The new look is most unaesthetically pleasing and it does hurt the eyes - in several ways. I see you toned down the white a bit with some greyish masks but it really does little to improve this look. All I've heard/read is complaints.

My main points of complaint:

1. The colors in the forum boxes would be nice to use on the site. They're very readable and don't hurt the eyes. Some of us spend hours on our computers as it is: setting up and doing renders, working on figures, working in Photoshop, emails, and other things. To come here and have them assaulted with these colors is not good. Dark grey or black page backgrounds show images off much better than these blues - for both 3D art and photographers. Even a soft pearl grey would be better.

2. My biggest issue is the text boxes and the size of the page at 100% however.  I have to crank my zoom in my browser up to 150% just to fill up the screen and be able to actually see an image and read comments, text, etc. The comment and 'Notes' boxes are ridiculously small. The comment box takes up a fourth of the space there - the rest is wasted. The Notes box for uploads is particularly awful and that slider bar on the bottom just makes it worse - especially if you are a writer. The slider bar jumps to the left as soon as you load your text, and somehow paragraphs are reformatted. It's hard to see what you're doing/writing. Please fix these boxes.

If you made your changes for Windows 8 and the pads/tablets and phones you have only enabled the online shopping experience from those devices. I only know one person out of all those I know who could afford a tablet or pad that might be capable of rendering in any 3D program and he doesn't do 3D art. I only know of one person here who even uses a laptop. We are on pcs and macs here and you have effectively made this an unpleasant experience.