Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map! 

Sorry for the delay since last post. In case you don't remember it, at the very end, I posted a little "screen-selfie" with Fire-Cat. In case you didn't notice, my skin looked a bit different from the one on the sidebars of my blog.  (I need to change that photo again, so it probably just looks normal if you're reading this a while after the time I'm posting this.) Indeed, last month, I updated my skin! Instead of doing a brief post talking about the latest version of my skin, I thought, "Why not do a post on all of them?" So, I thought to myself, "That's a good idea." (Hooray for monologue!)

So, that's what we're doing today. Luckily, I have photos of every version of my skin. I'll be doing a little personal overview of each version, starting with the first version I made.

This photo is a pretty accurate representation of what I was as a Minecrafter at the time. (I think the resolution is different than normal in this photo. I used to play on my family's desktop. That'd explain it.)

So, I decided I was fed up with being a Steve, and decided to create my first skin. This first version was done in an online editor known as SkinCraft. As you can tell, my skin was a basic Steve skin re-trace in my favorite colors (yes, I mistook the old goatee for a smile, a star badge (These days, I imagine it to be sewn onto my shirt. Don't ask me why I shade it as if it's metal.) and a basic spike-y hairdo that I liked.

At the time, it seemed like a decent idea to shade my skin with random, slightly-darker shapes all over myself, and give my hair a shining effect that's a totally different color than my hair. I can be mistaken, but I think that the default "Steve" skin may have had the Tetris-piece shading, too. Only, I was totally clueless about doing graphic arts, and in retrospective, my skin would've been best off without that kind of attempt...

Mind you, the actual Steve Skin is kind of bad itself. Back when Notch was the only developer of the game, Minecraft's textures had a different art style. You'll notice the really old blocks have a slightly different look. However, I think a lot of these blocks have since had texture changes.

It's worth noting that I created a variant of my old skin, featuring a Santa hat. I don't think  I have a screenshot of it, so I'm going to play dress-up with my old skin. :D



After Christmas, I started to get sick of my skin. Some time in January of 2013, my skin got a re-texture for the first time. By no means was I good at it, but I shaded my skin with Paint.NET (not a website), since I had been using it for texturing FreshCraft, my old texture pack, which still isn't done. My current focus is on Cloud 16.


Anyways, my shading at the time tended to be subtle, but it's there, and definitely an improvement over what I had before. I wouldn't exactly say the same about my hair, to be honest. I tried to tinker with it, but it turns out that drawing decent-looking spike-y hair is notoriously hard, and something I only accomplished recently. I still dislike my old face. XD

Notice that I kept some of the old Tetris-shape blotches on my arm. I was so used to seeing them on my Heads-Up-Display, so I kept the bottommost pixels on. They're still on my skin to this day.

At one point, I ended up changing my hairdo to not have that annoying central spike. This ended up making it into my second Christmas version, which came dressed with an improved Santa hat, (Now including more invisible white pixels that I couldn't fix to save my life!) an undershirt; it's chilly in the winter, an ugly sweater (that wasn't really what I intended) and, best of all... GREEN PANTS! I was a texturing genius, even back then!


 To be honest, I'm not really sure when the next time I updated my skin was. The file I have was last modified in August of 2014; last year. It seems like it was longer ago than that to me. The image always had the 1.8 overlay, and that was added January of that year. I really don't know, to be honest.

Whenever it is that happened, my skin got a pretty major overhaul. My face was unchanged, but my shirt and shoes were darkened, and I donned a vest for when 1.8 comes out, a new pair of pants with a pattern that I don't tell anyone.  I decided I'd do something (probably not a shout-out like I said the first time; I have almost no audience whatsoever) for whoever guessed it. I got a very clever, but not exactly correct answer from HowlingW0lf on Bluestrike the other day: a pattern. She can pride herself for being technically correct, which is the best kind, I suppose. She's not the grand winner, though.


The one thing was that my face was relatively flat, boring, and sort of stupid-looking. Just this January, I managed to pull off something I've tinkered with a long time ago; a more subtle smile. You can see it on the right of the post feed, but I'll be changing it "soon," (keyword: "soon," not right after this post) so, to keep this post relevant in the future, here is the same photo.


The hairdo was still bothering me. Fire-Cat, who decided to change her skin at around the same time. I was inspired to change mine again. I had some new ideas for the hairdo this time. I went and did it, and I'm really happy with the result. I think it's as good as it'll get. Luckily, I'm proud of it. Also, I gave my skin a re-shade. Hopefully the mystery pants pattern is still recognizable. I was sort of nervous about shading them. I may make the shading more subtle.



Some closing words come to mind. Here goes. :/

My big flaw is that I'm a perfectionist. I also happen to enjoy art, but it's constantly a plague to me. For better or for worse, I'm always searching for ways to improve.