GUI Olympics: Week 3 Results
Wednesday, May 26, 2004 by Frogboy | Discussion: GUI Championships News
Week 3 results!
After lengthy and careful consideration, here are the results for week 3 of the GUI Olympics.
Event: WindowBlinds - Most creative visual style
| Rank | Author | Skin |
 |
MikeB314 | Airlock |
 |
essorant | Pixel 8 |
|
|
^^Gabriel | G-Pod |
 |
treetog | Antares |
|
|
danilloOC | Sektor |
Event: IconPackager - Best themed (icons that fit a specific theme) icon package
| Rank | Author | Skin |
|
treetog | Thunder Storm (Icons) |
|
volter15 |
Smile 3  )) |
|
farid nafar | HFN Sapphire |
Event: WinAmp Pro - Most usable Winamp skin
| Rank | Author | Skin |
|
Andrew Mackowski | EMP 2 |
|
Anemovatis | AR7 |
|
kriptoner | D-Reliction |
Event: WindowBlinds - Best themed visual style (a visual style that fits a specific theme)
| Rank | Author | Skin |
|
treetog | Thunder Storm WB |
|
- vf - | Alloy Bezel 4 |
|
Scarebear | 10pin |
|
EventHorizon | Mime |
Event: IconPackager - Best Pseudo-OS icon package (an icon package that you could see coming with an operating system)
| Rank | Author | Skin |
|
Miloszwl | d3A |
|
Leothar | Amdio |
|
Rokey | The Last Order |
Event: WinAmp Pro - Best power user Winamp skin
| Rank | Author | Skin |
|
Andrew Mackowski | EMP 2 |
|
a-t-o-m-i-c | Impulse |
|
Muniom Designs | Resurgence |
 |
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biohazard emirua
Reply #82 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8:50 PM
Reply #82 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8:50 PM
maybe everybody should start supporting their points with screenshots..
VAG - METASKINS
Reply #83 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:04 PM
Reply #83 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:04 PM
StillWater: For WB you're kinda right BUT remember that this is an International and famous competition, and WinCustomise should MAYBE have MORE judges, seperate on any way of partitipation let's say, 10 for Icons, 20 for WB and another 10 for WA Skins, not just 6 people to do all this work......
So this show to me weakness or not professionalism at the state an International Competition needs, and specialy as Greek participating in a competition having the word "Olympics" on it's title seems a very good joke afterwall to me personaly.
biohazard: The server is slow itself, if we all start talking with screenshots will go down in matter of hours.
rpeterclark
Reply #84 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:10 PM
Reply #84 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:10 PM
If all the judges had done as Jark did, then it would have been fine, an impartial vote is exactly what a judge should do.
But if you have judges that had to rely on the opinions of others to finalize their own opinion, then you need to find better judges.
biohazard emirua
Reply #85 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:20 PM
Reply #85 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:20 PM
lol... yeah(well.. the server is not slow here.. but maybe it is in europe)... but maybe u can upload the pic to other site and just post the addy here...
StillWater Skins
Reply #86 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:29 PM
Reply #86 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:29 PM
Plague: Yep, I totally agree that each category should have had a comprehensive description released to the skinners before the contest began.
I assume that the judges have some sort of criteria that they have to follow. If so, then this list should have been published before the contest is over.
VAG: yeah, but no matter how many judges are involved, each one would still have to look at (in this case) 100+ skins for each category. Every judge would need to look at every competing skin. Otherwise, it would not make any sense.
And if judges had to look at THAT many skins for every category, then it would take so much time that you would quite possibly need to pay them. And if you had to pay 40 judges (which is the number you suggest), you would probably first need to rob a bank.
You have to be realistic 
StillWater Skins
Reply #87 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:30 PM
Reply #87 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:30 PM
Also, I have a suggestion. For next time, I think you should either:
(a) create 1 separate event for classic winamp skins
-or-
(
scrap classic skins altogether and accept only modern skins
I say this because I'm sure I'm not the only classic skinner that was disappointed to see how poorly the classic skins went. Especially since there were a few brilliantly crafted classic skins like ripe's "Bunker" skin, for example. This is NOT a whine directed towards the judges, because previous news-posts clearly show that this preference for modern skins is not just the case with the judges, but with the large majority of the public in general.
I personally think that classic skins have a valid place in the skinning world. They have disadvantages of course, but they also have advantages, like instantly recognisable and very intuitive component layout and ultra-minimal resource consumption. For these reasons and others, I never even bother using modern skins, no matter how impressed I am by how they look, and have never bothered to try to learn how to skin them, since I'd never use them even if I made them myself. And I'm not the only one like this.
So, I suggest that if the GUI thinks that classic skins have a valid place next year, that they give them a separate event. Otherwise, I would suggest that they simply exclude classic skins from the outset - because my guess is that most of us who entered this year probably feel a bit disappointed when we see windowblinds skins, which are also non-freeform, steal the show, while non-freeform winamp skins were all but ignored. And I think that most of us will probably feel that we have, unfortunately, kind of wasted our time.
scrap classic skins altogether and accept only modern skins
I say this because I'm sure I'm not the only classic skinner that was disappointed to see how poorly the classic skins went. Especially since there were a few brilliantly crafted classic skins like ripe's "Bunker" skin, for example. This is NOT a whine directed towards the judges, because previous news-posts clearly show that this preference for modern skins is not just the case with the judges, but with the large majority of the public in general.
I personally think that classic skins have a valid place in the skinning world. They have disadvantages of course, but they also have advantages, like instantly recognisable and very intuitive component layout and ultra-minimal resource consumption. For these reasons and others, I never even bother using modern skins, no matter how impressed I am by how they look, and have never bothered to try to learn how to skin them, since I'd never use them even if I made them myself. And I'm not the only one like this.
So, I suggest that if the GUI thinks that classic skins have a valid place next year, that they give them a separate event. Otherwise, I would suggest that they simply exclude classic skins from the outset - because my guess is that most of us who entered this year probably feel a bit disappointed when we see windowblinds skins, which are also non-freeform, steal the show, while non-freeform winamp skins were all but ignored. And I think that most of us will probably feel that we have, unfortunately, kind of wasted our time.
VAG - METASKINS
Reply #88 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:54 PM
Reply #88 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 9:54 PM
StillWater I agree as about Classic skins totaly.
As about the judges and their payments, well WinCustomize is a big site, has adds, tools to sell, Stardock too, you think they don't have money or sponsors to pay those 40 for example I suggested?
I don't think so......
StillWater Skins
Reply #89 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:15 PM
Reply #89 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:15 PM
VAG: Yeah, I guess maybe they do. Though it would cost thousands of dollars, would be way harder to organise, would probably make the judging process take way longer, and at the end of it, knowing life, people would still be complaining about the results - so I don't know if it would be worth their while LOL
I'm glad you agree about the classic skins. Actually, if the GUI continues to expand in the future, I think it would make it a lot more fun to include other 'minor' events, like for sysmetrix, trillian, skincalc, etc. 
QuadHeliX
Reply #90 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:20 PM
Reply #90 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:20 PM
I have to Say I am Disappointed in the Results, First of all I got booted for having a Beta out in the public to test my skin Warp. I think one of the boys at winamp had a thing to do with that. Second the Prizes weren't anything, at least for me. If it was $2000 i would be alittle pissed i got kicked out. I think Next time We truely Need a community effort on this. The Guys at StarDoc dont have a clue what it takes to code a Winamp Skin, PLague, RPC, JARED COLE, FRISBEEMONKEY, Jory Compendio All have Computer Science Backgrounds The coding is Just like C++ and Java.
D-Reliction used some advanced scripts
Resurgence as well. Please When holding a contest Get more Knowledge of the product STARDOCK!!
JayG
Reply #92 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:46 PM
Reply #92 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:46 PM
could the winamp people be any more cry-baby like? what a bunch of pampered little babies.
there's what? 2X as many windowblinds skins as winamp skins and half those winamp skins are just classic. you don't see the wb skin authors bitching and moaning.
i love how they blame it on stardock when nullsoft were the ones who did most of the judging. go bitch at them.
QuadHeliX
Reply #93 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:52 PM
Reply #93 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:52 PM
Judges..
Nullsoft..Steve not a coder, Jonathan, dont know what he does,
And the rest
3) Jark from deviantART
4) Voodoo from Neowin
5) Kris from Stardock
Anyway..... Have a good one guys!!
John Hamp
Reply #94 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:53 PM
Reply #94 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 10:53 PM
Way to make the Winamp community look like a bunch of spoiled babies. Elitist spoiled babies at that.
Here Stardock put together a wonderful set of events, included Winamp despite the fact that it's been losing popularity for years, and turned the judging over largely to Nullsoft for those events and what do you guys do? Crap all over Stardock as if it's somehow their fault.
Anyone reading this exchange is going to walk away with a very negative impression fo the Winamp community. It's pretty sad that the actual authors of the Winamp skins are belly aching.
The funniest part is seeing Winamp skinners threaten to not participate. I bet the organizers are thinking 'oooh no..' I'm sure there's any number of programs that would kill for this kind of exposure whose skinners aren't so quick to throw tantrums. Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Istari
Reply #96 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:03 PM
Reply #96 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:03 PM
1) Blaming Stardock for the outcome of the Winamp skin events is absurd. At most, they had 1 of the 5 judges. No one had more say over the Winamp skins than Nullsoft.
2) On most usable, do you guys realize that a classic skin could easily have won this given that the event was about usability? What does effort have to do with anything? It's about how usable the skin is.
3) Listen to the Hamster. The Winamp community is looking really bad.
Frogboy
Reply #97 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:18 PM
Reply #97 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:18 PM
If any Winamp skin author feels they have been treated unfairly they are welcome to take their skin out of the contest.
We don't want anyone to feel that they are not being treated with the respect that their effort warrants.
I'm sorry that some of you don't like the outcome of the Winamp events so far. As I've said, Stardock wasn't the one who did the judging (i.e. overall), we tried to spread it out amongst Winamp experts 2 from Nullsoft. One inhouse Winamp expert, the lead admin of deviantART.
I think most people would agree that the judges on the Winamp side were pretty well qualified to do the judging.
Incidentally, my comment with regards to looking at news comments was in regard to WindowBlinds skins since there were a LOT more of them in the categories to judge and for the record, yes, some of the judges do look to see what other people think on the WindowBlinds skins. That doesn't mean they take their cues from them. It was not my intention to imply that judges were getting their directions based on news items.
As someone else correctly pointed out, Stardock, in general, isn't familiar enough with Winamp to know what's involved in a given Winamp skin in terms of effort which is why the non-Winamp experts at Stardock haven't been judging Winamp skins.
Brother Rabbit
Reply #98 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:41 PM
Reply #98 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:41 PM
You are all a bunch of babies. It's just a stupid skinning contest. Get over it.
It's not like this event even get's any press christ
Brother Rabbit
Reply #99 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:52 PM
Reply #99 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:52 PM
Oh and btw,
I'd like to comment on judging, public opinion etc. Firstly, this is a design competiton, and no matter HOW you slice it, the opinion of a stupid programmer, computer technican or whatever you bunch of tools do for a living, should NOT be allowed to critic or comment on a visual artform like this. What the hell do you know? You think your opinion matters in the real world of creativity? No, artists & are visual people, educated and experienced, and they should be the only ones judging.
Artists / Designers don't go to expensive art schools for years and years for nothing you know. Most of you can't even draw a stick figure.
Get away from art. You ruin it's public opinion.
Yes that means you.
farid nafar
Reply #100 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:56 PM
Reply #100 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:56 PM
every one who looks the AMDIO iconpack know that a iconpack that havn't the 128x128 format cant get the medal.a very ordinary iconpack .I create it in 1 day.if i want to get a grade to it,the 5 step is the suitable place for it .
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Reply #81 Wednesday, May 26, 2004 8:46 PM