I took a peek... but won't comment on the individual images, since what I will say affects all of them. You have some nice ideas to grab the viewers' emotions. This is something lacking in most games (and many images). Some of these are a bit cliched (student in trouble, baby with dead mother) but still effective. We humans will anthropomorphize a rock if it is in the right setting! Your images seem to lack focus, though, in that the eye doesn't know where to go first. The eye will naturally go to the area with greatest contrast, whether by color or light or sharpness, and then move out on lines we determine. With the baby sea dragon, for example, the blues and greys blend and the bright spots of color are the baby's ears and the mother's tongue... is this where you want the viewer to look first? The brightest area is the mother's lower jaw... again, is this what you want the viewer to notice? The area with most contrast in lighting is the mother's teeth. If you added a bump map to the kid and brightened his coloring and lightened him up, it would pull him and his misery into the forefront. Alternatively, you could do this to the mother, so that we see that she is dead, and then notice the child. You'd have to recrop to keep a decent composition, but you'd have the viewer's eye where you want it, and not just where it ends up. (Study Frazetta... he was a master at this.) The wet look and tears works, this is a soggy picture, but it could have more impact. With the student and the test... I have a logical problem. Running isn't going to get her out of danger, nor will it solve anything. The eye jumps back and forth, not sure whether the monsters or the woman is the center of interest... or maybe it is the stripes in the road? Decide which one. Brighten that one. (Even though she is closer, her lighting is muddy and indistinct compared to the rest of the scene.) The other should be second brightest. The stripes and lightpoles aren't important and can be dirtied to make them less noticeable. I'd recommend cracking the roadbed so that it isn't flat and tilting those poles to help bring the viewer's eye where you want it. If it looks like the monster is ripping the road out from under her, the peril becomes more immediate and the connection between them more obvious. This is dangerous business, it ought to be more dynamic! Aiko's bedroom... why is she on tippytoes? (not balls of foot, the toes) Her shadow on the floor and tableskirt doesn't feel right and it looks like she is stepping on a leaf? Matching 3d images into a painted flat backdrop is very hard. Light color and intensity as well as direction have to match. Camera focal length has to match. I had to work with a Maya artist on one project and she was impossible to deal with, my figures were to go into her backgrounds, but she couldn't figure out what the camera focal length was and I went into fits trying to match by eye... among other problems. If you are going to work in the games industry, you have to be part of a team, and that means knowing what you are doing and how to communicate it. If you can fit your own figures onto your own backgrounds and scenes, you'll have an easier time fitting them into other people's scenes. I'd recommend upping the shadow map size on the main light source and changing your ambient color on the character's skin to something non-black. I use a dark purplish brown to make my people look alive. I like the overall colors in this scene... elegant. Not in my kitchen... her fist is at the same line as a cupboard: I'd raise her knuckles. Again, the focus is on the contrasted area (her skinsuit), but wouldn't you rather the viewer saw her face? Smile? Whatever she's holding? Look at the plants on the counters... if she was holding up an apologetic gopher (perhaps with dirty feet), you'd have a storyline going, and something to grab the viewer by the eyestalks. This could just as easily be a dust bunny, an alien, a kid's toy, just something to use as a hook. Again, change her skin's ambient so that she is a bit more alive and that will pull her colors together. View from a bedroom mirror. I rather like this. Different. Maybe you can replace the crayon with a mascara wand (we ladies do open our mouths when applying eye makeup), and given her lashes, that would make sense. However, with her teeth and lipstick being so bright, a lipstick tube might be better. IIRC, Jim Burton did a makeup kit, and the individual parts can be found in various freestuffs. We often use a small brush to outline the lips and then a tube of color to fill. I hope this helps, or at least gives you something to think about. Carolly