[WIP] Aerith

Looks really promising...
Maybe some accents in extrem colors (lime, pink whatever) would fit quite good...
Will follow this one *thumbsup*

mm

Thanks for all the comments guys.
It's strange you all have troubles reading the dark text. It's fine for me, but maybe my screen is way too bright.
I think I'll play with the color some more. Thanks for pointing it out!

@Lucleonhart
The small bar is for volume not progress.

as a rule i wouldn't put dark text on a dark background and vice-versa, when its on the tv its very hard to read.

maybe you can swap the colours around and see how it looks (light text on dark and so forth)

the skin has a lot of potential! i really like the settings screenshot with the icons. and i like the lifted/curved paper effect you did on the selected album covers/posters, don't think anyones done that for xbmc skin before.

Looks really nice.

looking great other than the dark text on dark background as others have said, I look forward to giving it a go.

love it

I Love the look of this skin, look absolutely fantastic. I am worried that it may be hard to read on my 32" tv, but I'd be willing to put up with that for this beauty .

One criticism though, the OSD doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the design. You've got lots of flat colours throughout the UI, then this futuristic, glowy, rounded look for the OSD which looks a lot like Aeon. It just seems jarring to me. Otherwise, it's fantastic.

Dr Gonzo Wrote:One criticism though, the OSD doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the design. You've got lots of flat colours throughout the UI, then this futuristic, glowy, rounded look for the OSD which looks a lot like Aeon. It just seems jarring to me. Otherwise, it's fantastic.

You are perfectly right there.
It does look different from the rest. A fact I don't like.
But I cannot use the same warm and vivid colors on the OSD.
It would be waaaay too distracting while watching a movie.

That's why I decided to stay with the same color scheme but dampen it.
The background is identical with the gray backgrounds I use everywhere else.
I see your point with the rounded elements, but I tried using square ones and it looked like shit to me.

So yeah, it's not seamless, but it's not too bad either.
Except for the blue glow for the focus button.
I hate that, but so far I was unable to come up with a better solution.
Besides I'm also using the glow for settings, so it is consistent.

Yeah, I get your point, it would kill your eyes if you brought up the OSD in a dark movie to be blinded by red and light yellow/beige.

Sorry if this is overstepping the mark but I'm thinking maybe just the embossed effect you use for the "Now Playing" for the play/pause buttons with a soft inner glow for when you "mouse over" (for want of a better term), even maybe copying the "mouse-over" effect you have in the settings menu. Then maybe a solid colour for the progress bar, maybe with a very faint 2 to 3 pixel shadow on the edges, similar to the red ribbon running under the main screen. Ditto for the volume but smaller, obviously.

Again, sorry if this is obnoxious in any way. I don't mean it to be, I just love the design of the skin and wanted to offer some help.

This should be a delightful Christmas present if released in time