One of the things I occasionally get asked is "How do you make your skins?" Often, the writers seem to want to know one single program that will accomplish these skins for them. Ha. Good luck. It takes a decent graphics editor, time, patience, and, if you want to make Winamp 3 skins, a computer science degree plus clinical insanity. I mean, I'm assuming, since I haven't tried it. But we're keeping it simple, here. Winamp 2.x only.

The tools I use to make my skins - PSP 7. A low-budget Canon scanner, plus stuff I can scan - artbooks, manga, doujinshi, game manuals, posters, calendars, Christmas cards and cover art have all found their way into my skins in some way or other. Images from off the web, too - I don't scan all my own stuff. Fonts - if you inspect my skins you'll notice some repeat offenders, and not all fonts are going to work on skins, but it's good to have a selection. Three years of practice - I can't give that to you, you're just going to have to work on it. And I've got a very helpful template - I hadn't wanted to offer it for download, since I didn't create it and I know a lot of work went into it that I couldn't have done on my own. But the site that did offer it is down, probably permanently, so - here you can download the files, with slight modification by me.

All links to images, illustrations, and other sites will take open in a new window. All links to a second page of the tutorial will stay in the same window.

These tutorials, when completed, will take you from this to this to this (huge file) to, finally, this, a completed, functional skin.

The first of those links is the cover of the second volume of the Suikoden 3 manga. The second is a compressed version of the multi-layer .psp image I used in the making of the skin. The third is a screenshot of PSP featuring all the image files that go into a completed skin - to make one of your own, you are going to end up putting something into each and every one of those. The fourth is a screenshot of a completed skin in motion.

If you're seriously interested in learning how to make skins and you've never attempted it before, well... click on that third link, or just click right here. Wait for it to load. See all those image files? You're going to have to edit every single one of those. Wheee!

Still interested? Here you will find a very complete tutorial from the makers of Winamp - it's not the same tutorial I used, but it looks helpful. And use the links below to see my own tutorial.

Before you begin - Choosing and editing images

Part 1 - setting up the image for skinning, continued

Intermission - The template explained

Getting started on the main window - The non-moving parts and the text file

More on the main window - Moving parts and the viscolor