This was done in Paint.NET, by the way. Contest requirements and stock images are here, if anyone is interested in seeing what I was working with (I mainly used \artwork\monster\pose.jpg and \logo\icon.png from the fankit):
http://phpbb.acclaim.com/2moons/viewtopic.php?t=9510
Direct questions.
Should I have kept the blur off the character entirely? I feel like I went a little overboard, but I wanted it to have a bit of a connection to the bg.
Text look okay? I didn't know what I was doing there, really.
Does the stroke around the character obscure too much of the trident? Here's one with no stroke for comparison.
