Unrelated: developmental hazards of Minecraft development sometimes produce odd results... via Jeb_
While some sites have been applauding the addition of a female skin to Minecraft as a new, recent development, custom skins of all types - male, female, alien, robot, and all sorts of others - have been a staple of PC Minecraft for years. There have been so many variations of character skins since first became customizable back in Alpha 1.2.2, it's nearly impossible to keep track of them all.
For many, I suspect a Minecraft skin isn't much different than a desktop background or paint job on a car, simply a means to look (or look at something) neat while playing the game. For many others, it is also a sort of identity, a representation of who we are or who we would like to be, inside the game itself. There are, of course, a nearly endless supply of pop-culture skins for fans of a franchise - video game characters like Master Chief, skins used and/or created by popular Youtubers, TV show characters given a Minecraft twist - but what really amazes me is the unique skins people come up with for themselves that aren't directly based on anything other than their imagination. Many of these skins have a story around them, as they represent something the player likes, or strives to be.
For example, this weird guy.
I made that skin back in 2010 originally, but it saw revisions later when I realized there was a second layer to work with, and a mask was added. It hasn't really changed since then, even with a minor mistake on the hands where the glove fingers are missing, but it's the skin I made, and it has been central to my Minecraft identity ever since. What brought it about? Pretty simple things, honestly: I thought red suits looked neat, and the time I was making the skin happened to coincide with a brief interest in the Man in the Iron Mask legend. It's been the same ever since, and likely won't change.
You, the Player
So what about you? What kind of skin do you have, and why? If you made it yourself (or had it made for you specifically), does it represent something about you, or something in particular that you are interested in? How many times do you change skins, if ever? If you could change one thing about skins, what would it be? Tell us about it!