504 replies to this topic

[Timthing]

UPDATE (VIA PREEN) - 10/09/2011

Fixed:
- Recently Aired View (both list and big list) improved. It now includes more information e.g. tv show titel in every list item


Newsflash! Woody did release after all!

As a lot of people already know (and this isn't a newsflash for them), Woody is being developed at the moment. The "power coder" Saintjuste took on a challenge beyond my imagination and started developing Woody from the original mock ups shown below. Being inspired by other skins for Plex these mock ups started as an experiment but now it's a skin being developed from scratch and really starting to get shape. This gives us the opportunity to really dive into the skin and make it both usable and beautiful as possible.

We are proud to have Woody available as a download through Preen so make sure to grab a copy. (thanks to vicariousMe)

Since Woody is far from finished we will continue to develop and design everything with great care and are open to all suggestions as already many people contributed and we are grateful for that! So be sure to drop a line when you feel like it .

So many thanks for all the support and kind words so far and keep an eye out for updates.


Saintjuste and Timthing.


The original post:
Hi there,

After using Plex for a while and switching some skins on and off I always tend to fall back on the basic Mediatream skin. It just works very well. Though other skins are very inspiring, like Alaska and Aeon, there's always something not to like about "the other" skins. I guess it will always be a personal thingie, but one day I got the idea to see if I could come up with some screens of what I would like to see in a Plex skin. So I started pushing Photoshop and a couple of evenings later these images rolled out.

The basic idea is to make it more "tangible" and give the viewer a warm feeling but stil preserve that classy touch the other skins have. Cozy, on the couch, in front of your tv, a bowl of popcorn and a good movie. That's what I like to experience when I'm about to watch one. But of course Plex is more than about watching movies. I also listen to music a lot using Plex and there's even more. Maybe in the future I'll work on those screens as well. But for now, these will do to experiment with and get some experience designing for a media center.

I don't have any skills to implement this design into Plex, so do not expect me to do so. But I do like to receive some feedback if you have something to say about it. It could help me if I decide to continue to work on these and possible future screens. And please chuckle, but do not laugh out loud, bear with me for these are only concepts and I'm still learning .

Thanks to the Plex team for creating such a great media center and thanks to all skinning people for the inspiration!

The screens:

[pooploser]

looks actually quite nice although i must admit everytime i see the film avatar used in a skin mockup my whole body shrugs (why oh why always that abomination of "cinema"?)
anyways yea i think this could end up quite a nice piece of work.
i am curious to see more (a few more viewtypes, series?), especially sort-of a multiplex-like (aeon) viewtype.
you are right with skins being personal, and i myself want a skin, whichever one it is, not to have fanart backgrounds in the home/main menu, but only when browsing films/series.
keep up the nice photoshop work, and best of luck with it!

[Timthing]

@pooploser Haha, Avatar was just "a" movie that came to mind. I'll try to avoid it in the future . I totally agree on not having fanart on the main menu, just on item views. But you have to give people the choice on that I think, not on every thing though. Hence the two versions.

Thanks for the thumbs up!

[pooploser]

of course, the more flexible a skin is, the better.
it might be more work for the writer to implement all the options, but it would be definitely worth it.
what i really like about alaska is the way you can modify it easily. so hopefully, with some writer skills, the same could be with your skin, too!

[tassitassi]

what's the name of the bold main menu font? love it.

[smoldersonline]

Nice work, very nice! Your choice of font (size) and colors (tone) are excellent. I might even be able to read (part of?) the content from my couch.. Only problem is that these are only screens. Any skinners out there?

[Timthing]

what's the name of the bold main menu font? love it.

That would be "Aller Display".

Nice work, very nice! Your choice of font (size) and colors (tone) are excellent. I might even be able to read (part of?) the content from my couch.. Only problem is that these are only screens. Any skinners out there?

Thanks a lot! To be honest, I have to see what the screens will do on my 42" plasma, but on my 24" lcd everything looks readable. This is just a concept so not much testing going on yet .

[Timthing]

So here's a movie list mockup.
Great fun! Challenging though .

[se.bastian]

As you've understood, it's all just opinions, so don't take my post for anything else. And in the end only your own matters, otherwise you'll never do anything if you only listen to those of others.

Graphics-wise, i like the contrast, and the only thing that i don't really see the in the context is the wooden background. Grit and texture is good, and here it's exactly the contrast that makes it nice, but maybe something less identifiable, just strikes me as curious in the whole.

Structure-wise, given how lazy we humans are, it's always nice to try and cram as much of information in any given screen as possible, taking into account of course the level of clutter one is ready to accept. This said, in list type views it's common to try and get at least a plot in there, and possibly even a few flags if the design allows it. This takes away the extra step of needing to press a button for complementary info. I like the clean look of the movie list, but in use it might profit from some more info in there.

Other than that, it's just a question of taste. Your work on graphics is clean, and that's a plus, now all you need is to get inside a skin and learn how to get it all in there.

If everything else i can say has no value beyond a question of personal taste, i'd like to recommend that you get in there yourself if you wish to go further. The mockups are nice and good, but they refrain from anything tangible. I knew nothing about skinning two months ago, and even though i'm still light-years from being an expert, you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Don't wait for someone else to pick up your design (i don't even know if that sort of thing happens here), and don't spend too long time on mockups. Take one of the skins that is close to what you want in structure (i'd guess Alaska would be your starting point here), and chop into it code-wise; modify things, see what happens, and then modify some more. Try to get it to reflect how you'd wish it would work. After a few days you'll start to understand how it works. And once you do, you get in the graphics, and from there it's a go.

It'll take time, sure. It's not going to be easy, sure. There's no documentation, sure. But you will learn it, and you'll get to do it how you saw it. And you can always ask if you get really stuck, and someone will help you. It's really not that bad. Just like learning anything else.

Really, there can never be too many skins out there, and anybody that has ideas and motivation should give it a try. Otherwise those ideas will never get done, of this i'm sure. I repeat; do not wait wishing for someone else to do it, i've yet to see it happen.

You can do it.

[Martin]

I like it. It looks great, very stylish!

I would use it

[Timthing]

Thanks Martin! I appreciate the kind words .

[juzzo]

I love it // Please Dev´s or Skinners make possible to use this wonderful skin!

[Timthing]

I love it // Please Dev´s or Skinners make possible to use this wonderful skin!

Juzzo,

I can't promise anything but I'm actually trying myself to dev this thing into Plex. I'm doing the best I can, it's a long road but I'm getting superb help from my buddy se.bastian.
If it'll ever make it into Plex and be usable, I can't tell, but there will be some changes of course since this is merely a concept.

Thanks for the heads up man!

[killercup]

I would totally love to see this as a skin! It's a quite nice idea to split almost every view in to areas where one has this texture background. Then add a nice selection of textures to choose from and it's perfect!

[Metropolis]

This is one of the most beautiful mockups i've seen yet. I would use this forever. I love the simplicity of your list view, in my opinion the basic list view should be as clean as possible, that is what the extended Movie Info page is for. I would never put Genres under the name like that simply because Plex relies on the stupid internet to get info right and it never is. You end up with a movie that someone has classified into 15 different Genres and now your beautiful interface that you've worked so hard on is destroyed. If you could code it to only display up to 2 Genres and ignore the rest then it would be fine but again, Genre is what the Movie Info page is for.

I actually really like the wood backdrop, putting some other kinds in there for user preference would be nice but I personally would stick with the wood. I hope this mockup gets some more momentum and really becomes a skin. Truly inspirational.

[juzzo]

Hey Timthing,

what´s the state of affairs? Do you got news for us? I think we all want to install this perfect skin!

juzzo

[Saintjuste]

really love the wood texture, does anybody have the link for that?

[plex_from_down_under]

It'd be a pitty to just leave this as a mockup and never release it. It's looking perfect!

[Timthing]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all the kind words! I honestly didn't think I would get this much response on these mock-ups. Amazingly all feedback was very positive and it encouraged me to take a big leap into developing a skin for Plex. Specially se.bastian encouraged me to take on the challenge and helped me a long way with examples and mostly some Zen wisdom . Thanks for that sebas!

Unfortunately though I have to announce a halt on the development of the skin. Due to personal developments I do not have the time to create a workable version for you guys. Also my skill level is not yet high enough to get it done in the short amount of time available.

Maybe one day, some time around the summer I will pick it up again when things have passed and I can focus on the skin again. Till then, thanks for the support so far and feel free to still comment or get in touch.

[Saintjuste]

I loved this concept so much that I decided this couldn't be left just a mockup. So since I have some time off this month I decided to try to make this into an actual skin, BUT I'm new to skinng, this is my first try, so don't expect too much. I hope Timthing, you are OK with it since you are the designer of that skin. This is the yet unfinished movie list view (this is an acutal plex screenshot, no photoshop mockup):




As I said I am new to this, so at first it took me a lot of effort and time to do the most simple things, but as I progress it is getting easier and faster. If you want I can keep you updated on my progress. I also appreciate ideas on the design of the other sections not done by Timthing yet. maybe even he will find some time to share some additional thought/ideas.