Xion Community

i havent been around for awhile and i have only done one skin for Xion that was actually finished and i am getting back to designing them now that i have a lil more free time on my hands now a days and was wondering what everyone thought of this skin so far.

**Removed image from my server.....

the buttons on the right are done n change colors etc.
the center part needs more info like bitrate etc
the dar left panel will be for volume/balance sliders etc.

i want honest feedback so if u think it sucks or wat not let me know and give me some ideas on how it can improve.

Well, i'm probably the most honest person around.

The glossy effect is getting old, really. You've got a good idea, but a not-so-good execution.

I recommend some clear visuals. Looks around guistation.com to get what i mean.

The layout is not half bad, but could be a tad skinnier.

Less is more.

Thanks for the honesty logokas, I will take into consideration what you have suggested and see if i can tweek it some and post a reply on this thread of my progress...

if anyone else is got any suggestions good or bad please let me know...

the play button is 1px to the right, even it up for slightly better look
you have gloss on the button icons bur a very dull sheen on the black, perhaps some more highlights
would also ditch the red or put in an rgb type cycler

red has meaning of anger heheh, i can appreciate you might want it red but some may not, don't forget people like to customise these players to suite their current desktop suite so the more you can put into it to make that happen the more it could be used and adapted

what are the down and over states like on cbuttons?

I would rework the round buttons to be more unified.

You probably took one layer at a time and applied for each of them the gradient style.
What I mean is to take all the buttons layers(play,pause,previous,next,stop),merge them into one layer(without moving them) and apply the gradient style.After that,rasterize the layer.Now you can cut the rasterized big layer into the smaller buttons and add the play,previous,next... symbols.

Don't forget that there is spaces between them.This is easy to do.This is what I do

Well thanks for the honesty
do any of you have a nice site where some tutorials are for Interface designing im not really big into interface making and been wanting to do it, i just get something done or partially done and it dont look the way i want it n scrap it....

I have tried Good Tutorials but it seems all the good interface tutorials have a 404 on them now a days....

or even better would be if someone with some nice experience send me one of theyre interface PSD's so i could possibly learn off of it.... and not one where the layer styles have been rasterized. but who knows.....

I'll continue to see what i can come up with...

Thanks again.

just open any of the xion skins

a lot of mine still have separate layers so I can go back in and amend stuff

sometimes I will merge layers but I try and keep most of them apart which could help you

as for tuts, yea a lot of them out there, try some of the newer ones popping up from dreamart,cosmo etc.

before scrapping anything you might want to put up a screenshot of stuff, someone may either be able to help you or get a look into what you were trying to do and offer suggestions and ideas, better than just scrapping it

I think that I can help you.I backuped a photoshop psd on witch I have a lot of layer styles(because I don't know when I will format my computer).The layers are unrasterized squares.all you have to do is to click on one and save it in your style window.

Take a look:



If your interested I can send it to you

I also have the full unrasterized psd of my latest skin(Connector).You will notice the amount of overlapped layers(by also playing with their transparency) just to get the final result.
Also I can send it to you.

Just PM me

pm sent forcefield.

this is what i have came up with so far after receiving the help from ForceField.



I have been looking at his gPod skin i downloaded awhile ago and it kind of looks like this, granted i am still learning how to do the interface things.

I am ALONG way from complete but i have learned alot including the whole ALPHA crap in photoshop and how to add semi-transparent layers to make it look alot different.

This skin will be completed one way or another, if i have to do a button once a week i will.

Feedback welcome
And a really big thanks to Forcefield for helping me when i need it.....

oh and i almost forgot i might scale it down this is just the starting size i have it in photoshop red background will be gone too.

You'r Welcome ConvictGraphix! and ...

WoW For the result till now.It's pretty good.

I have also some good advices that I really like to share with you

-I noticed over the years that shiny skins are more downloaded than others
Yep,more the skin is shiny with glass effect and higher will be the download count.

-When you want to do a new skin and you are out of ideas,try to take some ideas from car radios:
Make an image google search on 'Roadstar' , 'Pionner' , 'Clarion' , 'Blaupunkt' , 'RadioShack'..... and each time you like a picture,download it to your hard drive.You can save for example more than 20 images.Then with your picture viewer,view the images several times.Then take what you like the most from each picture and merge them into one skin:
For exemple take the buttons from a Pionner car radio,the screen or part of it from a Roadstar(You will notice that the best interfaces are from Roadstar),another set of buttons from an Alpine....
You can now make your skin.The final result will be very interesting.


Well,that's it.It's my secret