Excellent work! Just wondering about the smoke, did you add it on top of the image afterwards in lets say Photoshop? Or did you create it in blender with the smoke simulator? I haven’t tried out the smoke simulator yet so I don’t know if you can achieve such smoke with blender.
Top notch image! 
really nice nice work!
Wonderful character you’ve made there. Went even further with the detailed setup, lighting, texturing (“skin moist” looks realistic). Keep up the good work, 5* all right!
PS: Thought of a name for your character?
Wow, fish and Film Noir combined with style and artistry.
Of course I have the good taste to refrain from lame puns such as ‘Here’s lookin’ at you squid’. Or even ‘play it again, Salmon’.
Everything is really amazing in there: character, lighting & texturing (especially skin “moist” effect). Do you have any names in mind for your character? Would be hilarious throwing in a fishbowl with a scuba-diver inside!
Keep up the good work.
I hate to say it, but if the story is true then the scene should be under water.
or the fish is amphibious. in which case, maybe make it look wet?
(more moist than it is already)
The story teller in me appreciates the flooded map.
All in all very good, probably would have been better for me if i looked at the image first then the story
lmao this is so awesome. Pardon my “lmao” but the instilled look is wonderful, great job. He’s like, hey, you seen this fish??
impresive work
That’s awesome!! Great scene man
Impressive, very nicely done. Five stars and well deserved top row !
I love it!
First impressions:
• Background shows pixelation. Appears to be of a different resolution than foreground. What DOF technique are you using?
• I enjoy the retro look of it. A bit literal in the 1920’s detective cliché, but still interesting in contrast with the fish theme.
• Technologies such as the rotary telephone and paperclip must be a pain in the ass to use when you have fins instead of hands.
• Nice lighting!
• Nice smoke particle effects!
• Subtle attention to the bend of the cigarette adds personality.
• Eyeball bump maps and texture(vein) maps provide stimulating eye candy.
• Your textures (on lamp, fan, etc) are high quality and add a lot to the scene. Where do you find them?
• Is that the scene’s date at the bottom right? Shows context/setting. Good Easter Egg.
• Submerged future Los Angeles map in the background adds a fun touch for those paying attention!
• I appreciate that you played with the material of the ash tray and made it translucent instead of plain-old solid. Sometimes being realistic means adding more than what we would consider typical in day-to-day reality. Yet it’s still easy to comprehend what it is.
• Some of the objects are clearly planes (shirt collar for example) and adding some edge thickness via something like the Solidify Modifier would aid the believability.
• Excellent use of color throughout the piece.
• The best fish-to-human anthropomorphism I’ve seen since Muddy Mudskipper.
• Quadruple chin! Haha
• File cabinet categorization = “fishbone”. I think I’ll start using that naming convention.
Without analyzing further I’ll just say - Great work!
Both artistically and technically it leaves little to be desired.
Thanks for sharing this awesome/fun/inspiring piece of art!
Wonderful work! Always love images telling a story
Amazing. Stunning. Top Row. I very much hope that you win! The story, lighting, and materials blow me away. If there is just one thing that could be improved, I’d say that the hat cloth and suit demonstrate some texture stretching and kind-of-flat materials. But this image is still going straight to my Inspiration archive!!
The attention to detail has blown me out of the water. Every single aspect got your full attention - absolutely amazing work and so much fun to go over again and again. I think I see lipstick on one of the cigarette butts which is totally fish-noir! This is completely pro work. Congrats on all the accolades it gathers!
fish smoking underwater. Nice.:eyebrowlift2:
Tackle this guy some time?
Awesome! Nothing else to say
Absolutely brilliant! Funny, great storytelling, excellent modelling, texturing, rendering, just everything… as always from you.
Details, lightning, character and “little world” you created… all is awsome. Outstanding work Congratulations and good luck with further projects.
I really like how much attention was put into the whole of the scene…things like the fish skeleton label on the box with murder photo’s, or the map in the background that says Los Angeles, but looks more like Indonesia. The scene really tells the story. I would think you could even have asked people to say what they think it is about and a lot would have gotten it right from all the little clues like that.