Good Morning!

For the last 3 months skinners from around the globe have been uploading their best icons, skins and animated wallpapers to compete for the top honors in the Windows skinning world and for a pool of prizes that includes high-end ATI graphics cards, software from Corel, TechSmith and Stardock.  Oh, and of course a Wacom Cintiq 12WX!  We also have some cash to hand out to our best teams, and some awesome medals for all of our winners!

Today is all about our winners.  In a moment I’ll go through the Best Overall medalists, then the top overall teams, and then our top three skinners from the 2008 GUI Championships!  Some time in the new year, I’ll be posting some analysis and wrap up information.

Without any further delay, the final winners from the 2008 GUI Championships!

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Best Overall Dreams

1st Place (5 Points) The Dream Machine by TheMasterBaron	2nd Place(3 Points) Planktonic by ChaNinja	3rd Place (2 Points) Gargoyle by ChaNinja

Honorable Mention: Brahmand - Gateway to the Infinite by flyersfan

Best Overall Icons

1st Place (5 Points) Plastic Fantastic by Tiggz	2nd Place(3 Points) Non-Mainstream 2008 by iconboy	3rd Place (2 Points) Evolution by xiaomaohua

Honorable Mention: Plain Truth by Willouye

Best Overall WindowBlinds Skins

1st Place (5 Points) Freearea by Dreamxis	2nd Place(3 Points) Plastic Fantastic by vStyler	3rd Place (2 Points) FLASH – Live System by 1MrPAul1

Honorable Mention: Dream Loricae by bingxueling

Top Teams

This is based on the total number of points earned by team members in all the judged/voted events.

1st Place (30 Points) – Team MaxStyles

2nd Place (18 Points)  - SkinDex

3rd Place (15 Points) - Iconfans

Top Overall Skinners of the 2008 GUI Championships!

Winners are determined first by total number of points earned in all judged/voted events.  In the event of a point tie, the rules state that the winner is determined by contest organizers (myself, Angie & Brad). 

1st Place (17 Points) – ChaNinja

2nd Place (13 Points)  - TheMasterBaron

3rd Place (13 Points) - Tiggz

In this case, the tie was broken by the diversity of entries.  TheMasterBaron had a total of 7 entries, many of which were finalists in the Dream events and showed a stronger overall effort in this year’s event.

Final Note:

Congratulations to all of our winners!  You’ve all shown what great things can be done in Windows skinning and that you’re true masters of your trade.  In recognition of this, on behalf of WinCustomize, I am promoting all winners of this year’s event to the rank of Master Skinner.  We want each and every one of you to become more integrated members of the skinning community, where we can see and appreciate your work all-year-round, not just every two years when a new GUIC rolls around.

I will contact each of you with details on this and formally invite you to become regular members of WinCustomize.

All prizes will be sorted out after January 5th, 2009.  Stardock’s offices close this afternoon for the Holidays and will not reopen until after the new year.  I will be emailing each contest winner with information on how to receive your prizes.  Remember, once you receive the email, you have 14 business days to respond.  Please do so.  In 2006 we had several winners who vanished after the competition and never responded to any attempts to contact them.  You don’t want to pass up on any of these prizes!

Again, congratulations to all of our winners.

To everyone in the community who helped make this year’s event a success, thank you!

I’ll be back in the new year with the contest wrap-up.

Happy Holidays!

-Mike