's intentional. You could add a posbar too, the floating box is a little weird.

I have no idea who/what Aphex Twin is/are, but I like this skin :) :up:

Yeah, that was the original idea. I'll might still try that.

what do you mean? what do you mean "add a posbar"? Do you just mean you think I should change it?

Discontinuity: I mean the big brown round shape at the right part, below the title area, behind the eq/pl buttons, and above the presets button. I'm too lazy to prepare an anotated screenshot :D And I mean that "step" between the main and eq windows.

Posbar: I mean a bar, something for the slider to be attached to. In the screenshots (I have not downloaded the wsz files, sorry, I'm too lazy for that too) it seems like the slider just flies over the background. But now I don't think this is too important, just ignore what I said :rolleyes:

I know what shape you're talking about, but I'm still not sure what you mean by "discontinuity" or "step". I'm guessing that you're referring to most of the round shape is on the MAIN, but some is on the EQ. If that's the case, then that doesn't bother me.

Nevermind. I've downloaded the wsz and the problem is gone (see the attachment, that's what I saw in the screenshots). Well, watching the skin in action is far better than a ss :) it's great! More suggestions:

- Add something (even just a faint line) to show where the volume slider/bar is, I've played the "put the tail of the donkey" game for a while. If you can do the same for the balance without ruining the picture, do that.

- The appbutons change to squares when you click on them (and remain so until the window is deselected). And there are no buttons in the eq and pl, but I guess you still haven't added them... Forget it, I've checked the easter-egg and seen that you haven't actually done the buttons in the main either.

- Some indication of where the shuffle and repeat buttons are would be fine too.

- The inverse cursors are great, but now I will be unoriginal if I add them to Whirling Illusion :mad:

- The big clear circles in the background aren't very clean, they have dark spots which don't look good at all in doublesize, but I guess they give some texture. You could try to disguise them just a bit.

- Eq-sliders: The corners outside the circles are too white, make them the background colour. And how the hell did you manage to make the preamp bar look as if it was a different colour?? Oh, I see... you're playing with our senses, aren't you ;) Now that I know what it is, there's too much contrast under the 'on/off' button in the eq.

- The rightmost eq-bar eats a pixel of the red circle.

- And that's all for today :)

Nope, that's not all, I forgot the attachment I talked about (although it's not important).

Hey!! This time I didn't forgot it! :mad: I'm sure I did attach it!!!
Crappy servers!

But you're supposed to click on the ends of the two "arms" of the brown logo, and they light up. I know it's not obvious at first, but I thought that once you get to know the skin.....was I wrong? :(

Thanks for your comments. Very useful, as always. But can you please elaborate on the EQ-on/auto thing? I think that my monitor is much more subtle than other peoples' (more subtle than Not In Santiago's, that's for sure), and I can't really see what you mean there.

re: the attachment - yeah, sorry, I forgot that that was in the attachment (but I did say that the attachment wasn't dressed up as nicely as the WSZs - always download the WSZs! ;) )

Hmm... oh, yes... now that you say it... Yes, now I see there's where you have to click, but it was too subtle for me, the "arms" are so hidden down there... But the rectangular frame becomes too evident with the lighting (well, not too evident, but they are "guessable"). I think you should apply a circular fading to the effect instead, if you know what I mean...

I mean once I know the trick you've used to make the preamp bar different, I can see (or guess, again) the difference in colour just below the ON button. As you can see in the attchment, the gradients at the sides are smoother than the one at the top. I think you could get a good result if you use a feathered rectangle and then fill it, or fill a bigger rectangle and then soft-delete the edges...

?

Damn! I swear I selected the file. I was going to forget it, but I did attach the file.

This skin has been giving me grief like you wouldn't believe. Before tonight, I must have spent a good 20 hours working on it without getting anywhere, because whatever ideas I was actually able to come up with (mostly with the bloody PL stacks) were total crap and had to be trashed. Well, I finally broke through and made some progress (mostly on the stacks, MB, Mikro, plus little bits here and there)

Needless to say, comments are wanted :)


WSZ (324k)


http://home.iprimus.com.au/dbleja/se...mbience-ss.png

I like the way you've run the EQ and PL together just by having the line in the titlebar dropped down slightly. The semi-circle joining the PL and MB is a really nice touch too. The PL stack icons are good but maybe make the strokes brown instead of black to tie in with the rest of the skin (they should still contast quite well)?

You already know about my thing for consistency but I think it really could help this skin 'hang together' a bit better. In my work after doing a draft I always check the overall look to see if it needs more detail, contrast, etc. (usually does :)). In your case you've got so much to attract the eye you get pulled about a bit - you've actually made it too interesting! If it was me doing the skin I'd cut down on the number of images by getting rid of the 'floating' ones to leave one in each toolbar plus the button images. I think centring the toolbar pics (+ extending the EQ vis left a bit?) would add a bit of symmetry to make the windows match a little better. I'd also make the EQ 'hotspots(?)' between the preamp and sliders a bit more subtle so they don't dominate.

Still looking good. :)

I'm at work at the moment, so I can only go on looks, but here are a few first impressions:

To be honest, the brown logo in the Main is still driving me nuts. I find it too overpowering. I think it would be alright if you left the circle part of it, and deleted everything to its right. Also, the uneven Cbuttons look aligned purposefully so as not to interfere with the on/auto window.

I think the smaller windows are fine and work well, however the window over the on/auto area is a bit distracting. I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps it's because the the lines are vertical whereas the rest of the windows are more horizontal-oriented (this could be contested successfully, I know), or maybe it just needs to be a bit smaller.

Love the min/max buttons in the main. Will they be repeated in the other windows?

The rest is looking good. C'est plus que bon. :up:

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by "strokes". ?

Ok, I know what you mean by strokes (I guess I'm still getting used to PS/PSP terminology :)). No, I don't think there would be enough contrast if the stroke colour was brown. That was one of the major problems I had with the stacks - because the underlying textures vary in colour all over the place, those two-tone, navy-blue+yellow labels were the only damn things that would be legible (and even then, I needed to add a more stable background in the highlated states).

Bug testers please! :)

OK, I've basically finished the skin, finally. Could someone please bug test it for me? It's your last chance for comments, too.

Contains Vidamp, Amarok, a pretty shitty AVS preset that I made, and a gravity field in the far north-west region of the skin. :)

WSZ (420kb)

Great skin, great animations. love the "gravity field".
could only find one thing that might be a bug, in pressed state there's a white rectangle around the preset button

Thanks Mr. Tough guy.

I've changed/added a few things. It will be published soon. When it does, check it out. There'll be a little surprise for 1001 fans.