Need help with new skin.

[Forevever]

Will likely be done in time for Halloween but not likely to be published by winamp in time.

Regardless, I was so blocked I decided to just go head and do this and see what happens. All of the artwork is 98% original. The only thing I did use was various fonts for outlines. Coloring and shading is done by hand, and the only plugin I'm using at all is Eyecandy 4, for the fire shadings. My question... er, request for suggestion.. I have no idea what to do with the vol/bal bars. (already have ideas for the eQ). I'm considering tossing a hill or something high enough to cover and vol/bal areas and throw in a rat or something .. maybe. I kinda like the mass amount of blue and clouds. Ok so tell me what you think.
<---bitmap, if it doesn't show up, right click and select "show picture", if that doesn't work, check the attached jpg but its not going to look as good.

[The Only Lynx]

a flying witch, but you already have one..

[Forevever]

she can easily be moved, and that would cover the volume, think I might should just leave out the balance for the sake of art? or add another bat? I might could rearrange the others so they're a little more spread out, or fake a ghost in there or something. I guess I'll just try it and again "see what happens".

[Forevever]

ok some opinions/feedback might be helpful, this is seriously slow going. Spent several hours just on the EQ bars and I'm not as happy with them as I wish I was, but they're probably not going to change.
As Lynx suggested, made the witch into the volume button and gave her some details. jpeg compression for to file size smaller like.

[SuPeYDuUeY]

wow
that's nice. love the eq

I was gonna make a Halloween skin...It was gonna have really small buttons, but when you click them ghosts pop out...then I discovered that I don't have enough artistic ability to draw the ghosts, so I scratched that idea...

love the fire effect in the eq...very realistic looking how the light shines on the skull

[Colldawg21]

Wow, very nice. I was surprised you got the eq sliders to work. I wouldn't have been able to figure out a way with those crazy curved things.

[Forevever]

thank you thank you, just the boost I needed to keep going.
will update soon, working on a fix for the EQ sliders, gets just a bit gimpy towards the top.

[VooDoo`]

wooow, hot skin.
but make a line around or a little bit 3D, so that is not so flat
(mhhhh... was this the english word for it)

[Nini]

wow kewl and sewwt idea, really


How do you do that? So many skins... Do you skin night and day?

[Mr. Bojanglez]

i dunno she skins almost as much as raydream

[Forevever]

it took me quite a few weeks to come up with this one... anywayz, here's an update.. I'm probably going to change the corner buttons (menu, _-x).. still trying to fix the eQ bug.. not easy at all

finished the window shade today and put the rest of the PList together. Still needs buttons. I never thought doing something like this would take so long. I haven't spent this much time on one skin in a very long time.

[SuPeYDuUeY]

just a suggestion...you could change the main window corner buttons stars...

[Forevever]

I wish I had somewhere to use this. I can't manage to make it small enough and keep its detail. Trying to work it out for the Mikro. If not I'll probably just toss it into the mbinner for show.

(note: I did change the witch to make her stand out a little more too, just some brighter colors, the basic shape and stuff is the same)

[SuPeYDuUeY]

just another suggestion...
maybe you could have that snake coiled around the skull in the eq?

[Forevever]

actually I did try that with the snake, the problem is that when I make it smaller, I lose mad detail, and it turns into a black squiggly line.

I'm still working on it though... check these Cbuttons!!
The ghosts are a lot easier than you thought Supey

[edit]change to jpg[/edit]

[SuPeYDuUeY]

those are pretty

the ghosts may be easy for you, but I can't draw stuff like that...I'm best at taking an already made picture and adding effects till it looks cool...if I had to actually make the thing I edit I might die of frustration because I'd never be able to get it to look how I want

[SNYder]

wow... I love your style!

/me ready's clicking finger for download.

[Forevever]

ok, the Equalizer hates me (and I hate it more). Completely tore up the EQ bars and redid them (you might notice the flame is a bit different).

Anywayz!!!!!! I don't usually post a preview download, but I wanted ya's to see the Eq sliders in action and tell me they don't completely suck. I don't know if I can redo them again (but I might).

Also, thought ya's might like to see the ghost buttons in action too, I think they're adorable myself

mad adjustments, some obvious, some not (didn't get far enough to finish the title buttons yet)

here's the screenshot

here's the DL (warning, bitmaps are not yet compressed, file size 194kbs)
right click and "save as" to avoid opening an empty browser window

[SuPeYDuUeY]

I see what you mean with the eq bars...that stuff is very annoying and hard to fix..looks like you've done a pretty good job
one thing I would change about the eg: the bright red seems to stand out a little too much with the rest of the skin being so dark, maybe change that to a darker shade...that could also probably help with that bug a little...if the red is darker it will blend with the brown better and be less noticable...I think...maybe....I don't really know, I'm kinda just guessing

[Forevever]

its worth a shot, will try that
and yeah, I did just notice as I was scrolling past my screen shot, how bright the red is now. it wasn't quite as bright before.

[JustinBm]

What do you think about making the posbar a bat or a ghost or something that seems to float or fly along the skin while your music plays ? Not that I don't like the skin already, I was just wondering...

[Neko]

and you wonder why i love her?

... shut up raydream, shut up.....
... ahhhhhhhhhhh

mew?

does anyone know how to re-install adobe 6 without owning it?...
i dont.., erm, im going f'''''ing insane, i got told today i have lung cancer!

ah well, no time to dawdle, i gotta keep on skinning!, my fellow winampers need me!

aw gees i look so stupid now

p.s. raydream aint f@#king joking about the cancer :*(
p.p.s. sorry i havent updated any ss's of solar storm but ive just been away from the forums, been sat in my room digging a mental hole of what i could possibly do with what time i have left, and to be honest, all i can think of doing is leavingmy house and walking in a random direction until my legs fall off :\
someone please help me?
..

[Forevever]

Originally posted by JustinBm
What do you think about making the posbar a bat or a ghost or something that seems to float or fly along the skin while your music plays ? Not that I don't like the skin already, I was just wondering...

good idea, I'm going to try it. I have a suspicion that I can't make it work, but it was something I was considering.
If anyone has any idea what else could be flying through the sky, let me know. 10x29 is an awkward size to work with, and I don't want to mess up or clash with the sky/ground/tree as it goes across. I guess I can cut off part of the button. I don't know how it will effect the pressed button though... let me see what I can do.

[Forevever]

I stayed up late last night to finish this thing. Let me tell you, I was having some mad nightmares.
You are going to absolutely LOVE these cursors!! The ghost and bat fly (sorta, it looks real good), and the flame flickers. Very small arrows (I didn't include all of them in the screenshot, but they're appropriately labeled for different cursors). Screen shot looks awful, can't hardly see the bat cursor, but the download looks good. I had a little problem compressing the main to 256 colors. It kept eating up the clouds really bad. So if you were to open the zip file, you'd see that I actually cut out all of the elements in main.bmp to reduce the colors, then decreased and it worked Not a bad trick eh?
Ok so click the image to download, and feedback more than welcome!

Lots of little "tricks" and "treats" hiding in this skin.

[skinme!]

Awesome skin here, Forever. I see what you mean about the quality of the screenshot. It really comes alive when you download it. Loving it. And that bat is so lifelike!

PS: You might want to include a disclaimer so people don't try to sue you for instigating nightmares!