Interview with T-K
You're two brothers, living in Sri Lanka, more known as T-K... Could you add a little bit more about yourselves?
Well, we are Anuja and Arjuna Navaratna. We're both 18 ... we are twins, a fact most people don't seem to realise :) . We started out as winamp skinners about 2 years ago, though we've spread out from that, we still mainly do winamp skins. Oh, we're in our final year of school.
Unlike many other designers creating their masterpieces alone, you work in pair. Why?
Simply b'cos two heads are better than one. Almost all our art is a collaboration of our individual styles. This way we almost always have fresh ideas. There's a lot of constructive criticism the way we work, which helps to make our art as close to how we both imagine it to be. Besides, we're brothers and we've always done things together, so it wouldn't make sense to do things separately :)
When have you started making skins?
About two or so years ago we got a copy of Photoshop 5.5 and we were just learning it when a friend of ours, thk-cable, showed us a Winamp skin he'd made. That inspired us to try our hand at it.
Do you have any ideas why Winamp 2.X (not Sonique, CoolPlayer, WMP or even Winamp 3) remains the most popular software audio player? There are lots of players with more features and even more powerful (Sonique, Winamp 3 and so on...) and flexible (CoolPlayer) skin formats...
A lot of ppl started out with WA2 and loved it from the start. Somehow it grows on you. We have all the players you mentioned, but we don't use them.
WA2 is home! We doubt any hardcore user/fan of WA2 could totally give it up for other players! As for the skinning, compared to most of the players you mentioned, WA2 skinning is mush more simpler. No real coding necessary so you don't need a coder and you don't need to know how to code.
After Winamp 3.0_final has been released are you planning to make WA3 skins? You know, its skin format is much more powerful and flexible...
WA3 is every winamp skinners dream! We actually have one in mind but it's still quite literally, in the mind! We want to complete a few more winamp 2 skins first. 'Cos a Winamp 3 skin would take some time to finish we thought we'd take it slow.
Do you use any other skinnable applications, excluding Winamp?
We got Coolplayer, Sonique and Winamp 3 on our PC. But we don't use
Coolplayer and Sonique much. Just Winamp. We've so far only attempted WA2
skinning.
What does the word "design" mean to you?
Design would mean our favourite pastime! It would probably be the only useful thing we do on our PC (besides the games and music :D). To us that's the meaning of the word :)
What do you think is more important in Winamp skin: design or usability?
We'd definitely put design as first priority and usability second. When you think too much about usability you limit the design of the skin.
Frankly, a button etc. in winamp 2.xx is in the same place. It's not
freeform, so no matter what the skin looks like, the play is between the previous and the pause and the shuffle is to the left of rewind.
Most of your skin look aggressive. Just take a look at these: The Crypt, Truespawn, AddictorAMP v1 Demon.Green, HeavyMetal and so on... Dark colors, rusty metal textures, tentacles... The overall style is almost always the same: metal machine. Do you like "techno" so much or it's because of a fashion to skins with industrial designs?
Well, we DO have a fancy to metal skins! We're more comfortable doing metal than doing other styles. But in our recent skins like Prizmic Degeneration and Kironex, we've done away with rust and big tentacles and gone for a shabby metal look. We're just doing what we want to do and what we feel comfortable with.
IMHO your truespawn is one of the best proofs of that. This skin looks great, but it's very hard to use, as all the text and digits have a lack of contrast.
We're working on this lack of contrast. The thing is our monitor's display kind of darkens up after using it a while. Probably through age. :D
We pick colours for the text and the backgrounds on our skins and they all seem to contrast well on our pc. But it's when we see it on another that we realise the difference. So we are now trying to stick to colours that will have a high contrast no matter what. Like in "Heavymetal", the colours contrasted very well (we think!). We're going to keep to that.
Who are your favorite Winamp 2.XX skinners? Could you name some?
There are SO many. We really like Monaux's and Dj-Design's work and since joining Deviantart, we've also come to admire highly, the work of Xcaponious, Vida, Jocpoc, Kriptoner, Intolerant3D, Jason, Zkreso, Mikkeh, 883-design and C-specter. We also like thk-cable. We and thk were all in the same class in school since 7th Grade and it was his work that helped us take our skinning to another level. We owe a lot to him!
What skin are you using now?
Right now we either use our new skin, "Prizmic Degeneration" or Mikkeh's "naquila" and "old school", or Vida's "EnergyAmp".
What do you think about so-called "generated" skins? Have you ever used any skingenerator for your own works? ;)
We guess, generated skins we're made by blokes who wanted to try there hand at skinning without trying TOO hard. Fine, but if you use a skingenerator... you're not skinning. What you're doing is giving a program a simple bitmap or two and the program does the skinning... not you.
And no, we do NOT use generators!
Which programs do you use for creating skins: graphical and text editors, button extractors or something else...
We use Adobe Photoshop 5.5, notepad and nothin' else :P
Is it possible to create nice looking skin entirely in MS Paint?
Yeah, we made one. It wasn't that nice though ;) But we've seen alot of skins made using MS Paint and we think they're pretty nice.
But, due to the lack of tools we wouldn't recommend using Paint. A proper graphics software would be the best thing.
What about music? What's your favorite artist/band?
Do you both listen to the same kind of music or have different tastes?
Music? We're into all sorts of music, but mostly listen to rock and industrial. We like Nirvana, Staind, Pink Floyd, Creed, Bon Jovi and Linkin Park a lot but no real favourite. Yes, we do have just about the same tastes in music.
Should we await new skins from you in the nearest future?
What could they look like?
Yes, yes! Await new skins! In fact we have 2 in the making at this very moment. We work very slowly on our skins cos we're tied up with other personal stuff. But this time we've decided to work on a skin each. Not that we haven't done this before. Many of our skins were actually started individually, but we never really mention which one of us started. This time we will.
What are they gonna look like? Well, it would spoil the fun if we told you!
;)
P.S.: If you still haven't seen any T-Ks' skins yet, go to http://t-k.deviantart.com and download them all: they're far from the average level!