Best overall icons of 2004 so far finalists...

This year there were so many good icon packages made.  How can one pick between all these outstanding icons packages? The hard work and dedication each designer put into these is evident.  Of the dozens of icon packages submitted, we have narrowed it down to just these few for the "best overall" icon package.  There were a lot of variables that went into it.  Uniqueness, detail, quantity, OS support, etc.   But most of all, the icons had to have universal appeal. This is hard to quantify but icons that most users would tend to think are "neat" and want to try out. All those factors combined, at different ratios, are what the judges have been looking at.

Seed icons by Rokey. Very well done. Multiple resolutions, XP only, around 60 icons. Very very good use of a consistent and unique style.

Cardinal Blue icons . 138 icons. Works on every version of Windows. Many resolutions. Outstanding attention to detail. Support for many many skin formats. Good icon design but color usage is not optimal. Might have been better off creating a single icon package that had more colors in it rather than gray and the dominant one.

The Last Order icons by Rokey. 66 icons, XP only. Icons are fantastically good with a rendered look to them.  These are the type of icons one can imagine coming with some future super fantastic operating system.

TreeTog's PirateOS icons. 103 icons, all versions of Windows supported. Multiple resolutions. Very good use of color, very friendly style.

Mindless Puppet's Dementaecon.  ~100 icons, Not only do they support multple OSes but different resolutions have different icons for clarity. Most creative icon package by far.

Milo's D3A icons. 71 icons,  XP only. Like The Last Order have that rendered feel to them which makes them also feel like they're part of some futuristic operating system. Fantastic use of color. One other thing, 16x16 icons are redesigned which means that they don't become little smudges

This is vf's Megaton icons. 144 icons, very nicely done. XP-only. Very dark icons with red as the only color limit their universalness.

DanilloOC's Flooter icons. 129 icons, multiple resolutions. Very sparing use of color may limit universal appeal but image quality is immensely good.

vf's Al.loy Bezel. 127 icons. Multiple resolutions. XP only. Very detailed. 16x16 (detailed view) icons are a bit smudged (i.e. file types icons have labels as part of the icons but at 16x16 are no longer readable). Monochrome design may limit universality. But sparing use of color adds class as well.

Vladimir's Smile icon package. Roughly 100 unique icons in it. Outstanding design. Somewhat similar to the Toon-XP icons. Very well done, very friendly design.

Thunderstorm. 96 icons. Supports all versions of Windows. What particularly stands out on this is the quality of the actual elements (like the folders and such). Very  clear. Only downsides would be that it's monochrome which may limits its appeal and the icons are scaled to 16x16 (no switch over to pixel created 16x16 which means details view may look a bit smudgy when looking at file types).

There are others that we also found were very very good. We regret we didn't have more categories. We really liked DigitalChet's Novacons. We also liked Z71's Layout_IP but recognized that the color options on it may limit its appeal. Farid's HFN Sapphire was also really nice.