InfintiySapphire

Program Used: Pixlr Editor
Detailed or Simple review: Detailed
Message/Purpose of Graphic : Innocence almost like a sadness about a girl who's all grown up and has an exterior of a strong person but inside she contains innocence. "This innocence is brilliant, I hope that it'll stay." Influenced by Avril Lanviage: Innocence. :)
Your concerns, if any: I want to know if its better and any improvement and I grasp only a brief and the elementary stage of blending. Wonder if you can help me and tell me how to blend different textures together perfectly like a puzzle instead of how I did it because mine looks out of place and really simple.... Thanks!
 

FIRST GLANCE/IMPRESSION
 
It really is simple and I believe it's the placement of the photos you're talking about. Most of the time it really is like a puzzle and generally, this vary from person-to-person, but have you tried visualizing/image how you want it to look like? The message of the graphic plays a large theme on how everything should be set up. For instances, I want to show it's a dark theme, but I also want to make sure people feel it is a mysterious sort of vibe. Not only that, I want it to focus on the main character of the story so it shows there are some hidden secrets in the graphic. Now how do I apply this? I would start on the person first and focus the images around them. On some cases, it would rely on the character's photo being the largest or makes eye contact with the audience, and by using those points, it gives the graphic a focus area. On the other hand, some people focus on the background before adding the characters in. On your case, it looks like the background was the least focused while the character is the center point. Though, I think you probably need to change the background instead because it's mainly just a texture with images around it and quite frankly, that is backward. The base of a graphic are usually just images put together as a collage and then the textures are added into the graphic to enhance the theme. Thus, I'd suggest imagine what sort of background you would want and make a collage out of it before applying the textures. 

MOOD AND THEMES
 
You mention the ideal theme is 'innocence' yet on a strong person externally. The strong character does show, but I have yet to feel the innocent part of the graphic. I can see that you're trying to add objects in relation to youth and vintage objects. You are setting yourself in the right course, however, innocence need a lot of white/light as it stands for purity majority of the time. That may not apply to you, but generally that's how many people will understand it's 'innocence.' Most of the time, it's the universal meaning that's important on conveying the message and using obvious objects, which I do applaud on your attempt. Whenever I think of innocence, I think of white or feathers. But that's only because it's associated with angels, who are believed to represent 'purity.' If you can make it brighter or add some ray of light like the direction she's facing, I think it could have some great effects. I think this was under one of the blending options in pro, where you can add lights to it, but it's quite limited on what sort of lights you can add. 

  
COLOR HARMONY
 
There's quite a lot of contradicting colors. You have this dark brown that's close to saturation with a bright blue background and since you're trying to portray innocence, I think you should try staying on a certain limit of colors. The colors really go from one scale to the next and should be used differently. Though, I'd recommend whether you want this to be a bright poster or a dark one. However, I think it's possibly better to take out the blue and green colors because as bright as they are, they imply some happiness in the graphic. Or you can remove the brown and adjust it so it is a bright graphic. It's really up to you how you want to approach this and what set of colors you want to stick with. Most of this should be decided before you continue on so you don't have a mix of both to pull your graphic away from the concept. Although, there are some people who think differently, but it's really up to you style and how you want to go about it that determines the direction of the graphic. 

STOCK USES

There's only one person in the graphic and that's pretty fair enough that she's the main cast on the graphic. However, how you have the rest of her body missing makes this graphic look incomplete as well. You have so much space that is filled with textures and some smaller images here and there. I believe there were too much of her erased this time, but it can be easily fixed if the other objects on the graphic were blended close to her. Depending on how you use them, they can cover the parts where she's missing or act as a background behind her. Even so, it is most preferred that you get an image photo as a background instead of relying on mostly the texture. 

The images are pretty relevant to the message(except maybe the time) so I have no complaints of your use of them. Though, I'd highly recommend putting a photo as a background or simply moving the objects around so they're not so scattered around the graphic.  

When you say "The innocence is brilliant, I hope it will stay." sort of need more to convey this. In addition, I believe you would have to reconsider some of the stock images because 'I hope it will stay' needs something to chain it down and claim it. Like hugging is a gesture to treasure or keep something safe, which I think would be great if you want to keep that message. I can definitely see 'the innocence is brilliant' with the colors and all the other objects. It's just the second line of your message that isn't really put into the graphic and it makes it incomplete. 

  
TYPOGRAPHY

The title is pretty simple and it looks like you have added some blends to it. The color looks pretty dark and I'm not sure if it's due to the blending color or because you chose a really dark color. Maybe make it lighter or change the colors to gold (for the theme) it may be able to go well with the concept. Considering it looks like it has a shine above it, I believe you should add a stronger light from above and make it white. 

The quote on top is on the boarder of being seen and not because of that black area on top. You can try adding an outline around it to make it pop out more or simply change the color so it can be seen through the dark colors or change the background so it's a bit lighter. It's up to you if you want to change the background or the text. 
  

SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES
 
The reason I say to limit your color palette is mostly for the blending. When you have similar colors together, it's easier to blend them all together in comparison to using a set of colors that aren't similar at all. It's also something you need to consider when blending and to see which one of the colors match with one another. Your blending skills have definitely improved, but with the placement of the photos so spread out and the colors so different from each other, it looks incomplete. Though, you can always turn to the minimalist path (simplicity) and put less objects in the photos while concentrating on the brightness of the graphic. Say it could be nearly white and there could be feathers falling. But that is just a suggestion and takes quite some time if you're unsure of how to go about it. 

How to blend texture is mostly base on your own judgement. You have to see it and learn what works for you and how you should design the graphic. Like how I said earlier, it depends on person-to-person on what you want the main focus to be on your poster. But since the texture is really strong, you can try lowering the 'opacity' which I do think pixlr has this function and in the pro/express version, I think. Generally, the opacity decreases the solidness of the image so it doesn't overlap over another image. How to make it decent (because I cannot explain perfection) is to edit the texture and apply it where you want it to show. Most of the time it is the edges around a certain image, on this case, it's the only person on the poster and as I said earlier, to blend the objects around her. This way it allows the view to look at one object and then to the next without interruptions. Some other times it just using your judgement on what to remove and enhance (edit) it and majority of the time it works with the same color palettes. So my suggestion is to try giving each image the same color tones. This was also why the angst poster you had previously blended more effectively and I think it would be the best place to start along with adding a background image.

OVERALL

I think there are some improvements here and there, but nothing is ever easy. I apologize that I can't explain much about the program technicalities since I'm quite busy lately and I can't look into the program closely enough. I hope you still found this review helpful!