02-07-2008, 03:29 PM
This month's skin of the month is none other than Ev0. This skin has a strong history as one of the most popular skins to ever hit Windows Live Messenger. Ev0 was originally designed back in Windows Live Messenger 8.0. This skin began its life after me and ipab decided to cancel development on the original Windows Aero Messenger for 8.0. Windows Aero Messenger was causing me problems code wise and to be honest the graphics weren't exactly up to scratch.
Plus around that time Stianu89 and Blue_eyes had released Vista Live Messenger which made it seem a bit pointless to release another vista skin. So after announcing the cancellation of the original Windows Aero Messenger, I began work on a unique skin design. The skin started off as a multi-colored theme (not black or white). The skin had many patterns and gloss effects through it. This is what it looked like (and yes I know that it looks nothing like Ev0, but this is essentially how it started):
Within a week into the development, I secretly decided to scrap the current design (known as CieloUI back then) and try to simplify things. Initially I removed the majority of the overlays to clean things up a bit but the skin still lacked character in its bright colorful form. Whilst at university one day I got a really good idea on how to simplify the look even further. By using simple shapes in illustrator with just 4 basic gradients it resulted in something simple yet sexy and so the new Ev0 design was born.
Initially the design was only meant to come in black, but after showing a few people on the net that day I decided to also cater for those who liked light themes as well. Skip ahead a month and Ev0 1.0 was released in the form of 2 Editions split into 8 variations per edition. The skin did as well as I expected, but since Windows Live Messenger 8.1 beta was already in effect it drastically affected its popularity.
So I began development on the 8.1 successor, which would add 2 new themes and improve some areas that needed it. The 8.1 version was released early 2007 and did a lot better than the 8.0 version, but of course it suffered a bad memory leak which meant a minor update had to be issued.
2007 was my last year of university and my graphic skills had improved a lot by then so I decided to design Ev0 again from scratch for what would be version 3. At this point it was June and I had no idea that Messenger Plus! was going to introduce skinning. The design had been made more solid based on the comments I had received in the past. Version 3 was going to introduce a colorization system that I used in Windows Aero Messenger.
As time dragged on university became tougher and so I was highly considering in abandoning the project and calling it quits on skinning for good. Interest in skinning had nearly completely disappeared and there were very few people releasing things. November comes and I am just finishing university, I then decided that Ev0 3 would be my last venture in skinning after hearing that Windows Live Messenger 9.0 would be released in 2009.
I started creating more modernized resources getting ready to hack away another msgsres.dll when all of a sudden ipab comes to me and says that Messenger Plus! is going to add skinning. This blew my mind, and a few days later I was allowed into the testing group and began work on Ev0 3. The new system eased up a lot of things so I decided to expand Ev0 out even more by adding in different bases (6 more in the end) and making sure that everything was working well so that it would be released with Messenger Plus!
Ev0 3 had its minor hiccups initially but it is now indeed at a solid state with nearly every bug gone. And now we come to today where Ev0 has had over 350,000 downloads (and still rising).
So I present to you this months skin of the month Ev0.
http://www.msgpluslive.net/skins/view/5-Ev0/
Plus around that time Stianu89 and Blue_eyes had released Vista Live Messenger which made it seem a bit pointless to release another vista skin. So after announcing the cancellation of the original Windows Aero Messenger, I began work on a unique skin design. The skin started off as a multi-colored theme (not black or white). The skin had many patterns and gloss effects through it. This is what it looked like (and yes I know that it looks nothing like Ev0, but this is essentially how it started):
Within a week into the development, I secretly decided to scrap the current design (known as CieloUI back then) and try to simplify things. Initially I removed the majority of the overlays to clean things up a bit but the skin still lacked character in its bright colorful form. Whilst at university one day I got a really good idea on how to simplify the look even further. By using simple shapes in illustrator with just 4 basic gradients it resulted in something simple yet sexy and so the new Ev0 design was born.
Initially the design was only meant to come in black, but after showing a few people on the net that day I decided to also cater for those who liked light themes as well. Skip ahead a month and Ev0 1.0 was released in the form of 2 Editions split into 8 variations per edition. The skin did as well as I expected, but since Windows Live Messenger 8.1 beta was already in effect it drastically affected its popularity.
So I began development on the 8.1 successor, which would add 2 new themes and improve some areas that needed it. The 8.1 version was released early 2007 and did a lot better than the 8.0 version, but of course it suffered a bad memory leak which meant a minor update had to be issued.
2007 was my last year of university and my graphic skills had improved a lot by then so I decided to design Ev0 again from scratch for what would be version 3. At this point it was June and I had no idea that Messenger Plus! was going to introduce skinning. The design had been made more solid based on the comments I had received in the past. Version 3 was going to introduce a colorization system that I used in Windows Aero Messenger.
As time dragged on university became tougher and so I was highly considering in abandoning the project and calling it quits on skinning for good. Interest in skinning had nearly completely disappeared and there were very few people releasing things. November comes and I am just finishing university, I then decided that Ev0 3 would be my last venture in skinning after hearing that Windows Live Messenger 9.0 would be released in 2009.
I started creating more modernized resources getting ready to hack away another msgsres.dll when all of a sudden ipab comes to me and says that Messenger Plus! is going to add skinning. This blew my mind, and a few days later I was allowed into the testing group and began work on Ev0 3. The new system eased up a lot of things so I decided to expand Ev0 out even more by adding in different bases (6 more in the end) and making sure that everything was working well so that it would be released with Messenger Plus!
Ev0 3 had its minor hiccups initially but it is now indeed at a solid state with nearly every bug gone. And now we come to today where Ev0 has had over 350,000 downloads (and still rising).
So I present to you this months skin of the month Ev0.
http://www.msgpluslive.net/skins/view/5-Ev0/
