The black and gray theme you were looking at was not created by me. It was a style generator theme put together by the staff at vbulletin. It was made for version 4.0.6. I was running that at the time I installed it. When I made the jump to 4.1.2 the pitstop at 4.0.8 broke a lot of the features. You should have seen it before I sat down and fixed over 80% of what was broke. There's still some odds and ends to get straightened out.
As for Greetings!, it's a 1000+ thumbnails that show a cross section of anime artwork. If you refresh the browser you see 2 different pics. Move it? That's the forum sidebar. I'd love to make it horizontal.
And the little forum home icon came out of the box like that.
Like I said I didn't make that one but I sure do like its look. I made the rest of them though...

Hi setishock,

After looking through your skins I'd say I like Ninja babe and black and grey the most. (I don't know if you made Ninja Babe or not).

An important thing to remember is that less is more when it comes to skins. I think today more than ever, people want to look at something clean, streamlined and easy to navigate.

Background images are tricky, and I'd say most backgrounds in "cause and affect" don't work well, but as long as it's not your default theme it should be okay to have a skin like that because some people like it. The Ninja Babe background was fine though, because the image is more subdued and the rest of the skin colors actually matched the image.

"I'm so blue" hurts the eyes, as others have said. That electric blue with black just never works.

I wish I could help you make a skin.

Well, the thing that worries me even more that you have a forum up and running but not that many members, the ninja babe one looks better than the rest. Why not go for a High Quality free theme?

As you just need some sort of kick start, the domain you have is good, the market you focus is huge, what methods of promotion have you tried out?

Miss Baruku,
I made:
Ninja Babe
3.8 style
Blonde
I am so blue
Cause and Affect

Sage Knight,
Word of mouth and sigs. I've seen a couple of better looking sites than mine go belly up recently. I can't afford to pay for any services.

the artwork is amazing. I like your site. I find that I dont like many sites now a days. But I like yours. I think there could be some fine tuning of the shades you use to contrast some of the buttons and links (specifically the login and help button at the top right and the thread count links) but overall I think you have done a fine job. one final piece of criticism, I didnt get a quick understand of what your sites purpose or drive is. Maybe a tagline somewhere to let people who what your all about.

hope that helps.

now go review my site thread "New maps design, need your review"

Most of the buttons were just thrown together. Guess I need to stop with the tinkering and fix those little buggers up.

The site revolves around the artwork of anime. I have a story section where members can post stories they're working on. Seems I'm the only one using that part though. I'm about to put up the final chapter of the Ghost in the Shell story. Some time this week I think. It's gonna be some thing no one has ever though of in the GitS series.