Cruddy mspainty skin, whoo! Need suggestions

[aestas caerulea]

This is entirely mspaint except for the text on the metal part of the skin...I had to type the words out in photoshop, copy them, and paste them into paint, because paint just would not show the damn font properly. Because I hate drawing my own pixel-letters, they look like shit when I do them.

First of all...what I don't need:
1. "Get photoshop!" I have photoshop. I wanted to make something in mspaint for the fun/simplicity of it. Deal with it.
2. "Ew, it's rainbow, how gay, change the colors!" I like rainbows. I'm doing the color scheme exactly how I want it. If I submit this skin to winamp.com it will probably be somewhat different colors to make the annoying public happy (haha, as if they'd like it anyway), but this is my personal version.
3. "The white text on the screen parts is too hard to read!" See the 'I'm doing the color scheme exactly how I want it' part. I'll make a slightly-less-fruity and more-easy-to-read version for the whiners later.
4. "The flat blue parts on the equalizer are ugly and don't fit!" Those are from the very useful skinner's atlas template, they are not part of my own skin. The equalizer is not finished. Quit being a moron.

Okay, now what I do need:
1. Suggestions on how to do the bars on the equalizer. I want something more interesting than squares that slide up and down lines/rectangles. I'm stuck with ideas for animation though.
2. Help with a name would be appreciated.
3. Anything else helpful you might have to say. Note the word "helpful". Although funny is good too.

So...thanks! You guys are awesome. XD No, really.

[Namelessv1]

That's MS Paint? Impressive.

As for the eq bars, maybe a string of gems that grows as the bars move up?

Nicely done so far.

[k_rock923]

wow. that really is impressive for ms paint.

[LuigiHann]

Wow, I do like that. For the Eq, look for ideas in other skins that have circley themes, like Xenosomething's "Water Elemental" Steve Moss's "Blow" or "Coca-Cola". There's also a skin called "Parallel Futures" and a skin called "Yaxay" that have circle-themed eq's, but I don't have them now or remember who made them. But you'll probably want to have something with those gems appearing and dissapearing around the slider. Or something.

[aestas caerulea]

Originally posted by LuigiHann
Wow, I do like that. For the Eq, look for ideas in other skins that have circley themes, like Xenosomething's "Water Elemental" Steve Moss's "Blow" or "Coca-Cola". There's also a skin called "Parallel Futures" and a skin called "Yaxay" that have circle-themed eq's, but I don't have them now or remember who made them. But you'll probably want to have something with those gems appearing and dissapearing around the slider. Or something.

Ah...those are pretty cool. o_o Thanks...I'll mess around and see if I can come up with a decent eq, those kinda gave me some ideas.

[LuigiHann]

Hey... play could be green and stop could be red. lol

[aestas caerulea]

I thought of that when I started making it...just, that would kinda ruin the rainbow thing. XD Maybe when/if I change the colors.

[Ned Decca]

that looks neat,aestas an i`m not just sayin that,
it does actually look pretty nifty

[Cleanup]

Wow, cool. It looks a little busy, I'd take out a few of the gems, but so far it's very good. Keep it up. For the EQ bars, maybe just a vertical indent with a gem as an EQ slider.

[StillWater]

Originally posted by LuigiHann
There's also a skin called "Parallel Futures" and a skin called "Yaxay" that have circle-themed eq's, but I don't have them now or remember who made them.

When I saw this skin and read your post, I thought of Yaxay as well (it's by e-raser). And the EQ of "Paralell Futures (3)" (by marc falk) is one of my favourites too. Here are the links to both of those skins if you need them:

http://www.1001winampskins.com/skin_details.html?skin_id=2740

http://classic.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentId=102914

The only suggestion I can think of for the eq bars is what I would probably do if it was my skin: I would make little gems pop up and down - like they do in the Yaxay EQ. But unlike the Yaxay EQ, where they are all big, and in a row, I would have them smaller, and have them pop up all over the place, so that when you are not moving the EQ, they have a 'random' scattered feel to them (unless the all the EQ sliders are on the same line or something). But you might not want this sort of randomness.

[hammerhead]

All of that in mspaint?!
Well done, must have taken ages

[aestas caerulea]

It does look kinda busy, I agree...although, when I look at it, it's not all the gems that bother me, but the diagonal shiny-lines in the background. I think I'll try making those a little less contrasting and distracting first, and if that doesn't help, then I'll maybe take out some of the gems.
It has taken a long time so far, but that's really because I spend a very long time staring at the screen wondering what I want to do next without really doing much, and because I'm never happy and I have to keep making variations and comparing them. The way it's drawn is pretty simple, and it didn't take much work to get the not-very-convincing shiny effect or make the gems.
Drawing it in mspaint even makes it easier...nothing's antialiased and I'm using a limited number of exact colors, so it's easy to make sure things match up, fit where they're supposed to, and so on.
Right now the part with the sliders on the eq is flat screen-type stuff, because I wasn't sure how to have it be metal and still work right...gems would look funny on the flat screen stuff, and I wasn't planning to do anything with gems there before. However, I think I've figured out how to have it be metallic...so, I'm going to try that, because it would probably look much better. If it doesn't, well, I'll still have the screen version to go back to.
I talk way too much. o_O
Anyway, thank you for your comments and help, I really appreciate it.

[Krogoth]

woohaa... looks damn good... respect

[Krynis]

yes lots of respect