Now lets go with the rest of the grafics!

You can choose if do this part or not.... but is better if you do it!

You must make icons for the status:

online, offline, chat, DND, occupied, privacy, away, NA, message, file, url, notify, system

Those are the most used, so you put a image that makes the user know what status is his friend using, not something that has nothing to do with it! Don't be lame! The size is 16x16, you can save either bmp or gif, but on bmp you can add transparency and is more compressed on zip.

Now let's make the menu animation. This animation can be a still image or a fancy animation, is all on your imagination... I use to make complex animations, but as it take lotta time, I decide making just an image with the name, or something that represents the skin... The size is 50x22 and it MUST be gif. To put the transparent part, you just make as you do on your transparent gifs, I think I don't need to explain this part...

Make the main menu image, is that image that appears when you click on the icq button. The dimensions change from icq to icq(from 99b to 2000b, for exemple.) But I found a size that works well on both! 22x241. The cheat I use, is just copy a part of the skin layout and resize to fit.

Just need now an animation for the other dialogs window... This is one of the hardest, cause is the animation that the user see more(while sending msg), so do your best and show how you have skills! The size is 28x31, gif, and don't make something big, I mean in time...

After this step you must have: your skin layout broken, a background image, a logo image(if you want), a menu animation, a main menu image, other dialogs animation and some icons that represent the status(at least 13 icons).