Warning: Stupid Questions Enclosed

[Star Power]

Hey guys I am a newbie. Last year a friend of mine got me interested in making my own skins. She gave me her registration tag for skinner, but since then I have had my computer upgraded, etc without being able to back up my harddrive. It completely sucks. I lost everything...all my old skins, and the registered skinner. We won't go into all the other 1 million or so files I also lost grrrr. I recently started using skinning programs again and I have been fiddling with various things. I plan on submitting one skin made from a skinning program for now til I find the patience to play more. Plus, I'm stingy with stuff I make cuz I hate mean critics. My questions are:

1)What exactly should i have included in my zipped skin?
2)Do I need a website to host a screenshot? How do I set that up? (not a website account, but if it's published how do i link to the screenshot)
3)Will someone view my skin before I submit just to tell me it sucks?

Thank you to everyone in advance for at least reading this.

[dam]

No question is a stupid question.

1..

[*]You must have a folder containing all the files for your skin. There should be as many bitmaps in your skin's folder as there are in the base Winamp skin.[*]They should be named with the same respective names as the base skin bitmaps. (pledit.bmp should be named 'pledit.bmp' etc.)

First.You should have all the basic components skinned.Which means main,eq,pl and the config files.Not sure about mb.
2.Winamp.com takes the screenshot.
3.Why do you want to post a skin that sucks in your own opinion.

If you wanna go customize your skin everyone here will be glad to help

[skinme!]

Welcome to Winamp2 skins (the forum formerly known as SkinLove)

Of course it sucks - most of our first skins sucked. Anymore "stupid" questions - you know who to ask.

[Star Power]

wow, thanks for making me feel welcome. The reason why I am only submitting one skin for now is cuz of the hate mail i will receive due to the skin's subject.

would either one of u like to look at my skin so u can give me some pointers..i kinda cheated by using various skin editors to cut and paste stuff. psp is my friend except when editing skins.

[dam]

Always glad to help. .Post a screen shot or the skin itself.This is the friendliest forum ever.

[Star Power]

here is my shot...pardon the subject. ban me for life if you must.

[dam]

I dont like briney spears but the skin looks ok.

First:Try changing the playlist stacks.Theyre hard to see.The max,min buttons need to have a matching bg with the skin.
Try changing the color of cbuttons.Also change the shuf,rep buttons.I can hardly see them.
The eq bg's need some work.Use a subtler color.
You have to change the number.bmp to match with the dot plane bg.Thats it for now.

[skinme!]

Originally posted by dam
This is the friendliest forum ever.

And I thought the "40 and gay" forum was the friendliest... to me anyway.

Well I like Britney Spears and that's a good first skin.

[Star Power]

Originally posted by dam
I dont like briney spears but the skin looks ok.

First:Try changing the playlist stacks.Theyre hard to see.The max,min buttons need to have a matching bg with the skin.
Try changing the color of cbuttons.Also change the shuf,rep buttons.I can hardly see them.
The eq bg's need some work.Use a subtler color.
You have to change the number.bmp to match with the dot plane bg.Thats it for now.

thank you thank you thank you so much for your input....like i said i did a lot of cutting and pasting. i don't know how to edit the equalizer bg color with the only program that lets me save that part. what color should the cbuttons be..i wanted them to be transparent so you could still see the picture?

[Star Power]

Originally posted by skinme!

And I thought the "40 and gay" forum was the friendliest... to me anyway.

Well I like Britney Spears and that's a good first skin.

thank you for the compliment

[Atmo]

Nice first skin..

Im not the worlds biggest britney fan, but it's a lot better than the majority of britney stuff out there.

Welcome to skinlove...

[KiwiFreak]

Originally posted by Star Power
I'm stingy with stuff I make cuz I hate mean critics.

<my two cents>

If you don't want to be slamed by the critics there are a couple of things you can do.

1. Customise the skin as much as possible - people get sick of seeing skinner.exe skins, cause really there's no artistic merit in having a program do everything for you...if you customise everything as much as possible it won't look as much like a skinner.exe skin and people will respect it more.
2. Do something with the vis/counter area on the main...it looks bad at the moment.
3. Change the eq, you could do 2 versions, 1 with the sliders and one without
4. Fix up the tiles at the top of the PL.bmp
5. Change the close/maximise/minimise buttons.

I like the cbuttons, some won't but I do!

Thanks for not submitting heaps of skinner.exe skins, some people submit like 10 a day which in turn slows down the reveiw process.

Good start, with a bit of work this will be an ok skin

[nøva]

You said you made it in a skinner.exe... right? Well, i dont think most reviewers even care about the content, they value the quality of the skin.
Its those dumbasses that sign up for an account just to post bad comments and low ratings. Hasnt happened to me yet, i thank you all for the high ratings and welcoming comments on my first skin, but i have seen other skins get these rude comments.
I say, if you like the skin, submit it.
Also, as i have mentioned, i really like your skin, but maybe open up a graphics editing proggy and try adding some custom stuff.
Be creative, and it will turn out better than you think. This way, it wont be just another skinner.
Good luck!

And before you submit, be sure to post the .wsz here so some of us can chack it over for bugs, and give comments and other such things!

BTW Welcome to our forums!

[Kenny D.]

Welcome Star Power ! Boy I knew what was coming before I clicked the ss. Whatever rocks you !
Think you will like it here.

[Star Power]

Originally posted by Nova3d
You said you made it in a skinner.exe... right? Well, i dont think most reviewers even care about the content, they value the quality of the skin.

I say, if you like the skin, submit it.
Also, as i have mentioned, i really like your skin, but maybe open up a graphics editing proggy and try adding some custom stuff.
Be creative, and it will turn out better than you think. This way, it wont be just another skinner.
Good luck!

And before you submit, be sure to post the .wsz here so some of us can chack it over for bugs, and give comments and other such things!

BTW Welcome to our forums!

Actually I used like 3 or 4 diff skin designing programs and cut and patste.....a lot!
ok I may need a little remedial psp course for this...cuz it scares me when I even think about editing...i so suck at that..my hands are too shaky to do anything. It's sad but I can't even erase properly.

Wow, thank you so much for your input. I feel so loved.

[nøva]

loved, i dno, welcome, yes

[dam]

See.Like I pointed out.The friendliest forum ever.

[simon snowflake]

1st of all welcome to the skin-love forum.

I guess you allready have the answers to all of your questions asked. But I'll give my 2cents,
Most people in these forums (and so will you soon ) are not very fond of generated skins. And as far as i could see you don't like the look of generated skins either since you customized some parts. But in the end its loads of more fun if you really customized about everything. We are here to help you, and you are here to ask the questions. (thats how it started for the most of us). So if you have any questions, feel free to ask them.
To get ideas of how you can customize the buttons, sliders or whatever you could look in the sigs of most of us where you can find liks to skins of us.

note: We are not against skinner.exe as a helpfull tool, we only are against the skins that where made with skinner and not been ajusted after that.

[KiwiFreak]

Originally posted by simon snowflake
note: We are not against skinner.exe as a helpfull tool, we only are against the skins that where made with skinner and not been ajusted after that.

I'm not even against un-customised skinner.exe skins, it just annoys me when people churn out like 10 a day and clog up the database.

[Star Power]

Originally posted by KiwiFreak


I'm not even against un-customised skinner.exe skins, it just annoys me when people churn out like 10 a day and clog up the database.

I understand all of what you guys are saying. Thank you again. I'm going to work on it today and hopefully by tomorrow I can submit it. I just miss my cool transparent skins where you can see everything the way I want it.

[Tony Smith]

The only programs I use for skinning are the regular windows Paintbrush (for most of the work), Irfanview (for some sfx) and another prog I got with my digital camera (primarily for text on the bmp's). Asside from that, I edit the txt files in notepad and zip it with winzip.

What I am saying is you don't need any fancy programs for editing the bmp and txt files. The first step is, however, to open all the bmp files individually and save them as 24-bit Bitmaps. This will allow you the full range of colors instead of the limited amount the original base skin is made in.

[Kenny D.]

Download Template Amp. It`s much easier to work with than the baseskin.
__________________________




LINK> Template Amp

[Tony Smith]

Template Amp might have helped before I mapped out every pixel of every bmp. Too late. I now know exactly how big every item is (275x14 for the titlebars, 275x102 for the main and eq main , etc), where every button and slider is, and how big they are and so on. That part is no longer the most difficult part of skinning. Oh well...

[Star Power]

it's slowly coming along. one question though...how do i skin the mb? I want to at least learn how to do stuff even if i choose not to continue to make the effort for every skin i make. Plus, this one is a little half-assed so sorry. I will post it after i figure out the mb. thank you so much guys. i really appreciate it.

[Jellby]

The minibrowser is in a file called 'mb.bmp', very similar to the playlist. If you mean the inside of the minibrowser, you need mikroamp for that, the mb-inside is a html file called 'winampmb.txt' (yes, txt), there you can specify the bmp file you want.

[skinme!]

New to 2.7something is MB.INI support. Similar to mbinner.txt it allows you to supply the URL of an online page to display onload (of skin).

MB.INI example

code:
[Winamp] 

MBOpen=http://myUrl.com/mb.htm

[Star Power]

Originally posted by skinme!
New to 2.7something is MB.INI support. Similar to mbinner.txt it allows you to supply the URL of an online page to display onload (of skin).

MB.INI example

code:
[Winamp] 

MBOpen=http://myUrl.com/mb.htm

cool thanks..yeah I noticed that on one of the skins i have I was viewing to figure stuff out. ok guys, here is my final screenshot. i'm not doing anymore. I'm not lazy but I'm starting to get sick of this picture and my winamp. It may not look like much but oh well. There are still things I'm not too happy about but they're minor and i'm just too picky.

oh yeah I'll zip it later too. i'm just tired and not feeling all that great. my metabolism makes me sick..I have to eat constantly or i'll get really nauseous. tmi you guys sorry. I'm just a tiny girl w/a high metabolism and no life. bye.

[dam]

Lookin good for a first attempt.

You didnt skin the mb properly though.

[Star Power]

Originally posted by dam
Lookin good for a first attempt.

You didnt skin the mb properly though.

how do I skin the browser properly..I don't know how to do it.

[dam]

Just open skin up.Thats how I learnt.Remember the mb is stretchable.

[StillWater]

Originally posted by Tony Smith
The only programs I use for skinning are the regular windows Paintbrush (for most of the work), Irfanview (for some sfx) and...

I thought I was the only one who used Irfanview! That program rocks!

[StillWater]

Originally posted by Star Power


oh yeah I'll zip it later too. i'm just tired and not feeling all that great. my metabolism makes me sick..I have to eat constantly or i'll get really nauseous. tmi you guys sorry. I'm just a tiny girl w/a high metabolism and no life. bye.

Sounds like you might have hypoglycaemia.

[Jellby]

Originally posted by dbleja


I thought I was the only one who used Irfanview! That program rocks!

Not at all, I use it everyday, although almost only as a viewer.

P.S. I meant that you're not the only one who use it, not that it doesn't rock, 'cause it does

[StillWater]

Originally posted by Jellby


Not at all, I use it everyday, although almost only as a viewer.

P.S. I meant that you're not the only one who use it, not that it doesn't rock, 'cause it does

Yeah, I don't use it much for skinning either, although I do use it to resize pictures for skins/mikro/avatars.

[dam]

I thought I was the only one who really used Irfanview.I use it only as a viewer though.

[StillWater]

Originally posted by dam
I thought I was the only one who really used Irfanview.

Yeah, well you weren't, allright!

It's getting late here. Time to go to sleep I think - my sense of humour is beginning to do that wierd thing that it does.

[Kenny D.]

How`s it coming along Star Power ?
Give us an update.