trade skin design for skin creation?

phantom of the black parade
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i probably should have put this up yesterday when i was doing all the things but here i am now remembering that this is a thing. anyway.

i feel super awkward about this since i know skin requests rarely ever get taken (which i get since it takes a lot of effort to code and commissions are a heavy thing now and i strongly support that as a fellow coder tbeh), but i'm hoping that this is going to be enough of an odd request to give it a shot.

basically what i'm looking for is a mockup. that's it. i can handle the actual nitty gritty of making a skin myself - i've been skinning my own sites for a few years now so i got this down for the most part by this point. i just tend to have a hard time thinking of designs and my eye for colors tends to be pretty poor a lot of the time, so having a visual mockup for me to reference and bring to life would really help me out. especially if it's something a bit closer to a screenshot than the rough sketches i tend to work with when i'm designing for myself.

while i'm not gonna turn away someone who is happy to just toss the mockup at my face for the design challenge of it, honestly, i don't want to take advantage of anyone because i've been on the other side of that nightmare before that i'd never inflict on anyone if i could avoid it, so i'd be more than happy to exchange what i need for my project for coding out a skin for yours from another mockup. i generally code jcink these days because it's a lot easier for me, so that's what i'd prefer to code for since it's what i'm most familiar with, but if push comes to shove, i can do proboards if i have to and i'm given the time to relearn all the quirks of it.

like i said. i can code just fine. i don't need someone to make a whole skin for me because 1) yikes but also 2) i got this. i just don't have the sacrifices to satan that are usually required of me to produce a good skin design, so i'd like to trade some of my technical skills in exchange for someone's graphical skills and eye for web design, as it were.
last edit on Oct 16, 2019 15:43:52 GMT by Kuroya

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What would you like to be included in the mockup? Like, would you like a big banner that stretches across the site, or maybe something smaller, either centered or put to either side? Would you like hovers? Info put on top of the banner? Under it? Do you want staff images? Quick links? Awards/of the month's? A census? Updates?

Do you prefer light or dark skins? Any specific colors schemes? Any specific themes (like, superhero, dark and scary, fantasy ish, etc, etc)

Since I've recently (or rather, since I'm currently) learned(ing) how to skin myself, I don't really need anyone to make a skin for me, but it could be nice to have someone else's brain to pick if I ever encounter a problem I need help with. Like... "WHY IS IT DOING THIS, IT SHOULDN'T BE DOING THAT--oh, I forgot to remove a div closing? oh okay", ya know?

But yeah, I'd love to throw up a few mockups for ya if you'd like.
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ooh, I want to play around with designing and colors more but don't feel like actually coding anything so I might throw my hat into this for fun if I have the time

But only if you're cool with me using certain elements of my own mock-up for my own future skins if I like it enough. They won't be 100% the same but they might be visually similar due to my own design preferences.
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omg i wasn't expecting such a quick response ahhhh this is wonderful-

@melusine
i would have no problem with being a brain to pick if things are breaking. it's been a hot minute since i've been on the inside of proboards' admin panel (no, seriously, it's been at least three years), but i do still have a test site and some of the old rp sites i skinned, so in theory, i can still puzzle out what i did if it's a proboards-specific problem and sometimes just. someone else looking over the code makes all the difference. code support buddies are always important. yes.

i'm looking for like... more or less as close as you could come to screenshots of the site as possible (just because it's a lot easier to convert from image into code when i can eyeball things and how it's supposed to look). obviously it doesn't have to be perfectly one-to-one or anything since it's something in photoshop or another graphics editor or the like, but the closer you can get in the visual, the better since i'm wanting to be able to more or less bring the mockups i'm given right to life.

which i'll get to more of the nitty gritty for that in a second here hold on-


i would definitely be up for that too! and i would have no problems with you wanting to pull a lot of it for your own skins (and i'd be happy to hand over the code when it's finished too if you'd like, just to save yourself some of the coding) since i'm hoping to use this for a not-fully-public site. i just needed to go down this route versus customizing a premade since i would've had to do some p heavy code edits to do what i wanted to do if i tried that and a lot of coders tend to get p huffy if you're making a lot of large-scale changes like that.




as far as details for what i'm wanting to do with it go - the site i'm hoping to skin out is going to be an animated panfandom with a more fantasy-esque setting and more of a light-hearted feel. i'd prefer a lighter skin because generally my graphics settings are hit-or-miss for dark skins (like, for context, ct's skins were almost always okay for me, but a lot of other darker skins would be more iffy), but i'm not hard bound to a light skin if it's not super dark.

i'm planning on it being a semi-private site, so i can get away with a lot of minimalism in some of the designs - like i could absolutely slide by on a layout where i only have quick links from the "traditional" header, the discord is just linked somewhere instead of featured on-site, and there's just a v small area for resource sites in the footer area. i could roll with a little welcome + site credits area and a staff image area or a "featured shipper / want ad" area, but i could also get by without that. as far as other parts of the design go - it'd be nice to have a thread list and/or a member list layout but i can get by without them as long as i know what colors and adjustments need to be made to the default, the big things i'm gonna need are a board list, info center, profile, and mini-profile.

i usually go with a 100x100 image for the avatar (gotta keep those icons relevant am i right?) and a 250x400 larger image for hovers and the like. i'm trying to go with a profile app just so no one has to deal with apps and i don't have to code accepted / pending / denied templates as well as an actual app template oops, so while all the usual stuff is good for the mini-profile, i know the profiles are gonna need like... series, pronouns, age, sexuality, romantic orientation, a larger abilities area, a larger freeform area (with something for a spoiler / content warning), a smaller notes area (for things like canon points or w/e), ooc name, ooc pronouns, ooc age, triggers / no-gos, mature thread preference, preferred posting speed, message link, plotter link, optional wanted link, link to member directory post, post count, date for last login + last post + registration date. i usually go with different layouts for members / characters / guests on that so that's a thing (like cs is a p good example for how i make that work out) and uhhhh... i'm probably not gonna have different member groups for characters, so i guess that's a thing. (honestly, i think the board-wide member groups are gonna end up being like unsorted / validating > character > player > mod > admin / root admin, so there's not a ton to work with there tbeh.)

i'd been playing a lil bit with stuff over the weekend in codepen because i'd been staring at this image from pixiv, but i didn't get really far (this was as far as i got, to be precise, though thanks codepen for not making the banner stretch over the whole top area like it's supposed to, i appreciate it), and i'm honestly not super mega attached to it if you want to scrap that and go with something entirely different. like i said, my design instincts are terrible so i have no idea what i'm doing.i say as if i ever know what i'm doing tbeh

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i'm trying to go with a profile app just so no one has to deal with apps and i don't have to code accepted / pending / denied templates as well as an actual app template oops
You have to teach me how to do this. I need this knowledge in my life.

ANYWHO.

Mind if I add you on discord? Easier (and quicker) to chat over there, because now you're making my fingers itch. 
phantom of the black parade
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i'm trying to go with a profile app just so no one has to deal with apps and i don't have to code accepted / pending / denied templates as well as an actual app template oops
You have to teach me how to do this. I need this knowledge in my life.

ANYWHO.

Mind if I add you on discord? Easier (and quicker) to chat over there, because now you're making my fingers itch. 


i don't know how to do it on proboards since i've not messed with proboards skinning in so long, but i'd assume it's possible? it'd depend on how you arranged it and coded the back end, and i've not been on a proboards site in years and most of them don't let you see the profiles if you aren't a member, but yeah, no, kmh and cs both use it and it's an absolute godsend, i love it, though it does have the obvious drawback of "you can't delete accounts ever since then you're deleting the entire biography" which is a yikes but. yeah.

i'll pm you my discord! i just. don't post it publicly because i don't like having a whole lot of people hanging around in my discord when i have 0 idea who they are (and i have days where i have trouble processing "excess" stimulation so the extra discord notifications drive me nuts, it's a curse).

phantom of the black parade
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at this, the world's end, do we cast off tomorrow~!
gonna pop in a thing here so kitten won't archive this and so i can get it on the same bump calendar as something else i track but also so i can add another smol screenshot because i keep designing long after i should have stopped tbeh

phantom of the black parade
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at this, the world's end, do we cast off tomorrow~!
as another update, i ended up coding all the board areas by this point, so. just gotta move on further down. (or anyone else who's up for joining in on this rabbit hole tbeh, skinning is hard) if you want screenshots, just send me a pm and i can shoot them over to you. melusine's already been getting a lot of random dms for me throwing them at her, oops

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If you'd like to avoid having to bump this, I'd be happy to move this topic to a discussion board and turn it into a general thread where people can post designs they'd like to see coded and other people can pick them up. No worries if you don't and would prefer to keep the thread like this, I just thought I'd offer!
phantom of the black parade
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bless you for offering kitten but i think i'd rather keep it how it is - i can bump it regularly enough with adding some more bits and bobs of what's been coded already that i'm not anticipating issues with that?

but also you make a good point in that it might be a cool general discussion topic for people to be able to sign up for this sort of thing more generally so that might be something cool to do in the future, whether it's something you staffers put together or something a bit less organized that my brain pushes into existence!

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things i currently have: a header, board layout, info center, and most of the character profile

things i do not have: sanity tbeh

it's a real conundrum :/

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at this, the world's end, do we cast off tomorrow~!
i'm gonna toss a small bump on this because i'm really struggling with the profile and mini-profile / post areas (and i'm internally crying at the thought of official thread templates), so i'd definitely appreciate if someone hit me up to help with this!

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Hi kuroya!
Mizo here. I'm not sure if my designs are up to par, hopefully they are okay, but I have designed sites before and I can photoshop what looks like literal screenshots for the site mockup if you like! Here is an example of a skin design that I photoshopped. I was going to give it to the ww staff as a gift but I... Didn't finish it in time. I can photoshop any skin design for you, from pretty much any genre, I just need a bit to work on whatever you like and I can do it from scratch. I can also write down the details of the design (exactly height/width, color, effect, margins, padding, etc.) in a document to make sure that everything will look exactly the same instead of a rough approximation. If you are okay with the quality of my work, feel free to hmu and I'll see how I can help!

Right now, I'm looking for someone that can code me parts of a skin as well, but unfortunately, the forum host is still proboards. If you're willing to work together, I'd love to, though I'm currently handling real life obligations, so not right away. I'll be free to design anything, including site templates, around the start of December, so just let me know through Pm and we can discuss the details. ( :

P.S. If you need someone to handle graphics, I can do that as well, so let me know if you need that too! 
last edit on Nov 18, 2019 7:28:52 GMT by Mizo

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that's definitely up to par! and actually that is definitely the kind of thing i'm looking for to work with as well. pretty much exactly, actually, lmfao.

i think i'd like try to keep the header/banner layout and the board layouts and thread layouts i have right now in the codepen i've been working with just because i really heckin like them and i like the way they've turned out so far, but i'm definitely down for replacing the info center and profile layouts i have right now just because i'm still on the fence for whether or not i like the info center and the wip character profile layout i have rn just has me at a loss for how to tweak and finish it into something i'm satisfied with (and the player profile layout is an entire question mark for me at the moment). though tbeh if you end up with an absolutely fabulous idea that would work better for the overall design, i'd definitely not be opposed to going in an entirely different direction

i can send you a pm with a link to the codepens i've been working with (it'll probably be faster for you to pull a lot of the info you'll need) and the links to the various images i've settled on for the moment (i've not done any effects with them, just picked out the ones i want to use and cropped a few things down for examples so i know what i'm staring at) and/or i can send you a pm with my discord handle if you would rather handle stuff via discord, i'm flexible with that!

i've skinned v5 proboards before, so it's not a huge deal for me to skin proboards, i just... have not worked with proboards coding seriously in three years and proboards skinning specifically for... probably between a year and a half to two years on top of that. so obviously my memory of some of the more exact stuff is a bit sketchy and how well my usual method of "codepen to actual skin" is going to work out. as such, i don't really have the immediate examples of bits of proboards coding to show off in terms of "this is my skinning skill level", but if you want/need a quick check-in for general skill, both of the sites linked in the aff banners of my signature were skinned by me (iw's original skin design is probably about a year and a half to two years old since i keep recoloring it tbeh but cs' skin was done this april so it's v recent), so even though they're both jcink, they can give you a bit of an idea of what i'm able to do, software permitting of course.

december would work for me since i'm working on a semi-private site, so that would give me some time to get the solo building done in between my other site responsibilities and such, so with that in mind, if you want to throw me the mockup for your site a little bit earlier so i can get the skin back to you sooner, i'm definitely fine with that! (it'll still probably take me a bit to work from mockup to final product, but y'know, i'd obviously want to prioritize the full public site over the more private one.)

(i'd also definitely love to have graphics since it would be a delight to not have to worry about that, but it's not a big deal for me to snag them since it would mostly be skin images and the like since i wasn't really planning on advertising outside of a larger signature image for me and an affiliate banner for anyone else who wants to advertise in their sig or list us somewhere, and i've thrown those two images together.)
last edit on Nov 19, 2019 13:32:35 GMT by Kuroya