For this weeks member spotlight I wanted to pick one of the most popular creators of wallpapers here on WinCustomize.  Say hello to kenwas !  Kenwas does some beautiful work in wallpapers with Vue 6, and I know he has inspired many others to do the same.  He is a Journeyman at WinCustomize and is number 2 in downloads in the Wallpaper gallery with nearly 1 million downloads since joining in 2003. If you ever pick up a 3D magazine such as 3D world, you might...

Impulse continues to grow, and there are so many ideas and features that are being floated around, it's almost crazy.  However, one thing that we at Stardock take pride in is listening to our customers and even potential customers on how to improve upon what we have built.  Community feedback has played a big role in shaping how game updates have been made, and now we can do the same thing in regards to the future of Impulse. Frogboy wrote a more extensive article on this, so...

I have been getting quite a few e-mails lately about the subscriber skins available for WinCustomize subscribers.  If you are a current subscriber you can find the current skins in the Subscriber Resources link.  Let me also mention that a subscription to Object Desktop , is not the same as a subscription to WinCustomize . Here are some of the latest WinCustomize subscriber skins available for download. Boulder     RockStar  &n...

I wanted to post the final reminder about the contest for the ATI Radeon 4870 Video Card.  You have until this Wednesday night to get the questions in, and please submit the questions in the original news post . The next episode of the SkinCast, we will be talking with Darren McPhee, the Sr. Marketing Manager in Gaming for AMD .  We will be discussing several topics with Darren including AMD/ATI products, graphics, gaming, and much more. We will also be taking user-sub...

We are now at Day 6 of the new "Icon-A-Day 2.0" tutorials from renowned artist Mormegil .  This time Mormegil has created an index so it's easy to keep up with the series, and so you can navigate to the tutorial you need. I also wanted to take a minute to give a brief overview of where Icon-A-Day is currently at. Day 1 - System Folders Day 2 - Basic File Types Day 3 - Closed Folder Day 4 - Open Folder Day 5 - Live Folder Day 6 - Looks like we need a new index...

If you are a fan of the Molten or Dragon WindowBlinds skins by Stardock Design, then this .dream will especially appeal to you.  This animated wallpaper is just fantastic, and the animations are well designed, and not too distracting, and highly detailed.  Created by ChaNinja, the Dragon Dream is a must-have download. If you have Vista and ever needed a reason to get Stardock's DeskScapes , then this .dream could probably convince you.  

So everyone, how was your weekend?  I took a trip to Sea World Orlando, and aside from playing a few games, I was downloading a bunch of skins off WinCustomize.  Lots of good stuff this weekend, so here are a few picks to start off your week.

For this weeks member spotlight I wanted to focus on a WinCustomize member who has been doing some amazing work.  That would be Master Apprentice TYCUS .  TYCUS has been a member since September 2004 and has been contributing to several galleries since.  Some of the skins that TYCUS has created that stands out most to me, is his work with CursorFX themes.  The detail and animations that go into these themes are truly spectacular and I'm always looking forward to mor...

Yes!  It's Friday!  Well you know how we end the weeks around here by now, yes it's time for This Week in Skinning.  This was a fabulous week on WinCustomize, especially in the wallpapers gallery where there was just too many wallpapers I wanted to feature.  So head over and check out this weeks edition of TWiS .

We are already at Day 3 of the new Icon-A-Day 2.0 series.  Today is special as this edition mormegil gets into the process of creating new icons with CorelDraw , and the chosen icon for today is the Closed folder.  I really love these tutorials as they give an in-depth look at how to create icons from scratch, which I know many people are always interested in learning. I can't wait to see how the others come out! Check out Day 3 of the tutorial series and let us...

At the end of every month our trusted moderators get together and give their featured picks of skins.  The WinCustomize moderators can go through literally hundreds of skins per month, so this is one of my favorite featured articles. Snowman has picked the 100: Tribute to BoXXi WB skin by Panndora. "Yet another remarkably well done skin by panndora (KittyMalone). A honorable tribute to one of the greatest artist I've had the pleasure of working alo...

July was a really great month for .dreams (animated wallpapers).  We had many submissions throughout the month from both our experienced creators, and some new faces.  Even though .dreams are a category in this years GUI Champs, I still hope to see some creations coming through the pipeline. The latest edition of This Month in Dreams is now up, so head over and check out the featured animated wallpapers in video form, with a list of links to the featured .dreams.  

The latest Master Skin added to the WinCustomize gallery is another amazing .dream (animated wallpaper) from TheMasterBaron .  Asteroids is a .dream that gives the sensation of sitting in the middle of an asteroid field.  Beautifully animated, the .dream isn't too distracting and I found myself just watching the asteroids going by on my desktop.  If you are a user of Windows Vista, you can use Stardock DeskScapes to run animated wallpapers regardless of what version of V...

Probably one of the most popular and useful tutorial series we have had on WinCustomize was the Icon-A-Day series from mormegil .  Started back in 2005, mormegil basically created an entire icon pack for IconPackager and gave a daily update and tutorial on how he created that specific icon.  It also showed the tools he used to create icons, which happened to be CorelDraw, and it gave many users tips they used to create their own icons.  You can find the original Icon-A-...

Every month in the WinCustomize forums we have a dedicated thread where users can post their screenshots for the world to see.  It's always a great way to see how people customize their desktops, and what combination of applications they use to achieve their look. Since August just started a few days ago, the new monthly desktop thread is open and already has 3 pages of desktop screenshots.  Head over there and post your desktop too!