Custom art opinion

So, once my box and parts come through I’ll be putting together a custom and I thought I’d go with a Makoto theme. I’ve struggled to find images of her I like so I thought I’d stick with the official Super art and put these together.
You know what it’s like when you’ve been staring at something too long, you just can’t see the wood for the trees, so I could do with an opinion or two on which of these two compositions is the most visually appealing. The white frame is there to represent the white case.

Cheers.

http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2278/mak2m.jpg

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/1097/mak1t.jpg

go with the first one. if you have a standing figure like that it always looks better to show as much of it as possible instead of cutting off more than one or two sides of it. and there’s too much empty space in the middle of the 2nd example. if you like the 2nd one more, then i suggest moving makoto inward until maybe only her elbow is cut off cuz it looks cramped as it is now, and then fill the empty space with something, probably some makoto sprites or something. hope that helps some.

Definitely the first one because it looks cleaner. The second version looks like you pushed over that nice pic of Mak just to display her hand in the other, and making it look awkward as the final result. The first looks way more professional and polished.

Same here. One could say that Makoto’s menacing hand is a distictive trait of her, but it screws the composition. And the full body pose makes it look like she’s trying hard to fit in the frame.

First one all the way. Nice work on that.

Cheers, guys. After spending the last couple of hours away from it I definitely agree in thinking I was right with the first one. I did the second one to try and open it up more but looking at it with fresher eyes, shifting Mak to the edge makes both images of her fight for your eyes’ attention, whereas the main shot seems to stand out more in the first one and it all feels a little more comfortable to look at.
Cheers again.

1 for sho. You made the right choice. BTW what does the back of Makoto’s head look like?