American History X - DVD Cover

This was a re-creation of the DVD cover "American History X"
This ws my first Illustrator piece. Image was done entirely in Illustrator using three gradient meshes then a number of different shapes: blurred, feather, opacity changes, and layer mode effects.
Project took 2 days, a total of 20 hours.

Project score from teacher: His first reaction was that he thought it was just a print out of the original. He gave it a perfect score.

Thanks for the views and constructive criticisim is always welcome!