suggestions and all. I like the functional approach you stress before cosmetic appeal. Oatmeal is indeed quite congested, but I actually find the original skin to be quite well organised for something that small and complex at the same time. As long as it can fit in the screen then it's no problem. Something on the scale of Voyager or ugo's Motion is too big. I can't see all the controls in those plugins because my host doesn't allow scrolling. I think the size of Superwave P8 might be a good size for Oatmeal.
The seperating into sections you outlined as Modulation, Effects, Osc's etc should be mandatory for all complex synths
If the original skin had a colour, texture, or border scheme that worked with that in mind, it would immediately be 75% more workable IMO. Things are so much easier when you have a good cue to ignore (or concentrate on) certain parts of the GUI from time to time. The hardware look is usually very functional albeit very boring. I agree that Oatmeal could do with a little more 21st Cen. zip.The two skin idea is pretty good, with the (darker
) gol-ish one being aimed for people like myself, and another more aesthetically pleasing one for those requiring visual synth appeal to get their creative juices running 
.I've had GUI beef with only 2 synths to date and Oatmeal was not one of them. One was very recent and petty, and I can't remember what it was, but the big other was KX77FREE's Omni-600. These are the first two pages:
It has terrible workflow despite being a good aggressive and highly configurable PD synth. Even after I'd worked it for some time and learnt to use it, it's the organisation, not the simplistic look, that I find most difficult to work with; like the controls were kept where they landed, and the different parts could have used a little seperation, but even still, I use it all the same... so nothing like that please
One is enough.Bastions of clean and well organised synths among freebies:
- Alot of Synthmaker stuff - Anna, the Angular Momentum series, for example, are fantastic templates for exoteric and simplistic design.
- Boris K. as everyone would agree, organised some of the coolest looking, highly functional GUI's easily at par with or beyond anything I've seen in the realm of payware or otherwise.
- odo doesn't really have anything I can think of as complex as Oatmeal, but his synths never need any kind of explaining. And even when they're totally simple and monochrome, he has a way with those wicked metallic textures.
- Novakill, like BONES or not, always has highly functional GUI's that don't leave you guessing what's where. Simple and effective.
With their kind of functionality, you could hardly go wrong. Other than that, I say go nuts!!!
so I'm not going to argue for knobs, I'll only mention I still have doubts about the sensitivity of the sliders in Oatmeal; they need a lot of mousing...
Oatmeal!
