What you reckon?

I reckon it's quite good.  Did you actually use B&W textures? Or was the render at least desaturated afterwards?

The only thing that bugs me is the sky... I can't quite put my finger on what though.  Maybe it's too soft?  Or maybe the image itself should extend a TINY bit more upwards?  Also the texture on the shirt looks a wee bit stretched on the boob.

Other than that it looks great to me.  The roughness on the leopard texture is perfect. And the feathers are quite good for no post work.

I especially like the rock formations in the foreground.

The sky is the only thing that has some saturation, i think... unless my eyes play tricks on me... that might be whats buggin bout it?

Ray is right about the sky, I just can't get it to lose all it's colour in bryce. and I did try hard.

The rock formations are part of the rock stack from Daz.

All done in bryce. and yes its grey scale textures, mostly from the tex editor. I altered the leopard tex to try make it look like a snow leopard and then desturated that in PS before applying it, the dress  texture I made as black and white. Quite a challenge actually, making them, but fun. The jacket is the original texture that came with it, its an old model, actually meant for V2, but fit V3 quite well.

I am going to postwork it, probably to a sepia look, which should even out the sky (I hope)

Ah yeah, that's probably what's bothering me about the sky.  It sort of jumps out because of its hue.

Oh yeah, the sky is MUCH better with post work.  I'm not sure about the white fade-out frame though.  Seems to take away from the image.  Perhaps adding a gradiant linear or radial fade to the sky/background area only would have a better effect.

I didn't really want to comment ('cos I'm not really qualified to do so), but I have a problem with this pic that has nothing to do with textures, but with composition. There's something about the composition that grates on me, but I've not really been able to pin it down so far.

My thoughts so far have been:

"There's the leopard, with it's wondrous eye (obvious centre of focus), staring out of the picture at ... errm.. something or other...errm..  backtrack."

"There's the girl (fairy?), errm slap-bang in the middle, also looking out of the picture, ... errm.. partially eclipsed by a leopard who is looking out of the picture at....."

At this point I stopped looking before I became schizophrenic (no offense intended to any schizophrencs watching this thread..)

Sorry, but IMHO, it doesn't quite work for me.I can't understand what the picture is supposed to portray, and my eye wanders all over the place.

The leopard leads the eye in from the left; then there's a conflict. Out of the scene, following the leopard's eye-sight? Or up/down to view the girl, which also ends up leading the eye out of the scene.

I'm no master of composition (I'm not even particularly good at at), but would hesitantly try offering the following suggestion (and a bit of  hassle it would be..):

Try moving the girl/fairy to the right a bit, so she's a bit more distanced form the leopard. Then change the pose of the girl (Yeah, I know, big hassle, having to go back to Poser and all that) and change her pose so that she's looking much more toward's the leopard's head.....

Of course, the BIG problem with my idea is that it probably won't work, and then you've wasted several hours to gain no advantage:-((

But I had to suggest it, none-the-less...

Cheers,
Diolma

(Oh, and BTW, yes it looks a LOT better in sepia..).. :-))

I am afraid I must agree with diolma, the leopard conflicts with the fae in terms of composition - one or the other has to be the primary focus of the image. Right now both demand that attention. I would try pushing the figure back a bit and visually placing it 1/4 of the way in from the LH side of the image. I would then experiment with the leopard so that the eye starts at the figures head moves down the figure to the leopard and then across the image to the right along the leopards action line.

I have to explain that most of the latest images I have done are fun type, sort of educational images for a 6 year old, who is into fairies  (aren't all 6yr old girls?).

Whoo-hoo!!!

That's MUCH better, chohole!!!! (At least, it is to my unpractised eye.)

Well done.

Cheers,
Diolma

(Who is breathlessly waiting for leopard to pounce on the poor defenceless rodent - then look back to check with mistress to see if it can be eaten, or has be let go...)

Nicely improved. I'm getting in late here, but I think the real problem with the original was there wasn't any interaction between the figures. They were just in the same scene. Now you can sense the relationship between them. I think that was what missing in the first go.

Much better, love the third figure!