Well, that's why we have the highlighted section, though that doesn't change as often as we'd like :(
The problem is, the front page with the popular art will ALWAYS have cute girls in it, because an excellent wallpaper
with a Gundam crushing Tokyo will not be as popular as say, Haruhi.
This kind of reminds me of the other thread in the forum about popularity and Moderator opinion... I think that the
average member will only really care about favourites (hence pretty girls) and make those kind of things, because they
will enjoy putting them on their desktop anyway. For those who want to do something original (and I strongly encourage
everyone to do so, because the gallery will love you for it!) maybe don't want to because they won't use it
anyway (since "few people like it").
The front page I think used to work better when the popular art section wasn't there, but the fact is we don't
get a flood of eye popping submissions to highlight at least one per day.
The good thing I've noticed is that Vector Art and Doujinshi have gotten a lot more attention.
As Nubes said, it's got a lot to do with Holidays (it is Christmas) and the number of contests have gone down (I
haven't seen many contest entries lately, that is). I think once the contests go up (and with very bizarre
guidelines to sway people away from the ZOMG CUTE CHICK) there will be greater variety :)
I feel the same way as you! Fingers crossed :D