Thx Sharp and UD, funny that you'd mention that Whitesock because I actually made two attempt to do just that but booth times I failed and it looked very weird!
Well what I do for atmospheric things like this is I work with colors and then at the end I throw some flat gradients over it and reduce the opacity so that I get the colors to make it pop, but yet still have that unifying gradient to create that frosty/underwater atmosphere.
I do know this - xenforo dropped the ball by not keeping the vbulletin reputation comments as a feature. The loss of the Reputation comments data when we switched to Xenforo really was the death knell for the site when it came to all the users that left. I know I missed it so much and I got way less interested in the site when that feature was gone and I run the site.
I'm on a page about incorrect corrections, and spent the better part of like two hours trying to get someone to understand that -5^2 = -25, not 25, and then that post had comments get reposted because that group is self sustaining, and that person was in turn trying to explain what I just explained to them. And I'm taking that as a victory