To kick off Skinner of the Month, I'd like to direct your attention to a skinner who has so far submitted two WindowBlind, won the 9th Challenge at Skinning.net with one of them, and has only been at this whole "skinning" thing for a few short months.  His latest WindowBlind was uploaded to WinCustomize just one month ago and has already received nearly 83,000 unique downloads.

The Skinner of the Month for August 2006 is .Zer0. (previously rjsmith2007) and the popular WindowBlind I'm sure just about everyone has seen by now is Eminence.  .Zer0. has generated a lot of buzz and discussion in the WC community, and Eminence has received a great deal of praise.  Recently, I discussed the Eminence and .Zer0. with CerebroJD and DoctorNick on the Under The Skin podcast, and there has been a lot of praise behind the scenes from both moderators and other users I've spoken to.

His first skin, XP Format posted back in April, is a polished and slightly glassy take on the standard XP Blue theme that comes default with the OS.  While it has strong visual ties back to that default theme, it's far from unoriginal and is highly polished, especially for a first attempt.

Be sure to check out both of .Zer0.'s skins, and keep an eye out next Monday for an interview I conducted with him earlier in the month.