ps. yes I know I'm late. shut up.

Voted for 2nd Piece. Its quite obvious which piece is whose. Piece 1 I've seen the artist made something like that so yeah. Piece 2 gets more points for creativity.

My vote goes to the first one. The style appeals to me more; it has sharp, well-toned, color pencil feel to it (that was a bit of a mouthful, haha...). Overall it just appeals to me more.

The second one is too blurred and...I dunno. Visually it just doesn't really cut if for me. >.>. It's not bad or anything, just not something I'm a fan of.

Second, I like the darker theme more. The first one is too bright for me and it looks a bit pale.

2nd one looks nice, but i voted for the first. I love the abstractness to it way more, there just seems to be more "design" put into it in terms of visualization and complexity. I know it's really just the same image repeated a bunch, but the text as well as the effects looks nice. I agree with Pes that it's a little on the pale side, but Istill vote for it

Voted for the second one. The various sepia tones, the text, and the actual blurriness all contribute to this dark dreamlike aura that comes out of it. The use of line in the design is also impeccable. They all work together to bring your eyes to the final image of the brooding character. I love the way the scenery contributes to the mood of the piece. It's like every single part of it was carefully thought out and planned just to express one simple emotion. *__* Such an advanced piece, I love it so much!

The first has more pleasant colors. But the flow and and the angles at which all the text and elements come together are...stunted. Block design is cool, but I think it was executed a little poorly since it's this awkward juxtaposition of flowing dynamic design with stiff geometric designs. Some parts are also too sharp for my liking. I'm all for slightly oversharpened pieces, as a matter of fact I highly respect this one guy's works that always go a little overboard with the sharpening, but there are some parts that gets to the point where it turns into "noise".

the second one, i think the first is a bit too bright for the theme of the anime and all, plus i just love the look of the second one.

I forgot to mention, battle voting ends in 6 days.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ##### YOU RHADAMANTHUS!

Voted 2.

Rina's post sold me lol - second piece.

Since I'm about to jump off the computer, I'll keep this short and sweet. =p

I voted for #2.

Both pieces look good, but I feel that the second piece fits the theme better. When I think of Darker than Black, I think obscure, dark, and well...black. Piece two fits all of that and I'unno. It's rather attractive in an odd way to me.

Number one has a decent design, but it looks too...over-sharpened. It kind of makes the piece look rough and jagged. The colours are sweet, though.

By the way; wayyyyyy obvious on who made the pieces. XD

piece 2. the first was simply bleh.

Considering Piece 2 is winning by a landslide, I expected this to have been decided by now, not 6 days. Otherwise, it's just sad.

I suppose since she asked, the battle is over.
Rhadamanthus is the winner.

Though I actually really liked Winnie's piece a lot. The sharpness only adds to the image which has always been winnies style, using things like hard mix a lot. Her pieces have always had a wonderful flow and an extremely interesting design, as well as a great way of using text. The colors are wonderful and I can say I prefer her own piece to mine.

But my own piece, I really worked hard on. It took me almost a week to get it exactly right and frustrated me. Its kind of sad I put so much effort into a simple sig, but..uh...yeah. :x A lot of the things Rina said was dead on about regarding how I designed it.

Anyhow, it was a great battle. ^^

I do believe Rina's Post sorta did give a little influence.

But voting for Tony's post doesn't mean Winnie's one is bad. Just not as good.

To me its a 95/100 for winnie's and 98/100 for Tony's =)

I wasn't going to make a post about my piece but because of everyone's misinterpretation of it, I feels it's needed. =/

I didn't want to follow the trend in which people quickly relate dark toned colours/styles to the series when there's technically some light in it, if you've taken the chance to watch the series itself.

Second, my sharpeness is well... my style, I guess (although I don't think so myself). Though, I have to point out that I haven't used the blend mode "Hard mix" at all in this. I just merely sharpened one of the stock-layers constantly and then cut away the parts I wanted visible. The over-sharpeness - or noise, pointed out my some people viewed in some areas of the piece, is done on purpose to create a sort of 3D sparkle-light effect that I wanted.

As for the structure, yeh... not my best idea to have made it that way. Originally, I was going to enter the top left part of the piece that I made, but I felt it was alittle unfinished and missing something. So in the end, I kind of just did something with it to catch alittle more atention since I couldn't think what else to do with it. It also look even more empty to me without text, but I had no idea how to arrange that to be placed where it wouldn't hinder vital parts of the piece I wanted seen. In general terms, if I had more time, maybe I could have worked better on it...

I only took one night's time (and it was the night before the deadline =_=) to make it whereas Rhadamanthus, as he mentioned, took almost a week to to finish his - hence the lateness of his entry and this being put up a week later than planned.

Overall though... still a good battle and I'm surprised by the votes we actually got in from people ;P.

I will get you back, Tony! >;]