Version 1.3.1
Last updated on June 11th, 2014

Aesthetic aims to combine a minimalist approach of few distractions
with a clean yet colorful and visually appealing design.

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When I started playing osu! a few months ago and decided to look around for some skins, I was both surprised and disappointed that a vast majority of those advertised as simple or minimalist didn't meet my idea of such a skin at all. Even now, I can count the number of really clean skins I've seen on one hand. When I started working on this, I knew none.

My goal was to create a skin for myself and those who are interested in using it. A tight skin optimized for playing that still manages to look pretty. No shadows, reflections or other effects that make the circles look fancier, just a plain and flat theme.

I've been working on this skin off and on during the last few months, adding on and improving step by step. Right now, it's pretty much complete for osu! standard mode, although there are a few things here and there that may need tweaking. I plan to expand this skin for all modes in the future, but I'd like to take my time to familiarize myself with the gameplay and come up with some ideas first.


If you decide to give this skin a try, thanks! I hope you enjoy it.

All feedback is welcome, I'm happy to find new ways to improve this skin.

cool skin, I like it

I don't usually post on the forums, however the skin caught my eye. It is really well done. Just played a map, and it is really easy to play with. Took me a few seconds to get use to since it was a bit more busy than skins I use. The design of each element matched really well. The only thing I didn't like was the pause screen. The pause in the background was too much of a distraction for me and didn't seem to fit. Since you said that standard is pretty much complete, I would suggest an optional hitcircle with a transparent middle like this. Also suggest a background for ranking graph.

very nice skin, i love the lifebar

Just tested it and already lovin' it, I'm just kinda used to the Default one but this one is really smooth to play with

Hi, I really like this skin especially for the default numbers as it is easy to read. ^^ Hope to see more skins from you in the future. ^^

Very nice and smooth skin, the cursor and numbers are really awesome, and I like those little hints like "press space to skip"

Oh man, this is neat. I really like the cursor and the ranking panel.

This skin looks neat... gonna download It for sure ^^

wow.
I have to say, skin is cleaner than most skins i have ever seen.
Great job! :>

Just awesome.

This skin is /extremely/ beautiful. The only thing is that the hitsounds could be a bit louder, and this would be perfect.

just ♥

This looks really slick, I'll make sure to try it out.

Thanks to everyone for the nice words and feedback!

The first update is here. It may be a small one, but there's some new hitcircles to test, let me know which one you like best!
Some of the issues you addressed aren't fixed yet, which I will hopefully take care of soon.

Uruoki wrote:

I don't usually post on the forums, however the skin caught my eye. It is really well done. Just played a map, and it is really easy to play with. Took me a few seconds to get use to since it was a bit more busy than skins I use. The design of each element matched really well. The only thing I didn't like was the pause screen. The pause in the background was too much of a distraction for me and didn't seem to fit. Since you said that standard is pretty much complete, I would suggest an optional hitcircle with a transparent middle like this. Also suggest a background for ranking graph.

Thanks! That means a lot. Seeing that you created a skin in much the same spirit and how well it was received was a good motivation to finish this one.
I tested your hitcircle idea for a while and I ended up liking it a lot. I included it along with a completely transparent hitcircle in this update, so it should appeal to more players with different preferences. I also put finding a possible replacement for the pause screen on my to do list. Can you elaborate on how exactly it feels distracting or unfitting? Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Pannari wrote:

This skin is /extremely/ beautiful. The only thing is that the hitsounds could be a bit louder, and this would be perfect.

You might be right - I put this on my list too, so I'll have a look the hitsounds and see which need a bit of a boost and/or improvement. Thank you again!

Noobsicle wrote:

very nice skin, i love the lifebar

Might be my favourite part, too.

nice skin!

I took some time today to upload a HD preview video that shows off gameplay with the three different hitcircles and some ingame screens.

It should help viewers get a quick impression of the skin in action. I hope you enjoy!

I haven't tried out this skin but I have to say I really like your mod icons!

wow this skin looks extremely good.

Damn it's so nice.

finally people are realizing playability is better then cute and kawaii shit

Outstanding.

Redon wrote:

Can you elaborate on how exactly it feels distracting or unfitting? Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

If you are playing and you pause in the middle of the song, you may have 4 things overlap.

Hitcircles, the "PAUSE" in the background, the "| |" also in the background and the "Continue", "Retry" and "Back to Menu" options.

To me, four things overlapping is too busy for me.

Hope that clear things up.

Also, if you did make the transparent hitcircles, make sure you made the reverse arrow to match it.

Keep up the good job.

HandHeldPillow wrote:

finally people are realizing playability is better then cute and kawaii shit

totally agree! This is the best skin I've ever seen!
Goooood job~

Hi there. Thanks for such a wonderful skin. I was searching for one for ages and so I came upon this.
I feel as if osu just got so much easier. Thanks! c:

A very nicely done simple and clean skin. Wonderful job.

Also, this just my opinion,the sounds don't quite have the sort of power to it hit sound, if you get what I mean.

&how about adding a baby blue color? To kinda add to the pastel coloring.

Nice skin ! Approaching perfection :°

Just to let you know, the OSK file packs a folder inside a folder. So you have to drag the folder out and replace it. http://a.pomf.se/fixwxu.png

Thank you for the compliments and feedback! Here's another little update. It includes reworked hitsounds, which I hope are more audible and provide better feedback while playing.

There is a new large cursor alternative, as requested by Piku201. I tried to make it feel a bit like the default cursor, I hope it worked out. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

As a third thing, I added an animated followpoint based on Uruoki's concept in Luminance. It's essentially the same line followpoint, but animated to fade out quickly, which gives it a nice visual effect of moving from circle to circle, and reduces the amount of lines that clutter the playfield. Personally, I found that followpoint amazing from the first moment - it helped me with jumps, and I now find the lines a lot less distracting than they were before.

I hope that everything works fine, if you find any issues or have some suggestions, let me know.

Uruoki wrote:

If you are playing and you pause in the middle of the song, you may have 4 things overlap.
Hitcircles, the "PAUSE" in the background, the "| |" also in the background and the "Continue", "Retry" and "Back to Menu" options.
To me, four things overlapping is too busy for me.
Hope that clear things up.

Also, if you did make the transparent hitcircles, make sure you made the reverse arrow to match it.

Keep up the good job.

I suppose I can see where you're coming from, though I don't consider it as much of a problem as long as the menu options stand out. I'm afraid I can't come up with a satisfying alternative at the moment so I'll keep the current screens until that changes. I did think of the reverse arrow, thank you for the tip.

Uruoki wrote:

Just to let you know, the OSK file packs a folder inside a folder. So you have to drag the folder out and replace it. http://a.pomf.se/fixwxu.png

Ah, that's inconvenient... I wonder where exactly the problem lies. At first, I thought it might be because I renamed .osk file, though I when I did the same thing again it worked fine. I got the impression that osu starts acting up like that when you leave an unopened .osk or .zip file in the Skin folder? Anyway, this time I uploaded the update the same way as the original upload. It's probably a good idea to remove the old skin beforehand. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Joe Joe-kun wrote:

A very nicely done simple and clean skin. Wonderful job.

Also, this just my opinion,the sounds don't quite have the sort of power to it hit sound, if you get what I mean.

&how about adding a baby blue color? To kinda add to the pastel coloring.

Thanks! I do hope I get what you mean. The main hitsounds were intentionally chosen to be 'clicky' with the idea of providing precise audible feedback. I agree though that they didn't do that as well as they could, so I changed up the hitsounds a little bit for this update - Although they're still roughly the same, there should be more of a punch to the hitnormals in the normal and soft sound set. If everything went well, they should also be a bit louder. Let me know whether it was an improvement!

If what you meant was that they don't resemble a drum-like soundset like the osu default, I hope you understand why that's not the case. I suppose I could consider adding an alternative set of sound samples that's less clicky and resembles the original sounds more.

The color idea is interesting! However, I wasn't too happy with the result when I gave it a try ingame - perhaps it's because a baby blue color is a bigger step from the current range of colors, which are just 50° apart each? I honestly thought that going the other way in the color spectrum fit really well, so I decided to go with an additional hue of purple. I realized afterwards that I had kind of set that one up for me already with the color scheme of the song selection menu buttons!
I think I will experiment with different combo color palettes, and maybe provide some alternatives in a future update. Thanks for the feedback!

This is the most sexiest sleekish skin I have ever seen. Props to you @Redon
P.S. Any. rough draft on how CTB. going to be?

This skin is really awesome . I'm using it right now *-*

Hey! I really love your skin, thanks for making it.

Is there a possibility that you can skin the keys (input-keybackground and input-keyoverlay iirc) if possible? They're missing and they're pretty handy when you're streaming or make videos.

Also, the "UNRANKED" text (I can't recall its exact name, is clipping with the scorebar-ki as in [img=osu.ppy.sh/ss/1405879]this image[/img]. My proposed fix is to make a small empty space above the image so the position is lower.

Anyways, I switched to your skin, from one I made myself. Thanks for making it, and I hope to see your newer work, and hopefully I've given useful feedback!

Redon wrote:

Thanks! I do hope I get what you mean. The main hitsounds were intentionally chosen to be 'clicky' with the idea of providing precise audible feedback. I agree though that they didn't do that as well as they could, so I changed up the hitsounds a little bit for this update - Although they're still roughly the same, there should be more of a punch to the hitnormals in the normal and soft sound set. If everything went well, they should also be a bit louder. Let me know whether it was an improvement!

If what you meant was that they don't resemble a drum-like soundset like the osu default, I hope you understand why that's not the case. I suppose I could consider adding an alternative set of sound samples that's less clicky and resembles the original sounds more.

The color idea is interesting! However, I wasn't too happy with the result when I gave it a try ingame - perhaps it's because a baby blue color is a bigger step from the current range of colors, which are just 50° apart each? I honestly thought that going the other way in the color spectrum fit really well, so I decided to go with an additional hue of purple. I realized afterwards that I had kind of set that one up for me already with the color scheme of the song selection menu buttons!
I think I will experiment with different combo color palettes, and maybe provide some alternatives in a future update. Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, I was talking about your hit sounds, not the default, sorry for not being clear, also I've tried out the 1.1v and Ahhh nice to see a improvement on the sounds.

Still feels a bit quiet, but that's probably just me, anywho nice job!

And now to the coloring, I completely understand, the differentiation between colors may not seem right to you, I appreciate the consideration, and hmmm alternatives with different palettes does seem like a neat idea, would like to see that brought to light. Again really clean and neat skin, keep up the awesome job!

Don wrote:

Hey! I really love your skin, thanks for making it.

Is there a possibility that you can skin the keys (input-keybackground and input-keyoverlay iirc) if possible? They're missing and they're pretty handy when you're streaming or make videos.

Also, the "UNRANKED" text (I can't recall its exact name, is clipping with the scorebar-ki as in [img=osu.ppy.sh/ss/1405879]this image[/img]. My proposed fix is to make a small empty space above the image so the position is lower.

Anyways, I switched to your skin, from one I made myself. Thanks for making it, and I hope to see your newer work, and hopefully I've given useful feedback!

I had actually skinned these key overlays already, but it seems like I forgot to include them in the folder I uploaded... my bad. Thanks for pointing it out, I wouldn't have noticed! I snuck them into the download just now.

You're also right about the 'Unranked' image, I hadn't even paid attention to that. It could be a bit prettier. I could just shift it down like you suggested, but it would have to get pretty far into the playfield without overlapping with the scrolling text. I have some other ideas for it, I'll have to see if they're possible.

Sulker wrote:

This is the most sexiest sleekish skin I have ever seen. Props to you @Redon
P.S. Any. rough draft on how CTB. going to be?

To be completely honest, there isn't, and I have no clue. I'm about as inexperienced as it gets when it comes to Catch the Beat - I can operate arrowkeys, and I recently discovered what the Shift key does. And unlike Taiko and mania, I can't seem to really understand the appeal of the mode, either.

Even so, I'm interested in creating a CTB part for this skin, but it's very difficult to tell what makes a CTB skin good without any experience with the mode. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions!

Joe Joe-kun wrote:

Yes, I was talking about your hit sounds, not the default, sorry for not being clear, also I've tried out the 1.1v and Ahhh nice to see a improvement on the sounds.

Still feels a bit quiet, but that's probably just me, anywho nice job!

Is it any particular sounds that should be louder or quieter compared to others, or just the sounds in general? If it's the latter, you could try lowering your music volume in the settings a little.

XinCrin wrote:

This skin is really awesome . I'm using it right now *-*

I'm glad to hear you like it!

I can't download it for no reason. Any mirror link?

I can feel that it's tasty