I wanted to try this theme and it seems to work ; I have even put in my own fonts so the former looks nice. I might even post a snapshot but there are better looking ones here already.
When I boot my laptop, I get the blue grub screen which transitions to a blue-themed “start” screen with the animated white dots, which alternates with the text-on-black boot messages. I don’t mind this; it shows ALL the activity going on, along with diagnostic or progress messages.
The theme from our friend AVDuma in the link above is a variation of the Black and white theme. It comes with its own “start” screen as a replacement. In theory, at least. Is there a way to replace the installed ‘start’ screen? I can preview the B/W start through Settings>Settings Panel>Look>Startup, so it remains a challenge.
Today I was playing with an old laptop (Eeepc first model 701, 4gb-HD), which had Elive Gem+ installed on it (over Reiser4), an OS over 10 years old, it was using that old theme and it really looked nice 
, maybe we should have it included by default too
I have not looked deep but this is an improved version of the B&W theme, @she_dyed?
Not sure to understand what you mean with the “Start theme” question, but you can use different parts of different themes too
Maybe make a video and put it in youtube?
The start theme (aka bootsplash) is the graphical animation that is shown when you switch off verbose boot messages i.e. when I had the live USB, I had to add the boot parameter “text” to verify a smooth launch of Elive in the old days. Having a unique bootsplash screen was common then, for the entire theme to remain consistent from start to login.
Thanatermesis maybe you saw it for a few seconds on the old eeePC? To answer your other question, AVDuma updated the BW theme and uploaded it so that it would still run on the current version of e17 that we have on Elive 3.0.3. The bootsplash is recognizable in the Settings Panel > Themes, so I selected that but the blue-themed animation remained.
Thanatermesis one thing you can try is make like you are about to install the new theme on the eeePC. (Or wherever your 3.0.3 Elive runs on now). Don’t install it; you want to preview something first, like borders. So one would go to Settings>SettingsPanel>Look>Theme>Borders. Now do the same with “start” and you would be viewing the preview there.