This is all great stuff here, thanks for the insights. Let me clarify a couple of things that have been brought up.

1. The first page actually does occur inside an office, that plant in the background is a potted one. The page prior to that one establishes the setting a bit better (you more clearly see the walls, the desk, etc.). I probably need to darken my marble texture on the walls, and as will be dicsussed further, need to work on lighting more.
2. By expediency I'm not saying I want to throw up junk most of the time and really bear down on the important panels. I don't plan on glossing over any single frame, they all have a purpose and a mental image that I won't compromise on, there just comes a point where I feel if I haven't nailed it, I'll settle for around 97.5% of what I have in my head once it looks like 100% will cost me another ten hours. I do want to achieve an overall high quality feel, look and approach, and then maybe go a few extra miles with key paenels. I've got a decent workflow down which I'm using for all the shots that's got me to this point, it can always be improved on of course. What I do mean is that I really want to avoid things like painting individual hair strands or clothing wrinkles on every frame - high detailed high custom labor intensive type postwork, things that don't really lend themselves to being wrapped up in a nice photoshop action or filter. Believe me, if there was a "make hair look better" action, I'd use it on everything. I want to achieve quality processes and results that are highly reproducable, and then punch up the details when its really necessary. Does that make sense?

Responses to the critiques so far:

1. Fish eyed close ups - bingo, you nailed it. Here's where a shortcut came back to bite me. For most shots I used the dolly cam at 100 focal. But on the second page the 2 close ups were with the face cam because I got lazy and didn't want to hassle with repositioning dolly (or aux, or main). I actually set the focal to 35 from 25, but JV is right, it's still fish eyed. I'll definitely give 80 a try in future. Great advice.

2. The lighting - bingo again. This is tough because I've been struggling with lighting in general for a few months now. I've read Dr. Geep's tutorials a few times (looks like I'll review them again), messed around with RNDA light sets, DAZ complex global lighting (overkill), made my own, all sorts of things. Some times I manage to pull off great lighting (well for me anyway), and sometimes I need to take a walk after particularly grievous renders. In these I definitely was going for UNdramatic lighting - if everything is lit dramatically, the truly dramatic scenes aren't highlighted quite as much - there's really nothing dramatic about the lighting in an office, and that's the sort of "reality" I'm hoping to achieve. Basically these are straight interior shots, so these represent the best of my hamhanded approaches to interior lighting to date. I figure, logically, that I place the light sources where the lights would actually be, fiddle with the color, intensity, shadows and that should get me "realistic" lighting for the room. That's pretty much what I've done here.

It's funny because my first impulse was to say the lighting is too bright in general, while all the comments so far have been that it's actually too dark, at least in relation to the faces. Shows how much I've got to learn. Anyway, maybe my current normal every day interior lighting approach isn't quite there yet, so more advice in this department would only help. On test renders I realized Maggie's face was drastically underlit, so I did make another light and pointed it at her face to help out - should I take this approach to all the figures? I guess the problem is that the lighting in these is too bright in general, and not bright enough where it needs to be. Does that sound about right?

3. The shadows - probably a side effect of the lighting troubles. There are shadows, even on the floor, but they are definitely too faint on the floor. I think it's probably mainly due to the texture/highlight/reflection on the floor being to bright and washing out the shadows (I was going for a polished marble tile effect, and didn't quite get it - I just couldn't get the right gloss on the floor), if you look at the wall behind them you can more clearly see shadows. I used a map of 1024 and a setting of .6 for the shadows on the main light, and it still looks a bit jagged, perhaps I need to dial that one up more.

Anyway, as I said this is great feedback, I really appreciate it. If people have follow ups or there are more things to be said I'd love to hear them.

Thanks again,

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