Lets see, I got into the graphic world by seeing the 'shadowness' site. I started using flash but couldn't create 'heavy' graphics with it. Then I saw a cool wallpaper on a friends desk and asked him where he got it from. The reply I got: Dunno anymore but you could download a complete theme with it to customize your pc. (a thing I already tried but never worked out ok.)
The solution was a simple google search and it brought me to Wincustomize. Kind of have all my information from here.
I later found out that the wallpaper was from a theme created by Pixtudio. (atleast it proves that I can tell what is good and what not )

A good inspiration for me have been pixtudio and the skinsfactory. I don't know what it is but I just LOVE nice graphics. I can really stare to a WMP from the skins factory for more then 10 minutes just trying to see how they got the perfect texture and shape.

When I first saw those nice things the only thing I knew was: I want to do those things too.
Then spend a year or so doing tutorials and stuff and then created some skins. (Most of them were never finished because when I finished one up I already found it 'ugly' and tought I used the wrong things.)

About a year ago I contacted the company 'smart' (for the car) And asked them if they would be intrested in a skin for it. I got a yes and however it wasn't payed it was my way into the commercial world. Then got my first money from creating a small banner. Had mostly icon jobs since then but I just love to learn new things and get more experience. Now working on a new iconpack witch will be deliverd this weekend. (Not telling you who is my client because the community dasn't really like them )
But anyway, thats about the story.

my friend showed it to me a while back and i am addicted. RUN AWAY!!! im stuck.

My interest in computer graphics goes right back to when I started with computers in about 1980 on a Commadore Pet. One of the first programs I wrote created an animated sine wave using the symbols...I then wrote my own "graphics" editing program on there. Then I started using an RML 480Z which had the luxury of colour and real bitmap graphics! I spent weeks trying to create something akin to the then awe inspiring new Channel 4 logo. The hight of my graphics ability on there was writing a game of hunch back - the game was awful, but the logo I made for it was cool

Then came uni, and learning all the boring stuff about graphic algorithms, 3d maths transforms etc which almost put me off computer graphics for life...

Since then, I've mostly played with other peoples graphics software, using every version of Photoshop from 2 to 7 (though, I only feel I took my L plates off when I "discovered" layers after years of ignorance!).

As for inspiration - I've been a keen amature photographer since a child. This led me to create my first personal wall papers (for the Mac, as that's what I was using at the time). I was inspired to experiment with wallpapers by a lot of the graphic artists who have made some stunning works for the Mac. I was particularly interested in the way they managed to represent real world textures in a computer simulated way.

That led me to try and emulate some of their effects.

I then discovered the joys of "skinning" on the Mac when a cover disk included an early version of a program called Kaledescope. I had a go at creating a skin for that, but it involved all sorts of arcane incantations and giving your soul over to the God of the Mac-uverse, so I just enjoyed the fruits of other peoples labours. I particularly liked the perversity of making my Mac look and behave just like a PC - just to annoy all the Mac-o-philes I worked with.

When I then switched (back) to using a PC predominantly, I loathed the awful interface (Win NT at the time)...so I then went looking for ways to make the PC look like a Mac...just to annoy the Mac-o-Phobes I was then working with

I first discovered some dedicated programs to make a PC look like a Mac, and then I came accross something called WindowBlinds (a very early version I think?) which supposedly let you choose to look like a Mac, or Beos or Win3.1 at will. Deep Joy I felt, and installed it quickly...and lo, I was hooked into the world of PC skinning.

I've enjoyed tweaking the appearance of my PC using StarDocks products for years now, but only recently have I had a surge of creative energy to try my hand at computer graphic design again...and I've very recently started making my first WindowBlinds skin. Boy, is it technically so much easier than Kaledescope!

...and boy...can I waffle on!

Just like Sput, I was 1st introduced to computer graphics in the early 80's. My 1st PC was a Timex Sinclaire, but I jumped quickly to the Commodore 64 because it had colors
But I really didn’t get deep into it until the early 90's when I attended MTI for Mechanical Drafting and Design. Back then all I did was turn class projects into wallpapers. My first brush with skinning came when my girl showed me this site. The work by artists such as Adni, Pixtudio, DuoPixels, and Mormegil (just to name a few) sparked the interest to create and upload my work.
And little by little I began to experiment with application skinning (still in the learning process) so I thank all the great artists of this site for the motivation to create and my girl SilverBird for fueling my inspiration