Creating An Original Drupal Theme?

Hi guys....I know most of you use wordpress or joomla instead, but I'm a drupal person (mainly because I never figured out how to use joomla and wordpress), but I was just wondering.Let's say I want to create my own original drupal theme right? (Because I can't find one that I can easily use to configure and changed to my own style), what do I need to do and learn to do?I'm willing to spend time on it. However long it takes. And it doesn't even have to be drupal. I'm just looking for a simple site that looks nice and is original that you can't tell comes from someone else's coding and stuff. I have a vague idea of what it will look like. I'm willing to learn new languages for this, and etc and etc. I just need to know what the first step is... thanks. (If possible, I might make an attachment once I made a plan of what it looks like, but for now... just tell me what I need to learn (language wise) and what I need to do to start actually coding my own template, instead of stealing from someone else. Thanks.

You can check out this complete series on theming for drupal, right from designing it to coding it: 6 part tutorial on drupal theming

I have finished that tutorial. So, if you are doing that tutorial and have some problems you can ask me.

I really don't wish to get into themeing unless that pays me in return. Drupal being the most complex platform i really avoid to code for it. I found artisteer more handy in that case. Artisteer designs wordpress, joomla and drupal themes quickly. If not artisteer then you have option like - drupal theme tips or mydrupal blog theme guide.

Thanks so much, BCD. That would be awesome. @mahesh2k: Well, it's mainly for myself as well as a learning opportunity for me. Plus, the theme that I want to make is actually... really simple. (I think... hopefully, because I don't want any complicated themes), and if I actually made a theme, I can finally proudly say that this site's theme is 100% made by me... and it's fully original instead of scabbing off someone else and changing the CSS or something.So yeah, it's more of a learning opportunity than anything else, really. But thanks so much, BCD. :/ Expect a lot of questions asked when I actually read it. Which will be soon-ish? :PEdit: BTW... don't you have to pay for artiseer? And I don't know about joomla or wordpress. They don't seem flexible enough for what I want to me. I tried using both... but never really got past understanding how to install it.

Edited October 13, 2010 by Nameless_ (see edit history)

Well if you want to learn to create themes then sure you can go ahead. But if you are into site for making money to pay your hosting bills or want to attract more traffic then it really doesn't matter who created theme. People these days don't pay attention to such small achievements. but it's just your satisfaction that draws you to it. so go ahead and try official drupal forums and docs to get start in themes.

Try looking into the "Zen" theme. The Zen theme comes with a tutorial to create an extension of the "Zen" theme.It's the ultimate starting theme for drupal. Very customizable from the start. I'm not too crazy about "views" though. I actually have a question on top of this - is using "views" more secure than creating your own custom blocks with includes and some inner join queries? I'm very noob to optimizing queries or making them lean. I try and inner join only what I have to. Sorry if I sound like an idiot..

don't you have to pay for artiseer?

Yes. You have to pay for artisteer. It's not much of money but i guess 50-60$with which you can create unlimited themes and download free updates. Not only that you can also create wordpress, joomla theme as well. There is also setting for HTML template if you want to create one.

All themes can be zipped from the program itself and you can also upload some themes (like blogger) to web server. This feature is nice and i think worth to pay for. I mean if you're going to do a lot of things using these features then why not pay for it ?