I'm making a new theme for Aston Shell. It is based around a wallpaper made for the game F.E.A.R. (one of the beast FPS ever made, aside from Half-Life 2) The ss for it is here: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/48595098/ please let me know what you think of it so far. I'll keep it updated regularly.

The top-bar is very photo-realistic - nice shine and shading to define individual buttons.

sounds a good one....Top bar is good, not too skined and not unskinned too 

yep, test it for a while and upload!!!

alright, thanks guys.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/48595098/ I am almost done and the almost finished screen shot is at the link. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Hi, I'm mrbiotech, and I approve of this theme!

Dude, your style is totally evolving!  This looks so polished, styled, and deliberate in comparison to your previous works!  Great to see you pull out all the stops and create your next masterpiece!

Thanks! I'm glad you like it. I just realized that I forgot to make a recycle bin. I am doing that now. Wish me luck.

Sounds like you got the problem of the toolbars out....well done this time

yep, I took your advice and scratched the connectors. It looks much better now. Thanks.

Now you should check all things triece before submitting

I am doing just that. I'm going through everything seeing if I can make it better and asking peers for advice. krstatzar was even kind enough to upload my screen shot with all his suggestions written on it. It is things like that that make me happy to be in the skinning community.

It helps that you have an approachable, amiable personality.  Some people ask for suggestions and then shoot down everything you suggest.  You take suggestions well.  You consider them, implement the ones you can, and keep getting better and better.  It's a joy to see 

Thanks

Oh ya, and do you have any suggestions on how to make the tick marks in the gauges for aMonitor better? I freehanded them and they are noticeably crooked. (krstatzar brought this to my attention)

What's your preferred graphical software?

I s'pose the following is what I generally do in Photoshop:

• Create a rectangular selection 2 pixels tall by any number of EVEN-NUMBERED pixels wide and fill it with your color of choice.
• Copy this new feature on a different layer.
• On the copied shape use the transform tools (Ctrl+T) to rotate the new layer by a set amount.  Usually I do something like 10-20 degrees.
• Copy the original layer (to ensure highest quality) and rotate the new layer by 2x the amount in the previous.
• Continue copying and rotating by 3x, 4x, 5x, etc... of the specified angle.
• Merge all these layers.  You should have something that looks like a big asterisk, for lack of a better word.
• Create a circular selection of even-numbered diameter smaller than your asterisk and center the selection over it.
• Hit your delete key to kill the contents of the selection.  You should be left with just the outside edges of the asterisk now.

There are many ways to do this.  I've just provided a rudimentary method.  Alternatively, one could approach this technique from a vector-based standpoint, using vector shapes and copying and rotating them.  The advantage to this is that everything can happen on one layer, and you just rasterize it and selectively erase at the end.

Probably the best way to do this is to use Illustrator or Inkscape which deal entirely in vector imagery and use their alignment and rotation tools.  You can specify guides which will let your manually rotate shapes into place and have them click to set increments, like 15 degrees.

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the ideas. I played around with a few ideas of my own and found the way that worked for me. The finished image is here: http://www.astonshell.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5173&start=15 (near the bottom) Here is how I did it in Photo Shop:

1) make a selection of the innermost circle.
2) select/modify/contract 2px
3) using the square selection and alt (on a PC of course ) deselect the upper half of the selection.
4) then using the circle selection tool with a set height and with of 36px x 46px and alt, deselect the middle part of the selection leaving a semi circle that had a thinner base that gets wider as it goes. (I don't know if I explained that well.)
5) fill in the selection.
6) create a new layer and freehand marks that show where you are going to erase.
7) get the eraser tool and select the layer with the filled selection on it.
erase where ever your marks are.

This worked quite nicely for me.