Hey, sorry for the delay everyone, I wasn't aware until today that it was judging time
And as far as the color rules go, well I'm probably as confused as you are, so I'm just judging on what I see, because they've obviously all been approved for use by now
Kitten Medli -
9/10 - I really like how the character is so big and bold over a background that is chaotic, but on a small scale. I'm not sure how necessary the little text over the leaf was, and it think it bothers me more than it enhances the image, but overall I love the icon and it reminds me of fall.
blueZ -
8/10 - It looks like her soul is escaping :O It's really interesting to look at, and while at first all of the overlapping and everything going on put me off, the more I look at it the more I like it. I still feel there is too much going on for such a small space, yet I think it makes for a good feeling.
Laryxle -
6/10 - I'm not sure what's going on here. Even after I looked at the base picture, it's still very... eh. It's not a bad image, but it's just chronically unexciting to look at. Until I kept staring at it long enough where I decided that it sort of looks like a frog monster camouflaging itself against a wall to hide from heavily armed pursuers, i was completely uninvolved with it. It looks nice, but that's it. I'm all for simple, but this is just sort of blah.
DM was on fire-
5/10 - Her face is very distorted. I'm all for messing with pictures, but when working with an image of a real person it looks very obvious and unattractive, in my opinion, when they look wonky. The background is unnecessarily noisy on top of that and because the person takes up the entire left 2/3rds of the image all of the pink sort of seem like it came out of no where. It's not especially bad looking as an idea, I guess, but it's a little boring and all the extra noise does is bother me more than add interest.
WIS -
8/10 - It's very pretty and a great idea. I'm not sure that I like the placement of the smaller orange flower placed over the larger flower though. But of course I'm getting into a lot of 'what if' territory in judging these as it is. Still, I feel it gets a bit too crowded. It's such a bold beautiful design I think you could have (should have?) pulled a little off of it and still ended up with the impact it has now, maybe more. I think that keeping the white is a good idea, it really prevents a lot of awkward color combinations that would have came with transparent (though admittedly those are always fun to see)