"A Bloodscent in the Air"
--featuring Gaara of Naruto--
--a "Have Faith" production--
http://www.angelette.com/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Tari Gwaemir
tarigwaemir@hotmail.com
http://www.angelette.com/tarigwaemir/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think I set a personal record this time: a little under a week to finish this skin.  Of course I was on a marathon rush and spent several hours straight doing nothing but "copy, paste" repeatedly.  Wow.  Anyway, doesn't Gaara look surprisingly innocent and, dare I say it, cute?  But wait!  Look at the murderous expression in his eyes in the background on the lower left, and quail in fear.  Mwahahahaha...er, don't mind me.  I've been staring at the Photoshop screen for far too long.

This skin is...on crack.  Insane.  Psycho.  Weird.  (Just like Gaara.)  Look at that crazy color scheme for example.  I hope it doesn't hurt your eyes too much.  The colors are all taken from the original screenshots though, so miraculously it doesn't seem to clash...at least not on my monitor.  ^_^;;  And somehow I like it.  The style is bold and straightforward, a lot more conventional than what I've been playing around with lately, so it was kind of nice.

Please note that the borders get kind of funky in the playlist and minibrowser (and probably in the AVS, for all I know).  It is /not/ my fault, for once.  That's just the way Winamp skins work.  Hopefully it doesn't stand out too much.  Oh, and if the AVS looks terrible, please don't blame me.  /Oniichan/ upgraded me to Winamp 2.91, which has a different method for skinning the AVS, so I actually can't view the skinned AVS on my computer.  It's a pretty simple AVS, though, and I was feeling lazy.  If there's a mistake, I'm very sorry.  I would have skinned it the 2.91 way, except I was working on a time limit and didn't have the time to figure it all out.

I think the eyes are kind of creepy, and I don't quite like the way the "sand" turned out, but right now, I really couldn't care less.  -_-  A lot of the buttons and other skin elements are invisible:  the EQ/PL buttons, the MONO/STEREO buttons, the volume and balance bars.  I did try to skin everything that people would commonly use, at the expense of putting them on Gaara's background face.  I've already mentioned the crazy color scheme, and I might as well say that I was in a very strange mood when I came up with the "eyes" in the equalizer.  Yes, those buttons are supposed to be bad replicas of Gaara's eyes.  What can I say, I'm weird.  I'm really bothered by the yellow, but it was the only readable color in my palette for this skin.  I also don't like the minibrowser buttons, but oh well.

I especially like the way the small picture in the windowshade turned out--didn't the gourd blend in nicely with the sand background?  I also like the control buttons, as plain as they seem, and the little pictures in the playlist menus, because they look funny.  I also like the fonts, which I've never used before, though they've been on my computer for a long time.

Ah, and the most important part: this skin is dedicated to Dean, a.k.a. xseiferothx.  See, even if I didn't make the pledge to start these dedications, I would have been obligated to dedicate this one anyway.  Dean not only supplied all the Naruto screencaps used in the making of this skin (they're all from the second part of the /chuunin/ exam, if you're interested) but also constantly nagged at me to hurry up and finish it.  Without his hassling, I probably would have finished this around...November.  Oh yes, and he's also the one who introduced me to the series and kept me regularly supplied with new episodes.  This is my way of paying my debt, I guess.  So indeed, this Have Faith production would not have been possible without his help.  >_<

Graphics Editor: Photoshop 7.0
Text Editor: Windows Notepad
Fonts: Mistral, Lucida Handwriting

If you wish to distribute this skin through your own web site, please remember to give me, Tari Gwaemir, full credit.  You don't need to ask permission beforehand, but you should, out of courtesy, inform me if you're going to archive it on your site.  No skinning programs were used in the making of this skin.  Please don't insult me by insinuating that I did.  All "handmade", thank you very much.