first of all look into the graphics design section in this forum here
http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin....=sf;f=7
then download an exisiting skin and try to understand it - it's pretty easy.
all graphics are in the media-folder and the xml-files for the positions and sizes of the graphics are in the "pal" or "ntsc"-folder. the xml-files are named after the corresponding screen like home.xml (home-screen), myprograms.xml (my programs)... the video and music-screen have 6 xmls for each view: mymusicsongs.xml / myvideo.xml (songs-view), mymusicalbums.xml / myvideoactors.xml (album-view) and so on. it's pretty selfdescribing.
the most important xml-file however is "references.xml" - in this file you find all controls (e.g. listcontrol, thumbcontrol, default buttons, labels,) which xbmc and a skinner can use. if you edit this controls (e.g another color, position), you will be able to customize a skin very fast.
most of the skins have compressed images in the graphics-folder, so for learning purposes you need one without this compressed xpr-file.
you have 2 possibilities:
- download the graphics of the default-xbmc-skin (project mayhem) from sourceforge.net
- or download a skin from
www.xbox-skins.net. one skin which has uncompressed graphics is
simplygreen, another should be
the-orbs
let's make some great skins!