Hi Clare - I think some of the same things that Paul and iDad pointed out also bother me. Here's how I would describe the problems:
1. The resolution of the unicorn and the girls is higher than the rez of the castle. In fact, to me, the castle stock is so rough looking, I suspect it was up-rez'ed from a lower resolution original.
When viewed at full rez, this resolution mismatch is obvious -- however, when viewed at lower rez, it gives a subliminal impression that something is wrong, but u can't immediately put your finger on it.
2. As iDad pointed out, the lighting on the girls doesn't match the overall lighting: it's too sharp edged, too directional, and the wrong color.
3. I can see how your overall colors are appealing, but, to my eye it's a bit too overcooked towards blue-magenta.
FWIW, I played with your image a bit, trying to suggest a direction to go. For example, to address the resolution mismatch, I selected out the girls and the unicorn, down-rez'ed them by 2x, and then up-rez'ed them by 2x to get back to their original size but a bit softened and rough looking. IMHO, at least this gives everything roughly the same look w.r.t. sharpness, removes some of the unusually sharp edges from them, etc.
WRT the lighting on the girls, I softened it, added some broad shadowing, and tried to remove a lot of the pink cast on them -- there has to be quite a bit of blue-green light bouncing around a scene like this. I also darkened them, but may have gone too far in this direction, especially on the lower girl.
Another change was that I added a touch of "Glamor Glow" to the whole image. This is an old favorite trick of mine that usually helps blend elements together and adds a bit more drama to the lighting.
Finally, I felt it looked better with a dark border.
It's quite different from yours, but I'll be interested to see what you think. You won't see much difference when comparing the in-line previews, but the changes are more obvious when inspecting them at full rez.
BTW, IMHO, there are also some compositional choices that you may also want to consider:
1. IMHO, unless there is a good reason, I don't usually like people and animals looking in the direction of the nearest edge. For example, the unicorn looks like he couldn't care less about the girls or whatever's going on, and the upper girl is dying to get home with her prize orb. LOL. I think I would prefer the unicorn pointing to the right and the upper girl pointing to the left. I know this would wreak havoc with the current lighting if you just flipped these pieces, but you might want to think about this.
2. I know this is kinda silly, but I keep wondering about the lower girl. It looks like her next step is going to give her problems. It looks like her only choice is to take an unrealistically big step down, and this gets back to the question about the implied story line -- what exactly is going on here?
Anyway, as you know, I'm not a fantasy composite sort of guy, so I suggest u take my comments with the largest grain of salt u can find.
Cheers,
Tom
