A blast from the past.....

I first heard of Xiandi when I ran across her GOLDnGREEN icons. They caught my attention because of the colours, which were so rare, and the unique and appealing style. In a world of blue and black, they were (and are) a refreshing change. Next came her Book icons-only two of them, but unique in colour and style again. That was then, and now, only a short time later, she has a number of large projects under her belt, having tackled most skinning programs, and producing a number of suites of her own design and one derived from Skinhit's Organic IconPackager. That was the first time I'd heard of someone making a suite based on icons. She made everything imaginable except a DX widget.
It all started when someone gave her an old computer, her first. Most people don't start poking around in the inner sanctum of Windows, but she did. She didn't like the icons, so she found out where they were stored, and modified them using Microsoft Paint.
It happens that her brother is a skinner-Noiram, and he saw them and encouraged her to take a look at Wincustomize which led her to buy ObjectDesktop. Not knowing any better, she looked inside a WindowBlind, and said, "I can do that." Most of us would see the same thing, and say, "I don't have a prayer of doing that. It's too complicated."
The name Xiandi is another form of her name Cyndie. She lives in Commerce, Michigan, and works at a firm specializing in finding rental properties for people in the Detroit area, and is married with two children. At one point in her career, she was in the Air Force, and while stationed at a base in the mountains in Germany, had the good fortune to have to shovel her way out of a five foot snowfall.
Her favourite skinning application is WindowBlinds because it's big and a challenge, and likes to take on a large time-consuming project.
After finishing her latest suite, Siroco, doing a WindowBlind (and Rainlendar) for PuterDudeJim's (aka RedneckDude) Copper Carbon Fibre DesktopX theme was next in line. She has just completed that, and did a Right Click for the Skinnalicious suite. As well, she and 2of3 are working on the WindowBlind portion of a suite for skinning.net.
These days, she is an administrator at a new website started by MikeB_1954 called The Skinning Suite (skinningsuite.skinnalicious.net), which is right next door to Skinnalicious. There you can find her, along with people like 2of3 (a fellow administrator), Murex, PuterDudeJim, sViz, and Black-Knight, among others.

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My inspiration into skinning come from Cliff. My 1st skin was actualy a skin of his that was horizontal and i took it vertical. I used skin a lot more than i do now. Still really enjoy it but just do not keep planted in one spot long enuf to have time to sit in front of pc to work on them. Ihave learned some tricks along the way. Mostly trial and error as i think a lot of us can relate to.

Don (dcrewchief)

Indeed, trial and error is a fine guide ;)

Wow After soo long ago I found these.. Thank you very much

You're welcome basj. Great to see you around!

Talk about a blast from the past! It's good to "see" you again.

THE PLASTIC FANTASTIC CONSPIRACY

A few months before the 2008 GUI Championships, I logged into MaxStyles to say hello, and in the chatbox was a message from Tiggz. It caught my attention. I thought it was a bit remarkable; I didn't recall seeing him in anybody's chatbox before. I wondered what it was all about every now and then until the 2008 GUI Championships came along, and then I knew: Tiggz was making an IconPackager, and vStyler was making a WindowBlinds Skin. Then I found out that a lot of other skins were coming out, and I started joking about the Plastic Fantastic Conspiracy because of how quiet they all were about it, and how big it was. That wasn't the end of the mystery for me---what was Tiggz doing making an IconPackager for a vStyler skin? What was he doing making an IconPackager at all? Wasn't that his first? Most interesting of all---who talked to who first, and how did they cement that partnership? Tiggz struck me as a person who worked alone; maybe he's partnered before, but I couldn't think of any other occasion. To solve all these great mysteries, I contacted some members of the team.
The whole conspiracy began with a set of icons being made by Tiggz, a self-described "tired old skinner" and the creator of the well-known series of K-Tek skins. vStyler--"I already knew Tiggz for a while.....with GUIC (2008 GUI Championships) coming up, he had started some icons. I didn't see them until they were almost done. I was going to enter my Outer Limits WB, but I finished it far too early, so after seeing the icons, and having always wanted to do a kid's theme, I decided to invite him onto the MaxStyles team....after a few words of discussion, decided to make a matching WB".
Bilbo--"...once on msn, vStyler said to me: Hey B, this will be my project on GUIC, and sent me some screeny of PF". Bilbo is a beta tester of vStyler's skins, so he got versions of PF to test and comment on. As the builder of the DX theme and widgets, he sent his early versions to Tiggz who made suggestions on what to rework, and some icons: "Bilbo, use this for....". etc.
Messiah1--"I usually speak with vStyler on a quasi daily basis so I keep abreast of the projects pretty well. When he first showed it to me, my first question was "Did you do that in C4D?" His answer (no) surprised and intrigued me". "It took some effort to get the correct look for the zoomers and tabs but I think I matched them up pretty well. The 3d tiles were done in 3ds max, which I love".
This is one conspiracy that met nearly all of it's objectives: Out of the eight categories that they were elgible for, the team won four firsts, two seconds, and two thirds, including best team.
In the words of Messiah1, and echoed by Bilbo, "It's great to be part of a small, talented group of people...".

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