Lithium Skin Project Looking for an Artist!
#1
Smile 
For the past couple months I've been working on a skinning project that goes by the name Lithium. The goal of the project so far has been to create a slick and coherent media center interface that can be comfortably viewed on hd tv's from across the room on the couch without super-human vision. More details can be found in the Yet Another Skin thread over on skin help and support subforum.

I'm looking for a talented artist to take some of the workload off of me and shake things up a bit graphically. The skin is still in a very early stage of development and I'm open to radical changes as long as they stay within the initial goal of the project.
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#2
I like what you're trying to accomplish but if I may, i think people around get carried away with the numerous features that are available to xbmc and sometimes force them into their skins just because they exist. Take fanart for instance, I took one look at your link and it seems redundant to use fanart in every view you screengrabbed, excluding the first one (IMHO). Some say "sometimes, less is more" I say "Less is always more".

just a thought! Wink
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#3
Ayala Wrote:I like what you're trying to accomplish but if I may, i think people around get carried away with the numerous features that are available to xbmc and sometimes force them into their skins just because they exist. Take fanart for instance, I took one look at your link and it seems redundant to use fanart in every view you screengrabbed, excluding the first one (IMHO). Some say "sometimes, less is more" I say "Less is always more".

just a thought! Wink

I'll be the first to admit that I've been using xbmc's fanart as a crutch. In all honesty, thus far I've really only just been working on acquainting myself with the skinning engine and figuring out usability issues. Now that I feel that I've got a bit of a handle in my mind of the best practices in usability I'm starting to turn my eye towards working on the aesthetics. (Is it me or does it just sound goofy to start real work on the aesthetic of a skin 4 months in? Laugh)

Anyways, tangent aside it has been an ongoing battle figuring out how to showcase the fanart (as it really is a unique and nifty feature of xbmc) without letting it dominate the view. The issue that I think you've really picked up on is the use of containers to encapsulate the information. While the containers serve as a great way to highlight the background and still let the text be readable - it comes at the sacrifice of the available screen real estate used to display the information. If you check out some of the mock ups later in the thread (p. 6-8), I've been working on this a bit lately.

Thanks for the earnest comment! I'll try not to get carried away cramming the entire kitchen sink into the skin. Tongue

p.s. How's work on Noir coming along? I'm really looking forward seeing how you handle the duller things like contextual menu's and the info screen. Big Grin
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Lithium Skin Project Looking for an Artist!0