You’d never tell from looking at it, but I had to do sort of a lot of work on that top image. I didn’t like the composition of it when I shrank it down and cropped it to fit the DS screen resolution, so I removed the yellow bear and redrew his arm onto the pink bear. Redrawing the missing background was comparatively easy, but still a little time consuming. Anyway, I am pretty happy with how it came out. Hopefully it’ll win this month’s contest over at NDSthemes.com, but I doubt it. Even if it was the sort of skin that the audience there tends to enjoy, which it’s really not, there is so much cronyism going on over there that there is no way any skin of mine will ever so much as get a perfect 5 rating (which they sort of hand out like candy to anyone who is somewhat competent) let alone win a contest. So why do I keep posting my work over there? Shrug. I guess so people will see it, even if they don’t like it.

Download carebearsice.zip (217 KB)

This skin took way too much effort to make, but I’m pleased with the outcome. The menu icons, aside from the images of Twink, are completely from scratch (and the shapes will likely get used again in the future), and even the images of Twink had to be almost completely redrawn before sizing them down. It’s hard to find pictures of the little guy that are of any decent quality that also have him in usable poses. Good thing the final images are so tiny or I wouldn’t have bothered.

Download rainbowbrite.zip (764 KB)

I kind of like the dreariness of this picture of Hello Kitty – it makes it a little less cutesy without going too far into emo territory. The nice smooth gradient background looked a lot better before I had to bust out the hardcore dithering, but it was the best I could do if I wanted it to look good while in use. I’m glad I know my way around Photoshop for controlled color reduction from my time spent making KiSS dolls because it would have been a disaster otherwise.

Download hkrain.zip (147 KB)

I recently fell in love with the Sugarbunnies from Sanrio. I saw them in Wal-Mart of all places and my sweetheart bought me a vanilla scented one that I sniff at my desk fairly frequently. Then he bought me a chocolate one that, unfortunately, spent too much time in the box with the rose scented one so now it sort of smell like soap. :( Anyway, long story short, I love Sugarbunnies because they’re cute and bake stuff and so I made this skin. Enjoy.

Download sugarbunnies.zip (195 KB)

I saw The Octonauts for the first time about 10 months ago and decided that I should get my niece into them since it’s weird for an adult to be into children’s books that they can’t blame on nostalgia. That way I could vicariously enjoy the cute little guys who like to go adventuring. Anyway, they’re so super cute that I needed them on my DS so here they are.

Download octonauts.zip (583 KB)

There was a contest going on at NDSthemes.com that piqued my interest. The challenge was to make a Nintendo DS theme that featured a monster so I chose Marceline, the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time because I’m totally in love with that show OMG. I had to cobble together several screencaps and production art to get the icons the way I wanted and it took way longer than it should have. Also, I have no chance of winning this contest, but it was satisfying.

Download marceline.zip (697 KB)

I totally love Adventure Time and also my CycloDS flashcart so I made this skin. I know I could have gotten more creative with the icons, but I wanted to feature the main characters without putting a giant picture of them together in the top screen so there you go.

Download advtime.zip (440 KB)