So I am back in the swing of things and working on a new Marvel theme: Spiderman. (Ironically the bg that the Marvel rep wants me to use is a Spidey/Win XP wallpaper and I am doing this on Vista.) Anyway, heres a ss of what I have got so far. Some stuff is from my Metal Zion theme (aMonitor, AstAmp and the ghostly looking topbar in the top left corner.) All I really haver right now is the Main Menu, start btn, tray with .3pic beauties, and the clock. Please let me know what you think about it. Especially the clock, because I am not sure if it is going to work out just yet.

been working a little more on this, but I find it hard to get motivated since I think it looks like crap. Anyway here is the updated screen shot. I would be very grateful if you guys could give me some advice on how to clean it up.

I like the various elements, but the colours are a bit erratic, and a bit bright ~ but that red wallpaper doesn't help you much  . If it were me I would make a gradient of the two ends of the red range, duplicate it and colourise the copy until I got a suitable alternative for the contrast colour.

Then by comparing one alongside the other you can use a colour picker to find complimentary shades to use for the elements.

i.e. 

If I were you Chris, I would stick with the first wallpaper.

Ok, I was thinking the same thing about the wallpaper. I needed a change, because I was getting annoyed by the old wallpaper, but since I suck at making walls I think I'll stick with the old one. As far as the colors go, I am not sure why the start menu is a different red than everything else, I noticed that i did that after I posted this ss. Changing that will be easy enough. I'll also try tweaking the base colors. Thanks a lot for the advice, I really needed it.