Hi,
To be a 'silverlight' developer, is it basically asking for both programming and graphic skills?
Or is it just a matter of implementing the graphics into the silverlight project?
i.e. can you be a silverlight guru and yet not know heads from tails when it comes to graphic design?
thats the power of xaml, both coder and designer can work in one language ;)
If it's anything like Flash (and, from what I understand, the "finished products" can have similar capabilities), you don't necessarily need to be a designer. I'm part-flash developer and I don't have the first idea about anything related to graphic design :)
When I do flash programming, 99% of the work I do is in Actionscript. We have a couple of asset prep guys here who extract the visual elements and add them to a library, which us developers then use in the flash app.
Like I say, this is assuming there are some similarities between Flash and Silverlight (which, for all I know, may not exist). Good luck!
To be a silverlight developer, you really only need to know a .NET language, event driven programming, and how to use markup for XAML. It's pretty simple really; the XAML describes UI elements (which can all be handled by the designer) which can then be used in code as a .NET object is created for each UI element.
Knowing graphic design is just a bonus.
I've done a couple of WPF and Silverlight projects and I have terrible graphic design skills. You can certainly do Silverlight without having that type of skillset.
However, even though you can do some attractive work in those projects without having graphics skills it still very useful to have access to somebody that does have the skills.
For example, adding small animations to glassy-looking buttons can be entirely done by a programmer. But adding attractive backgrounds to form headers (other than gradients) is still better handled by a graphics guy. (In my opinion, of course)
It is not strictly necessary to be a good graphic designer, knowing how to develop .NET applications and XAML is sufficient. However, it's like drawing, all you have to do is to hold a pencil and move your hand, but if you have a good sense for art, the result will be better. Since in Silverlight your potential targets are Internet users and they're used rich user interfacese (maybe Flash based), if you know how to organize your elements, which are the best colors and things like that, your work will be easier.