Also, would you mind telling me if the dumb resource pack I'm making looks good?

You clearly have tons of experience in making things, so you probably have some pretty good taste in art :T

Thanks.

Sure why not!

I am trying to figure out a way to formulate this, and honestly I think it's best if I just ramble a bit about the question, so if the answer gets redundant, I apologize. Truthfully, let me preface this by saying something like "ideal art" won't ever come to be as you cannot expect everyone to agree on a matter of such great subjectivity.

Never the less, I do think there's a core to a skin that can make it ideal under given circumstances: That the definition is style specific, and that the skin has a concrete idea and concept that cannot be disputed. These two reasons eliminate some of the issues of ideality. A knight skin for example is such a broad terminology that you cannot put down an ideal version to this, even if we work style-specifically. Similarly, style-specificity is necessary as we must appreciate preferences to different ventures in colouring, shading, designing and the usage thereof. Let me also add that even with this in mind, the notion of what is ideal will change given time as ones skill level or the ability to perceive what makes a skin good/bad to oneself is refined.

I think it's important I explain what matters to me for a skin to be great:
To me the best skins need a clear-cut concept that expresses something of importance to the audience.
The colours and shading need to be applied in a way that advances the prior condition and does not contradict the message in any way.
The design must be immediately understandable without much aid (I think having a title should be plenty).
The skin must still be attractive in its portrayal of the message.

An ideal skin for me fullfills these requirements. I think an ideal needs a set of requirements for it to be reached and these satisfy my own needs for what is ideal. The problem with this, is that my ideals change rapidly, therefore I think the appropriate terminology would be that a skin can be transiently ideal. It can never promise to be immortalized as an ideal. I think that goes for any conidition in the world. You can make an ideal situation for yourself. Say you're at home, movie is on, with friends, family whatever need might be, that situation might transiently completely satisfy you, it's an ideal situation. The reason this is transient is that disturbance of this situation creates chaos that will require time to settle, even if it's small. Maybe the phone rings in the middle of your meditative session in front of the tv-screen. Maybe the popcorn at the bottom of the bowl are burnt, who knows? In that vein, an ideal skin is just a still image, just like anything else. A paradigm waiting to fall and be replaced, and that's okay. To me the ideal skin doesn't need to stay ideal, it needs to be ideal for the moment I make it so I will have the satisfaction of feeling the accomplishment it provided.

So to answer your question, no I don't think there's true perfect; for something to be truly perfect it cannot only be transiently expressed. Perfection can be achieved in a still-image of oneself. You can make a situation, if just for a split second, where everything feels perfect, and that's how I feel about skins too. I can post a skin now that I find ideal and in a year see a flaw I couldn't before. That doesn't change how I initially felt about it, just that it isn't perfect anymore.

I hope this rambling makes sense.

I cannot find the actual logs of it, but I am pretty confident it's bloodtype (in AB0, rhesus) AB+. I am not currently an organ donor.

My favourite skin of yours is:

Error: Title required. by diving boardz

Which surprised me a bit, since I am familiar with your works both from PBL and a bit before PBL, and those were so good I thought it had to be one of those. Can I just say, you had a brilliant apearance in PBL and it was a shame you had to go out early on. The reason I pick the skin I did, is because it feels polished. It has that sweet but evil vibe to it, in no way less exacerbated by the horns and the colouring being both pink and desaturated. This skin is expressive, and it stands out to me as a brilliant piece. The fact that it's a work in progress over multiple iterations makes me really happy and reminds me of some of the challenges I've faced with skins in multiple iterations. Great work!

I use the software version of the PMC version, called MCSkin3D. Can be found on Paril's page. PMCSkin3D is actually a bit more advanced than MCSkin3D, but I like the fact that MCSkin3D is a software that I don't need the website to use and has directly integrated storage options.

I use Paint.NET for copy+paste jobs, filtering, and HD skinmaking in combination with a previewer/modelling software called BlockBench. If I have to edit a palette or manually edit the colours of a skin I use Aseprite!

When I read the question, the skin that came to mind immediately was your old Bob Ross skin, but honestly, looking at it now, while still spectacular, it aged worse than I thought it did.

SO! I had to do some considering and I arrived at:

Boba Fett (Correlation Contest) by duckiez

You made this palette look better than the palette probably gave rights to. That's really impressive. Stunning lightning work. Stunning everything.

I think your contest second place (congrats on that!) has some awesome colours and shading, you're definitely trending in a really favourable direction!

Good question! I am genuinely not sure, my travelling aspirations are so dulled down by the coronavirus lockdowns.

Lifetime:
Make a massive discovery of my own in molecular biomedicine.

Achieve a happy family-life

Be able to tell stories of my life and whatever transpired at the end of my lifetime. My grandpa did this and it was truly the most inspired thing I can imagine. I loved him doing that and I want to be able to do the same.


Holiday:
Climbing the K2:
I don't, and won't ever have the commitment or skill to do this, but since we're in a hypothetical world I'd want to do this. This mountain is an aesthetic gem of nature and I would love to see it and of course climb it if I could. It's an aesthetic marvel and I don't think other mountains compare to the combination of height, legacy and general aesthetics.

Visiting the central region of Shanghai, Lujiazui:
I've always been fascinated by the construction of tall, yet elegant structures, and I don't feel any place compares to the marvel that is the financial centre of Lujizui. Not only does the centre contain a multitude of skyscrapers that are all designed with different, all fascinating ideals in mind, the location at the Yangtze makes this area picture-esque entirely. The opposite of the K2 in the sense that this is an Urban fascination, whereas the K2 is the marvels of nature.

Going to the galapagos in a sterile and populous free journey:
Cliché answer, perhaps a bit unlike the other two, but this place is stunning and moreso, historically intriguing. Since the discoveries made here are vastly important for my field of interest visiting would provide such insights. Problematically, the masses of people storming here is ruining the isolated environment that sets this island group apart. I wouldn't want to visit with others than my partner and I would want a sterile approach to entering, and leaving, the island group, to disturb the group the least I can while there.

Thank you!

Many of my skins have been influenced by music, but honestly apart from that, nothing really comes to mind. I think the approach to science and litterary analysis/interpretation is something I've utilized to gain a different appreciation for how I could and/or should do things. It's one of those things where something I am incredibly passionate about gets to interplay with my free-time artistic venture, it's pretty slick!

gosh darn that Fishkiss

I'll go through them one by one, hopefully explaining shortly how each felt.

1st: Leviathan summoner: First win I got, felt great and is my fondest memory on PMC as a whole, I remember waking up excitedly and checking pmc each morning until finally, I woke up and saw a surprising amount of comments in my inbox. In finding out I won I literally jumped out of bed and told my parents, I must've been cute back then lol.

2nd: Suit of endless storms: I honestly cannot remember how I felt, which indicates to me I hadn't put much heart into the contest at all. I was happy but not really excited the same as the first time.

3rd: Dreamless Wanderer: As time would later tell, this was a concept I am very passionate about and therefore winning with it was a huge spark of joy. Particularly because I didn't expect to win at all, rather I expected the 4th place skin by snowy to win the entire contest. Therefore, winning felt exciting but also confusing this time around. I can confirm I was ecstatic however.

4th: Blossoming eye: I think some people will argue this is my best contest entry ever, and while I don't think I agree, I felt very very certain it was the best skin in the contest. I hadn't really ever made a skin I was this confident in for a contest before, or honestly since. Therefore winning this contest sparked a sense of relief, since I felt it was almost set up for disappointment. This skin was really quite incredible.

5th: Dead comrades: The second pirate contest I won. Honestly, I didn't feel much for this because it was massively overshadowed by my utter annoyance at how I handled my entry. I had made the head early on, which turned out really well and then had this awesome idea for the body that never panned out despite days of attempts, only for me to scrap it at the last day without much time left before the deadline. The body turned out fine, but it's just so generic in comparison to my original idea, which involved the skull preciding over a coat that opened up to reveal a sinking ship. Unfortunately, this really overshadowed everything else for me, because I really feel that idea was brilliant.

6th: Skies of tomorrow: I think this is the best contest skin I've made; it's expressive, it's a nice idea and it has such a firm level of detailing. Honestly, winning with it felt great. This contest had 2 other frankly fantastic entries by Nah and Spectral so winning never felt like a guarantee or something I could expect, which enriched the experience entirely. I was very happy about the entry and the win.

7th: Obelisk for the palette challenge: This win felt amazing, and the reason goes back to the process of making the skin and who I got to beat. In the cyberpunk reloaded contest, allergy had beat me, which was a completely fair result. But it really made me want to beat him in a contest. If you know allergy, he loves palette contests, and moreso than now I did so too back then. Sure enough, come the palette contest, we get this rather basic blue palette and allergy just seemingly nails a skin rather quickly. I wasn't having it, so I spent ages trying to make Obelisk the Tormentor from Yu-Gi-Oh, which fits really well with the palette. I came up short on it and transformed it into a dragonoid. A brilliant decision in hindsight because the elements worked so well in that context. I just barely managed to scrape the win to me from Allergy for one of the most joyous wins I've had! Thanks to Allergy for setting this contest up and making the process getting to the skin so difficult. It was awesome competition.

8th: Key of timepieces: Similar to before, I had an ambitious idea which I failed at. The skin is still good but overall I cannot say I really came to terms with the fact it wasn't what I set out to make. I was happy with the win, but it felt a bit meh.

9th: Villain: Frankly, this contest sucked. I hated my skin for it, I don't think I deserved to win, and if I did I would've been let known I didn't deserve to win by a lot of people. Fair enough really. This win honestly felt terrible. I like the idea of the skin, I like the message it tries to set out and honestly, everything else feels like utter failure. Getting told by others I didn't deserve the win also sucked, but it was entirely fair and I won't argue with anyone that this skin wasn't up to par. It just wasn't. I think the following contest I placed poorly with a skin that deserved to place poorly, which ultimate taught me a lesson. From there on out I only entered contests if I had a clear idea and great execution to boot. This contest was important to me as a learning experience, but winning it didn't feel good.

10th: Fan skin: After the 9th win and the subsequent failure, I took a break from skinning as a whole. I had decided already that I really wanted to win at least 10 contests to break the double digit contest barrier and to double the tally knoble ever achieved, but I could tell that my commitment to making good skins had suffered as a consequence. I entered this contest with a clear idea, with techniques I wanted to try and I finally got those ideas from the realm of thought onto my canvas. This win had me ecstatic, frankly, finally reaching 10 but also finally getting back to the form I had lost with the 9th win.

11th: 3rd Pirate contest: After my 10th contest win I feel like I got utterly cheated out of a win in the fossils contest, and you cannot convince me I shouldn't have won that to this day. Then I lost a contest to canday on thematic relevance which didn't make any sense (canday's skin was sublime, she deserved the win, but the way I lost felt terrible). So entering this contest, I knew I had to do something special. I paid homage to my first ever contest win, developed a ton of new techniques and elements and spent so much time adjusting the colours and the integrity of the design. This win felt really great and I am super proud of this skin.

My favourite skin of yours is:

The Guardian (SSPBL S4R1) by Punkamoar

I really don't like picking PBL skins for these, because I want to point out something nice about all aspects of the skin, but pointing out the colours on a palette I played a part in making seems really dumb and egotistical. Luckily, the colours are not what makes this skin great. In fact, I feel confident you could've made a better version of this skin had you been allowed to make the colours yourself. What makes this brilliant, is your selection of colours and your idea. The poo face is brilliant. There are a lot of versions of poo on pmc, and this deserves a shout as one of the well-designed and well-made ones. The shallow roundening with the shadows, the oblivious expression. The puffy cheeks being present but not overdone. It all falls together so well. Looking at your old skins, one of the skins I'd love to see a new approach to would be:

[32nd] Elite Luchador by Punkamoar

Ultimately, this skin is held back by how busy the shading is on the muscle groups. I think your new approach where the shading is simpler and you get to focus more on design elements and colours could benefit this skin greatly.

Thank you!

The procedure for achieving a unique set of skins for me has been to seek out concepts rather than concrete ideas. A skin like my colourbook skin illustrates this well!


Colourbook by DragonsDungeon

Here the idea is more to make a conceptually interesting colour gradient into a skin and not so much focus on what that skin actually is. In this case I just chose a basic kimono design. Other times, such as Fleshbound, the design itself is the concept. For me, it's all about expressing what your idea and concept is very clearly and to focus less on other aspects of the skin.

For shading and colouring, my tip will always be to change it up every so slightly, or sometimes vastly, to just get a slightly different taste for what you can do with your skins. If your shading only fits to a certain mold, a good example could be the hair shading that's become everpresent, then you will never be able to express new contrasting concepts. I don't think you particularly fall under this category, since you have clearly shown to be able to do more than that!

The danger is getting stuck in one mindset always being the best, you need perspective sometimes. If you make a human skin, you can take some of that and apply it to say, a knight skin, and increase the quality of the knight skin to then use the new knowledge back onto the human skin. In the world of litterature, this process of analysis , interpretation and appliance is called hermeneutics, a highly useful way of thinking outside humanistic sciences!

Finding a concept itself has never been difficult for me, so I am really sorry that I cannot answer it well. In general, just find something small, something interesting and from that one element you love, build your skin. That's how colourbook came to be. The idea of colouring something in a children's book leaves some of the drawing void of colour, while the rest will be incredibly colourful.

I hope this helps!

I think to answer this question, we should first examine why we shade hair the way we do, and then see if we can apply the same logic to traditionally black hairstyles.

In my opinion the basic of hair shading comes through the idea that we can oversimplify the motion of strands. Such as is illustrated in the picture


We should essentially apply the same principle to different hair styles. I will try to explain the general idea might be, and then see if I can find an example that does it really well.

The afro:
For the afro the important characteristics we need to convey are volume and fuzziness. The volume can be achieved by using the hat layer to make a more circular head. This helps achieve both the roundedness we want and also the volume. Of course a limitation becomes clear here, no matter how big the hair that we want to make it, we will use roughly the same hairsize on the skin.

The fuzziness is achieved through a method called dithering. Dithering is essentially where we place single dots of highlights and shadows in grid or diffuse patterns. The reason this is great in this context is that we get to achieve the curly texture that the hair has while also aiding the structure of the hairstyle. There are many great examples of this, I think I've tried some myself for other skins, but I want to highlight one I think shows this texture really well.


Muhammad Ali by LilFella

I encourage you to also look at the 3d previewer for the skin to see the details on the top of the head, where the use of highlights really increase the height of the hair.

The general texture you might look to achieve in the hair even if shorter, will likely be the same as the one above, just where the hair colour approximates to the skin tone. A good example of this could be EvilEvil's X skin:

X by Low Activity

Stuff like dreadlocks or similar, the general rule imo is that you need to have very clearly defined strands and not one continuous flow like you'd see on regular teen skin hair styling. If you make defined singular strands or locks, you get a very clear hair structure that ultimately indicates this very hairstyle.

If I didn't cover the one you wanted, let me know! I'll try to figure something out!

Cheers!

I don't think you will ever realize a final form of skinning, there's simply so many fascets to explore and to properly attain the ideal expression of a multitude of ideas you will need to accommodate by changing your stylistic choices. Currently my style is moving in a more colourful direction, where expression is highly dependent on multiple colour combinations with an everchanging hue and RGB proportionality. When this has gone on for a while, I tend to go back to moody lower saturation skins, which is probably where I guess I will eventually head for!

To me expression of the skins you make is the most important aspect of making a great skin. In ensuring your skin has a concise message or feeling you get the most intriguing characters and concepts. Therefore, I retain my style should always be dynamic and transiently different than all my other work to really capture the right ideas.

For that reason I'd like to highlight this skin of yours:

[​REQUEST] PresidentCheeto by Cupricgon

The reason I highlight this is that all your stylistic choices point towards the same expression. The face is incredibly expressive and the abundance of orange with the black contrast plays off the menacing expression you attained on the skin. I want to highlight I do not think this is your best executed skin, that title goes to your protogen skin (whichever one, I think the blue is probably more in line with the design).


Protogen by Cupricgon

I think the large advantage with your Protogen skin is that the colours play into the same idea, we're working with a cold skin and it shows. Where this doesn't hold up to part with the other one is its expression. The other one has that incredibly expressive face, which really sets it apart, even if Protogen is the better and overall more interesting skin everywhere else.

I think the main place for you to improve is colours and particularly how to keep a design clear. If you look at both protogen and the request skin I highlighted, there are elements where the design begins to blend into itself. A rather obvious instance of this is the golden sword on the back of the former skin. Here what you could do to ameliorate (and possibly be rid of) the blending is to have heavy shadows in the area around the golden sword. On protogen, this is prominent on the front torso, albeit I do not think it's an issue here. But I am impressed with your skill level, and surprised I have not seen even Protogen before. Good luck!

I could probably beat a blue whale, on land it's just useless and will eventually explode by itself when gas builds up inside of it. Since the blue whale is the biggest animal, I think it's suffice to say it's the biggest I think I could beat. Run on sentences are bad.

Arguably

Thank you!

Music recommendations is a bit difficult for me, since I honestly listen to a lot of pop music which is often frowned upon in answers like this I find. This obviously isn't apparent from my pmc profile where my main musical inspirations are lyricless tunes.

I'll start by mentioning an artist by the name of a_hisa who makes some of the most stunning artcore pieces. Each have their own flair and I think that really makes their catalogue attractive as a listen-through. A wonderful aspect of a_hisa is that I don't really want to highlight any one song (although if you need to listen to one song only I'd listen to "anhedonia"), rather I encourage you to listen to a few different ones since they're varied but all very tasteful.

I'd really like to throw a shout-out to the less popular song Landgridding by Camellia. It's a song I've been waiting to make a skin for till I get a full picture of what I want to do. Moreover, I want to highlight lapix and zekk as great artists to delve into. lapix ~ Foolish (Hero PLight Remix) - YouTube is a wonderful song that I highly recommend.

If it isn't apparent I really enjoy string and string-like synth sections in music and therefore I'll make a suggestion that might sound weird. Clean Bandit is quite a popular band now, but except for "rather be", which of course is a brilliant song, their first EP "New Eyes" is often a bit forgotten and I think you'll find a lot of the lesser known tracks of theirs from this EP has a lot to offer, particularly in comparison to their watered down pop-style they do today, which frankly is just not as interesting.

A song that's popular in my home country but not elsewhere "Saveus - Ready to die" I think is also a brilliant composition.

Currently, I really like the song "Black Magic" by Little Mix to energize me. It's highly energetic and well, a rather sterile song, which just puts you in a good mood. Similarly, recently I've listened to Ericka Jane's "Strangers in the night" for the same reason.

Finally, for vocaloid, let me highlight Orangestar as my favourite of all time. His songs are absolutely gorgeus and if you want to listen to them just for the sonical design, I still recommend it. His best song in my opinion is "Henceforth".

I honestly cannot recall which skins others have made that have been music-inspired so please clarify if it's of my own skins or if it's from others!

You're a brute for this question!