Oh yeah, I always thouhgt too sha was quite a legend-faery girl!

Just so we have the number here, 8,160 downloads in a single day.

Pretend i dont own another design studio for a minute and i'm just a simple member of the community, which i have been for over 2 years now.

While i have no doubt Alexandrie has skillz and puts in ALOT of time skinning. I think its total BS that theres so much celebration about numerous color changes to an existing look (XP) that isnt even her own design. I mean please anyone can make a color change and a gradient change and name it what they want and right now it will be downloaded because win xp is in style right now. Take the "bluejean" one. Ever see Lorenela's blue jean skins? That LOOKS like blue jean material. Not some blue denim colored gradient. So you'll have to excuse me if i dont celebrate this big hooha about minor color changes to a design that isnt even an original piece of art except by the person who created it at microsoft.

Jesh

I don't think that's a fair comparison. If you look closely at her skins, they are original. She is just using the same style to them as XP so that there is some consistency. But she hasn't jsut taken an XP skin and recolored them.

It's all in the details. This is particularly true in the area of the Start bar which believe me, is a HUUGE pain in the rear to work on.

Jesh before critics someone else work without even tried to make one windowblinds skin, I think you should try to skin one time yourself. Ok it's simple, it's the way I like them, OS style. No it's not just colorize, just look carefully and try to put them side by side and you will see the gradients are not same place at all. I only use same shapes as XP, same arrows, same style. Yes I use the checkbox, radio and tabs. The rest is my creation. I just use them to keep it as feeling like Microsoft made them. I think I have win if you think I just colorize them.

The Forest one I made is more just colorized but Jeans, Nature and Coppery are different. And between the XP bar I can not change the way it feels because Windowblinds just skin it, it's not adding features in, so it will always looks like an XP bar.

what i'm saying alex is this...

add textures, add something. great you moved the gradient. whats the difference?

I dont have time to skin on my own. I do it with the artists i work with everyday. We must be doing something right as we're busy as hell right now. But if you want i'll be happy to make a titlebar for you that looks like the denim one then tell how hard that is.

I dont need to create a skin on my own to be able to criticize like i dont need to be a politician to criticize politicians. You put your work in an open forum for review and downloading and i have every right to say how i feel. welcome to free speech at its finest. As far as my qualifications to judge, i think with all the skins i've had a hand in pertaining to the design aspect, i've earned that right hands down.

yes i agree totally. People obviously appreciate them. My argument was the fact that theres a thread basically saying look how great she is for all these downloads when i think they arnte very original. This isnt about her talent overall as i think she is talented. This is about the subject of the thread not anything else.

Jesh,

Sorry, but I don't agree. This isn't like the slew of XP-based skins we saw a few months ago. Most of those were just direct copies, pixel for pixel, of WinXP, either colored differently or not. If you put the images that made those skins up against the images used by MS, they were (practically) identical (or a worse almost-identical copy).

Now do the same with the images that make up Alexandrie's skins. They're not even close. Sure, some of the shapes are similar (that's what she was obviously going for), but beyond that, there is little comparison. Add that to the fact that the skins come across with a completely different feel than the ones included with XP, while still maintaining a familiar shape and layout, and I think she pulled off something that no one else seemed to get right a few months ago: making an *original* XP-style skin (or several, at that).

Now, I'm still trying desperately to change the fonts she chose (why huge italicized Trebuchet I'll never know...), but otherwise I think they're smooth, gorgeous, and very original in their own right. And don't think for one second that that doesn't require talent, artistic vision, and a lot of hard work.

It is the simple variant color changes that bother me, without any change to texture or anything but a color change. But these are my opinions only. Hell i could be the only one who feels this way. Should i not say how i feel? or should i participate in the community and express my views? I think being part of a community, people should be free to express dislikes and likes. If i like something i will certainly say i do. And if i dont, then i will also say something.

But if i'm wrong and the similar styles are different then i will take back what i said about them being direct color-overs of the actual MS GUI. I still have a gripe with simple color changes. I've seen her previous work and know she could have made them a lil spiffier and different.

Anyways, taking brad's advice i'm going to drop it. I said what bothered me and theres nothing left to say.

I'm sorry Jesh. I wasn't trying to imply that you shouldn't state your opinion. I was simply disagreeing with it, for the reasons I gave above.

Please, continue to express your opinion on what you like and dislike. I, for one, love a good argument.

And I fully agree with you that being a member of a community gives you a voice and welcomes your opinion. It is valued, even if disagreed with.

(whoops.. sorry, clicked twice there.. with five minutes between somehow!)