I have joined the ranks of the many "newbies" to OS Customizaton who dream of one day creating a masterpiece skin to upload, have rated 5 stars and rejoice in the reward of praise for the artwork and usefullness of their creation. I have been working late into the night to learn what I need so that one day I might join the ranks of top skinners, this is what I have learned so far. That I have to read and learn some more. So I started searching Web sites and joining and using sites like Codelia's Corner for the Complete newbie and skin your screen.com (2 great sites for us newbies), and then downloading and downloading some more. I learned enough to make an attempt at creating something and I purchased some software. I purchased the ever wonderful Object Desktop, which lead me to print out the 118 page users guide, I had more too learn. Next came Aleksyandr.com and his wonderful Tutorial for Windowblinds, another 26 pages to learn! Was this enough? could I begin creating now? Nope not yet, so I bought a book for "Dummies" to assist me in my quest for learning how to create a beautiful and useful skin, because you really need to learn how to write language you know. One thing I learned rather quickly is that the top skinners must dream in Boolean. Well now I have so much to read and learn that it may be a month or two more before I actually create anything. Like many of you out there I stumbled upon Stardock and Wincustomize one late night while surfing the Web. Of course like all of us "newbies" I fell head over heals with the artwork and was really tickled when I learned they did something useful too, I could do this I thought to myself, I am an artist. But that is not all it takes to create a beautiful useful skin, you have to spend alot of time learning techie stuff, because if you don't then all you create is a pretty button that does nothing, so there is alot to learn, thus to date I haven't created anything myself. The creation of a skin takes alot longer than downloading one, alot longer than it took the Lord to create this planet and alot more than $49.95 and the price of a book. I figure that if I continue at this pace, late nights learning how to create a useful skin that I may be ready to create some graphic artwork and upload something of quality in about a year or so.
