Design Evolved Community Forum

Well as many of you will be aware of already, Patchou announced an upcoming skinning contest for an unspecified date. I can see this contest as being a really awesome event for everyone to take part in and it will definitely give Windows Live Messenger skinning the recognition it deserves.

Now some of you may be worried and saying "Skin contest? Wait..... if Willz competes then odds are he will win".

Well you don't have to worry about this, simply because I will not be competing. Why? Well it would be unfair based on how popular my skins have been. I bet a lot of you are relieved now

Anyway onto another point, in order to avoid bias and unfair advantages I will not be helping anyone in this competition regardless of who they are. Whilst I can offer guidance, I will not be coding or making graphics for anyone and I will not be allowing anyone to use any of my resources in the contest (excluding the skinning guides).

I am doing this to make things a bit more interesting and to force people to actually make an effort into learning skinning properly. So if someone wants to truly win then they have to put the effort in.

Anyway for those entering I wish them the best of luck, and realistically you should be planning out your skins right now. Here is a bit of advice:

+ Do not use shaped windows just for the sake of using them, think them out really well. Things like stretch regions and how tabs affect windows need to be considered.
+ Complex does not always mean good and there is such a thing as over simplistic.
+ Try to do more than just throwing in an image you googled into the background and then call it a skin. There are far too many skins that do this.
+ Try to be original
+ Innovation can beat pretty graphics.
+ Try to implement an options panel and skin minor parts of Messenger Plus! e.g. Alerts and buddy icons

Anyway these are just some generic considerations, when the contest is properly announced I will start posting up advice on individual windows just so you guys and gals know what to consider when you are skinning.

Good Luck to everyone.

Willz.

Copied Willz !!!

willz, i was thinking of entering my skin into the contest however you stated above you wont allow anyone to use any of your resources in the contest, does this include your modern emoticons? the reason i ask is apart from the modern emoticons you have given me permission to use and a few things blessedguy is helping me with 365 is for the most part mine and jasons own original work so i just wanted to clarify your position on the modern emoticons issue as i know a few skins have obtained permission to use them in recent weeks.

i await your response.

This includes the modern emoticons, so if you still want to use them I'd recommend you add them in after the contest is over or alternatively make a note somewhere in your skin to not include the emoticons in the judging process. It really does depend on how this contest is going be structured and judged.

Anyway just be aware of this for now, if blessedguy is helping you then make sure you mention this to him as well.

ok willz thanks for letting me know, what i might do is comment out the code for modern emoticons in the 2 xml files and then package the contest one up seperately from the one im working on (not packing the emoticons folder) that way if its not an enabled function then hopefully it wont break the rules, anyways as ytou said until the contest is announced and its rules are defined theres really nothing i can do.

i will speak with blessedguy as suggested just incase that too causes any problems.