http://i.imgur.com/6qJXR5k.png

Thank you very much!

Keep at it whenever you've got the time and the interest. Don't force yourself if you really don't want to or can't think of anything. It will get tedious and grueling sometimes even when you do want to do something. The trick (other than eye-candy tricks like what I've mentioned before, which I see you use some of those as well) is to find time to just play with the program a little.

Doesn't matter if you don't complete anything with that session. Just play with things and learn. Play with scenebuilding, HWM left and right sliders for expressions, custom posing with either the default bip rig or the rig_biped_simple rig. Learn as much as you can from this ass-backwards outdated Source engine render/animation software, kick it in its backwards ass and you'll just keep getting better as you punch the clock on your hours.

Your composition's pretty good. Try more background scene-building; even if you've got a nice DOF, sometimes adding more than the dude & the dude's loadout helps. Granted with loadout posters it makes sense but I really like that Spy poster where there's a Sniper and a Spy running in the background, that sort of makes it feel balanced in the sense of there is life other than the dude & the dude's loadout. Like crates, barrels, a dumptruck, more dead people - experiment around with that.

This was my early work when I started in 2013.
This is some of the most recent stuff that I've done now.

I've got more hours in SFM than I do TF2, clocking in at 4400+ and still adding hours as I type this. I relied a lot on Photoshop when I first got started because a) I didn't know SFM's UI at all and b) would have been a shame to waste the Visual Communications ACA for PS CS6 that I just graduated with. Did not learn about adjusting FOV or importing the stock animations until like a year later, and there's still things I'm learning about SFM to this day. (Like I just learned during Tip of the Hats that you could go first-person with the lights I do not pay attention or watch enough tutorials.) Eventually Photoshop stopped being as big of a crutch as it was, I've begun using it sparingly for super-imposing & post-processing after I became familiar with shit like material override strings.

Within SFM, some easy eye-candy tricks I like using that other people use are tilted cameras, DOF, rimlights & volumetric lights. Post-processing in Photoshop, I usually tend to toss on a soft filter with subtle diffuse glow, then a levels contrast boost & a subtle vignette. Sometimes I'll fiddle with selective colour or saturation/vibrance. A very miniscule amount of surface blur does wonders for all the grainy stuff (though it kills some fine facial details every now and then).

Sometimes a lot of post-processing goes into non-TF2 shit. Here's some Overwatch, Frozen & Mirror's Edge renders I did with my Before & After processes.

I collect a lot of models and props to jerry-rig together or reskin, so a couple of people have called me SFM's Dr. Frankenstein. Otherwise, I want to make things that I want to see, that I think people want to see more of, or don't want to see at all. If it doesn't exist and I want it to exist, that means I have to make it. That's probably one of the reasons that I wanted to do promotion for competitive TF2 once I had a taste of what competitive TF2 was.

http://i.imgur.com/AvvAaIX.png

Will this mean you will you be helping Korea on their conquest towards solidifying TF2 as an eSport this i58?

http://i.imgur.com/f9iQVZY.png

http://56.media.tumblr.com/5b904f4b05b781ab19e37b6d0580c660/tumblr_inline_nubhtvqaCF1qmgobz_500.png

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https://mcakins.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/chips-challenge.jpg

http://www.abandonwaredos.com/public/aban_img_screens/jilljungle-4.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/RRKdCVZ.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXIP2RNUAAACCG0.jpg

Got Frosty on Christmas God bless America.

http://i.imgur.com/TL9GoFb.png

classic

http://i.imgur.com/oV6aF1T.png

??????? There definitely could be more.

EDIT: nvm probably template, see pazer's post below

http://i.imgur.com/vd2d5Zk.png

http://i.imgur.com/xZivF35.png

http://i.imgur.com/TCdw9re.gif