Skinmasters #3 SE - Javier Ocasio

Welcome to Skinmasters! A series of interviews with top graphic designers and skinners on deviantART.

The special interview features a well-known deviant of all time. Every single person that uses a PC have seen at least one of his works and enjoyed the quality and detail on them. He is a real legend, and his continous efforts to amaze the community awarded him with a Seniorship status some time ago. He runs a great website and offers a wide range of options for potential clients.

:icon-kol:
It's a pleasure to me to feature Javier Ocasio, known as :dev-kol:





Hello Javier, for those that haven't heared about you... could you give us a brief biography?

¡Hola! Well my name, Javier Ocasio, most of my friends call me Franco, some call me Javier and on the web people know me as KoL. I'm 25 years old and I'm from Bayamón, Puerto Rico. I finished my B.S. in Computer Science but I work as a freelance graphic designer for companies like The Skins Factory. I've been working with graphics design since 1999 and for the past years graphics, application user interfaces and skinning are my hobbies and job. My first language is Spanish so if you see some mistakes here now you know why.



Cool, let's talk about your wallpapers and skins. When did you start to make them?

I started skinning when Microsoft released Windows XP. I liked the new interface that Microsoft made for XP but like a lot of people I wanted to change the green start button. I found Neowin.net and a lot of people there wanted to do the same thing and everyone started looking for ways to change it. Then after a while some people started to make some cool themes like Rhodium Edge, Static, XP Classic. My first theme was a mod of Brw2KX’s XP Classic. I asked for permission to mod it and I released on Neowin. A lot of people liked it and that motivated me to make more themes.

After a while and with a lot of influence of some artist here at deviantART I started to make some wallpapers. Strange World was not my first wallpaper but it was the one that defined “my wallpaper style”.



What graphic tools do you use? Any recommendations?

My main graphic tool is Photoshop. I create my skins, wallpapers, icons etc. in Photoshop but that is not the only one I use. For Msstyles I use Stylebuilder, Reshack, Resbuilder and Notepad (to edit the XML of the Msstyle). For Windowblins I use Skinstudio. For icons I use Axialis IconWorkshop.







Where did your inspiration came from?

Well inspiration comes from a lot of places. Mine comes from others people work, watching TV, a movie, playing a video game, situations in my life, etc. It comes from different places.



Has deviatART been an influence to you? How big was that influence?

Yep a big influence, a lot of talented people here that inspires me to learn more to be able create better designs.







What are your favourite designers on deviantART. Could you name a few?

Some of my favorites here on devianART are dangeruss , rpeterclark , skinsfactory, mattahan , ssilence , tigaer , gilad


Your Studio name, StudioTwentyEight. Where did the name came from?

When I started skinning and after I released some of my skins I decided to make a website and put all my themes there. I had no idea what was going to be the name of the site but I knew I wanted to name it Studio something. I just decided to use my favorite number, 28.







What kind of services you offer? I’m sure there is a lot of potential clients reading this interview

My thing is Application User Interfaces. I love to create skins for application, gave them a nice, clean, easy to use design. I can do icon design, photomanipulations, web designs, banners, logos etc.


You are a legend and an inspiration to many artists on the community. Could you give us some suggestions or advices for those that are starting to create their own skins or wallpapers?

Practice, a lot of practice and patience. Look at other people work, learn from them, try to create what they have done but of course don’t rip them or release something without permission. Try to learn how they make their work. If it’s a skin, first try to learn well your tools and how the program works. Also patience, a lot of it. Skinning programs takes a lot of time to learn and sometimes can be frustrating.







Any final words to add?

Thanks for inviting me to participate in the interview and thanks to all the deviants that download, comments and fav my work. Gracias, I really appreciate it.

Thanks to you Javier. It was a pleasure.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed making it!

Cheers,
Mauricio aka mauricioestrella


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