Lecrayon believe me, if someone takes ripped work and my 1 ONLY takes it to a 3, I'm not satisfied. This isn't deviant art or some site where EVERYBODY has any and all means to just post crap here. This is a "skinning" community, and all too often people come here and find some icons, or groovy walls. And instead of appreciating it, random joes go, hey I should do stuff to. Then the person who has no graphic experience, or qualities soon realizes they have no idea what they are doing or talking about. It's easy to get inspired by seeing great work, it doesn't mean you should pretend you can. How many people see a good movie and makes them wish they were an actor? Hear's their favorite band play and wishes it was them? Think american idol. The guy judging is honest, which is something EVERYONE needs to hear. He's not afraid to tell someone they are useless, or that they are exactly what they're looking for. Tons of people come here and see what people can do and are inspired to try it themselves, and god love them do. Many of them just see good work, and out of jealousy, envy or otherwise go, "I wanna be important too." Nothing wrong with that either, competition is an excellent means of inspiration. However the people that think that way and the only thing they can do is take someone elses work and expect people to say good job, we have no use for them...I have no use for them.
People think that this is any different than anything else are seriously confused. Like it's ok to copy paste work, slap your name on it and watch the downloads, but it's no different than pulling a milli vanilli. People get all huffy when work is ripped by people known to them, i.e. if I uploaded jairo's work as my own. But people pay no mind to ripped work if it's official or not well known to them. whether it be mormegils work, or a screen shot of the logo of a game, it's ripped work just the same, you're stealing AN artists work just the same, and should be treated JUST THE SAME.
Any ripped images in all forms should be purged from this site, this is and hopefully always will be a skinning site were people upload things they make for designated purposes. Just because wincustomize supplies icons for object dock, and wincustomize doesn't have an icon for space invaders, doesn't give anyone the right to copy paste and put the space invaders logo up as an icon. I'd rather take every single request on myself than see halfwit people copy paste and try to take credit for it. Perhaps you all don't understand how much of an outrage it is for people to rip work until your own work is the one being ripped. If it was up to me any one ripping work, whether local, or official, would be given one warning and the item deleted. If they did it again exile them. Does that sound harsh? How many stores give you a warning for stealing before they ban/arrest you? It seems more than fair to me. Icons, walls, widgets and wingdings apart, stealing something and putting a glass effect on it is still ripping work, and should be treated as so.
Its taboo here, to mention stealing programs on kazaa and such. But stolen images are here all over the place, I don't see the logic in it. I'm tired of seeing people wanting nothing more than a temporary spotlight shining on them, and submit stuff they didn't do, or the even more ridiculous crap of stealing work and putting the copyright symbol and their name on it, just so people can give compliments to them they don't deserve.
I'd dare say most people here that actually does make their own work, aren't in their minds thinking "I wanna make cool stuff for wincustomize till I die and thats it." Logically people that do this stuff would like to do it for a living. Many would probably like to keep putting stuff here even if they had a job doing it. But no job is ever going to pay someone to steal images off the web, and take screen shots. This site should be looked at as a job of sorts. Perhaps the best job you'll ever have, no deadlines, sleep in as long as you want, make your own schedule. You do however still have responsibilities. You can't get away with this stuff in a job, you can't get away with it in a school, why should a "skinning" site be any different. The honest people here that do honest work should for the most part take their ratings to heart, but not as a personal attack. If it has a high rating, good keep up the work, if it's low try harder, keep working at it.
You need thick skin in this field, whether you do it professionally or not. Be prepared to hear what people really think of your work, not just what you wanna hear. If people take it easy on you they are doing you an injustice.
The ripped work however will never set easy on me, perhaps you have to be an artist to truly appreciate art. These clowns that submit work that doesn't belong to them may always be here, get downloads, have good ratings and plenty of warm friendly comments. But anyone that expects me to pat them on the back for it is seriously mistaken.
