I remember the good old day right before I left when good skinning wasn't done by adding a ton of filters and changed the blending options.

Now it's all add a few patterns, add texture overlays, a couple of lines and done

Worst of all people now think these skins are good, that they think this actually takes effort...
a few of these skin are...

Jesus Freak skin by Spark#22

Ok, so, I can't tell wether he used a premade pattern or took a small square of the image posted ealier in the post. But that's the most of the skin... Then a crop from the image was cut and pasted 3 times and text was added... At voila!

These are responses

Ummm...... Yea..... Not really. How can a 5 minute skin be impressive?

Not only that but racer and the others have lowered thier level too...

C'mon man. I mean, really... Render clouds and a few overlays? May have taken more then 5 minutes, 20 at most. But come on.

I mean, my last skin took hours. Not one day but three days of work...
if anyone can remember the old unnamed chrome...

They've really let the slack go here...

I'm not angry, just very dissapointed....

Racer just made this one.
But what about my 2nd skin?
If only took about....lets say one hour because I was seeing witch filters would do good metallic stuff.

I'm trying my best to make good skins,that's why I don't like it when my skin topics are revived,it's a symbol of failure. :(

Yea, but you were playing around. These guys should know what thier doing by now....

Ice -

You should take a look at tank_master's skins, they're about 1 or 2 filters, at the most.

@Ice -

I'm afraid you're suffering from what's commonly called "nostalgia". The past is always shinier than the present. Even in the past, most skins were created using exactly the same methods you are bemoaning the youth of today using. XD But all you remember is the highlights - the stupendous, the beautiful skins lovingly hand-crafted by artisans. Those have always been in the minority. Some of today's skinners may grow up to be the artisans of tomorrow...

What kind of world is it when the 35-year old is listening to the teenager talk about the "good ol' days"?

LOL

I dunno guys, I think I agree with ice. Skinning used to be a big thing, there used to be the official "skinners" of think tanks, now they have all gone down the drain. There some to be some damn amazing skins that took forever to do. Now we got skins that take maybe 10 minutes to do. I admit, I was never the best skinner, but I was slotly learning. But the reason why skinning has gone down the drain is because when skins used to be good, none of the good skinners wanted to say how they did them. After a while, people probably were just saying to themselves 'well if they don't wanna tell me how they did it they must not want anyone else to be good'. I mean come on, how bad could telling how to make good crome be?? I mean ice punk, look, when you figured out how to make your good chrome look you shoulda been proud of yourself and made a thread showing every step you did to make it. Also, take this skin that racer recently made for example

You can see the overlays and the filters!!!!!! Now take ice punk's for example

You can't really see any overlays, any filters, or anything.

This?! You've gotta be damn kidding me! Look at the copy and paste! And the texture just sucks!
yeah, my skins arn't that good, but I was slowly doing better, but I would have done good if you guys would told me how to do some cool stuff!!! Thats how alot of people are. I just got fed up with your crap, "oh you have to figure that out yourself", I mean you guys used to be f-ing assholes about it! I couldn't stand it any longer, thats one of the many reason why I don't play tt as much anymore. And I'm not even going into the mod shit. But seriously, back to the skinning, YOU GUYS THAT USED TO BE GOOD, GET A GRIP! DON'T BE SUCKERED IN BY THE CRAP SKINS. DO YOUR GOOD STUFF. Thanks you, I am done now.

Nah, I remember the crap we had back then. Like baby ufo's skins. X/

Well, Well, Well... I would like to remind you Ice Punk and Zoon Bot that that Jesus Freak Skin was my FIRST ^FIRST _FIRST FIRST skin I ever created!!! And I made it with APPLEWORKS! (It's nowhere near to photoshop). I also spent like 5 mins. On that skin, trust me, if I spent 20 minutes on a skin one day, you would like the result. So you were probably thinking that that skin was my 50th skin or something, but you're wrong. So I would ask you to please not rant about people's skins until you know more about the skin and creator.

Come on guys,let's not start a fight. I'm trying to create better skins worth mentioning,but no success yet.

Ha ha...good one. Calm your hormones for just a second and listen up.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, Bigshoe, it's in the Bill of Rights. You should know that, or weren't you paying attention in Social Studies?

Last edited: Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 12:09:48 PM

My only comment here is, the secret to making good skins is to learn how to paint .

There is no magic.. It is just people learning how to use digital tools to make good art, and the knowing ofwhat good art is. You can find tutorials on skinning over at http://www.polycount.com

For your info, I was pushing on the compliments if you read. So I would ask you to please not rant about people's comments until you know what their saying .

You're right IP, all skins (Even mine) have really decreased in quality, but we can't compare yours to ours, they're too good.

W00t! New resource! I've been building art for my personal website lately, and have been learning a lot of new tricks from online tutorials. This looks like a different style of work I might be able to use pieces of.

Last edited: Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 4:04:05 PM

I agree with you Ice Punk. Even though I am realativealy new to the tt community, I agree that skin quality has gone down signifigantly. Even for me. Take me for example, My first Skin

and one of my later ones

P.S. The first one was handdrawn.

Last edited: Saturday, November 20, 2004 at 2:41:33 PM

@Ice Punk
Yes, but I still would like it if you would not use people's skins to demonstrate decrease in skin quality (If you really have to, don't point out the creator, thx). :)

I am creating my first skin. I am new at it, and I am using Ultimate Paint. I am a believer in hard work and beleive that skins should be a reflection of who you are and should tell a little bit about yourself. That my two cents. By the way, I have been working on this skin for three days, so I'm hoping it will be woth my while 8o , as well as everyone elses ;). Thanks, CK.

Uhh.... Yeah, I wanted people to see the tank outline, what's wrong with an overlay to do that?

Don't fight over skins guys,that's just childish. Ice Punk made his point,we need better skins to be made,now go make better skins!

FYI, it took me about two hours to do the tiger stripes texture, I don't see tank_master doing that.

No, sorry, you're mistaken. It's a texture that he used, I can be sure of that.

Again incorrect, that's two filters, find edges and glowing edges, plus a hue.

If you want something that will take me more than a couple of days to make, Bigshoe, then I'll go make one.

Here's the texture that I made.

Yeah, see that's where this thing called 'trust' comes in...most people can trust me and accept my opinion, but you just seem to have a problem with both of those things. How does that look like it took 20 minutes? I can't understand your reasoning.

Furthermore, if you continue to believe that it took me 20 minutes to make it, consider this. I can say that tank_master's skins took about 1 minute to make. How can you like tank_master's skins if they took 1 minute to make, when you're trying to criticize me on how long my skins took to make?

There is no comparison there, Ice Punk is far more experienced in Photoshop than I'll ever be. Of course it would take him 10 minutes to make that, it took me longer than that because I'm less experienced than him.

Picking on him? Listen, Bigshoe, and listen well. I'm expressing my opinion, which includes criticizing someone's skins if I don't like them. It is not against the law in any way to say 'I don't like your skins, tank_master,' and I think you should calm down for a second and stop falsely accusing me of things that I didn't do.

Don't take this any farther, Bigshoe; my day is going horrible as it is.

You want a skin? I'll give you a skin.

And this used 1 filter! And that is Blur. It took me over 2 days to get everything right.

I don't get what you guys have against filters!

Yes, you can do some really cool stuff with filters! FILTERS ARE YOUR FRIEND!!! XD

I understand there's a learning curve. We've all had to scale it. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with using filters, that's what they're there for, but you have to learn to use them effectively.

I think IcePunk has a point, but I don't think its the fault of the newbs. Its just that the "old pros" have taken a bit of a vacation from skinning, so the newbs don't have anything to compare the new skins to, so what they're producing is "awesome". I think they need to keep up the good work and keep trying. That's the only way they're going to learn.

I've been interested in other things lately, namely 3D modeling. As always, I'll look back on my earlier attempts and think they stink, but right now I think they're "awesome". Just give everyone a chance to improve.

And the ship I had to postpone because the season was starting.

As you might guess, I've been working on a high school football TV opener for our local cable access channel. :)

Last edited: Monday, November 22, 2004 at 10:45:05 AM

Heh. And I've been producing graphics for my website...

And...

http://www.strategicwebdesign.biz/tmo/temp/

Last edited: Monday, November 22, 2004 at 9:41:08 AM

@Rabban,

I'd like the Football and Goal Post models in ms3d format please. Email is in profile.

I agree....skins used to not be about how many filters you could put on, but about what the tank acctually LOOKED like....Most of the skins being produced lately I would hate to have on my pc, much less acctually on a tank, even when people cant see them.
I'll see if I can dig up my first skins...
^{Bump to get that damn thread off the first page that is screwing everything up!}

TMO can I use that pic for a skin?

That would make a rockin' boost pad....

I think the format has created a bit of stagnation, but that's not much of an excuse for the janky jank people are peddling. Quality control, pick up the phone.
perhaps some themed contests would get things going.

@Jacob - I assume you mean the Glass Sphere? Yes, you have my permission, so long as you post your final result here in PTT for all to see. XD

The funniest thing is that I can build one of those spheres in less than 5 minutes, but found out how purely by accident. If you want one with different colors to it, just let me know which colors you want.

Just got a Pen & Tablet for Xmas and am still playing with it. Built a cheesy light skin with it that I may post sometime. It will take quite a bit of practice to get used to it though.

Last edited: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 at 9:27:25 AM