The Chinese zodiac is thousands of years old, so what better decoration for your glossy, state-of the-art PC? The twelve zodiac animals make a stately parade across your Windows 7 desktop with the Chinese Zodiac Windows 7 Theme. PCWorld editor Kim Saccio-Kent selected these wallpapers from the many available at deviantART, an online community showcasing user-created art and photography.
DeviantART user immanuel's horse seems to stand on thin air.The wallpapers depict all the animal signs in the Chinese zodiac and follow the twelve-part cycle, beginning with user kacza-ino's image of a rat and ending with MPtribe's tattoo design of a pig. Each of the images is striking in its own way; many use contrast to show the beauty and power of the animals. Most impressive is a close-up of the piercing eye of a tiger. User fennecx's big cat is nestled in a fiery golden coat, with ripples of black and white. KalleVictor's snake has a sublime appeal, with its lush scales of varying green tones against a background of darkness.
For obvious reasons, deviantART user orgastic's dragon is one of the only images in the pack that isn't a photograph.In addition to the unique images, the Chinese Zodiac 2012 Windows 7 desktop theme features sound effects from members of the Freesound.org online collective. Reinsamba's work starts Windows with the vibrant, hollow sound of a gong, and Gorgoroth6669 shuts it down to the mellifluous tune of a Chinese flute.
Note: To install this Windows 7 theme, unzip the downloaded archive and double-click the themepack file within. Windows does the rest. Make sure to read the readme file to get details on the images and sound effects in this theme.
--Zohra Ashpari
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