Hello all! After posting my other thread about Dashboards (Share your Dashboard theme; located here), I realised something. There are no threads linking to free themes. So like the Twitter thread, I've chosen to make such a thing. For those of you that don't know, you can make free themes for your Xbox 360's Dashboard. This won't cover how to do that. Well, not in much detail anyway. :
Making a Theme from an Existing Image
To do this, you will need the following: - USB Flash Drive
- Access to a PC
- Large Image for Use
Plug the Flash Drive into your computer (or Mac), and find the image you want. Drag and drop in into the drive and into a folder, if you want to make your drive neater and stuff. Now you have the image there, remove the flash drive from the computer, and plug it into the front of your 360. Go to the console's Dashboard, and navigate up and down to the 'My Xbox' slides. Flick through those until you find the option marked 'Picture Library'. Press A on it, and then select Portable Device. Find the image, and press Y on it. Select Yes, and go back to your Dashboard. Say hello to your custom theme.
For the record, Custom Themes act in the same manner as Free Themes. There are no icons for your friends list, and you can't select different images for use in different menus, such as the Media Library. The image you will be using is ideally extremely large, or the theme won't display well, as it may pixelate.
Creating a Theme
Creating a theme takes longer to do, and you will also need to be prepared to put some time into it. I recommend you download an image editor for this. By image editor it doesn't necessarily mean Photoshop. There are free alternatives, and you could try using Gimp, Paint.net, or one of the many others. Regardless, here are some image editors you can check out: | Mac OS X | Windows |
|---|---|
| Pixelmator | Photoshop |
| Gimp | Paint.net |
| Acorn | Pixia |
| Photoshop | Gimp |
| Inkscape | Irfanview |
Now you've got your program of choice downloaded and ready to go, you'll need a template to work from. Thanks to deviantART user AlCozzi, you'll get just that. Click here to get the direct link to his image, from his deviantART account. After getting this, you can alter the background - ensure you keep that original copy though, and then alter a backup or something. Get some renders or something, put the images on, make it look real good, and then follow on from the section on making a theme using an existing image.
Theme Directory
I know of a site that may be of interest, which is here. In order to make this thread neat and easy to use though, I'll direct link to some of the images. Check out the site for the full range of images they have, but here are some to begin with: - Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Family Guy 1
- Family Guy 2
- Far Cry 2
- Prototype
These images are not mine, but they may be of use to the rest of the GiantBomb community. If there are other images that are safe for work, and you'd like to share them post a link up here, and I'll link to them in the theme directory above. I don't know how popular this thread will be. If it's decent maybe we can get it stickied so GiantBombers can get some quality free themes and maybe make some too. And if not that's no big deal either.
GiantBomb Themes
GiantBomb itself is awesome enough to get a sub-section entirely for themes relating to it. E3 Themes
Celebrate E3 from 2009, and 2010 with the two themes that appeared for them both.
Unofficial Themes
I'd link them all individually, but I'm lazy and therefore I'll share the thread that was used for these themes. Conveniently it's here.
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