Well, here’s my latest work. It’s not great, I know, but I’m still quite happy with the results :o . f course, feel free to criticize (surely there’ll be a lot of that 
).
PS You will notice that there’s something missing there - I’ll come back to this and add it when I have more time and less stress (university is a weird place… )
Looks good, I think its a good start to a really nice scene. Once thing that sticks out to me straight off is the paper. The text should have pencil pressure marks and be indented where the writing happened. And less uniformly flat and less pristine. Just my thoughts though.
You will notice that there’s something missing there
the string for the tea bag? lol
make the paper curled on the edges or something… i had a similar one i this… i subdivided the paper (pretty hectically) and went into sculpt mode and set the strength to low and the brush size to high and went crazy over it… and then smoothed it everywhere… it worked nicely…
nice pencil texture! it just looks like its made of gold
oh and the first thing i asked myself when i saw this was “why are there ripples?”
normally things dont ripple. atleast not by them selves… so maybe zoom the camera out and add an open window with curtains flying (use the cloth sim and a wind thingy) or make a fist (good luck 
) slamming the table… or just take the ripples out 
the string for the tea bag? lol
Well, to be honest - I never used Curve modifier before, and it’s just too troublesome for me to make this string just by modelling mesh. When I tried to apply the modifier to a cylinder to make the string bend like that on a teabag, it went crazy - twisting and scaling :o
I also tried applying some irregularities to the paper - though the result aren’t nice (yet?). Besides, I dunno how to make bump/normal maps, and increasing normal value of the text texture only makes things worse.
nice pencil texture! it just looks like its made of gold
Do I sense sarcasm in there? It was meant to look like the paint that some pencils are covered with… :o Guess it failed 
normally things dont ripple
Considering the fact that went to a all-maths-and-physics school, I know that. I just thought that someone could have just (like 2 seconds before the scene) put the glass down, so that the ripples caused by this action are still visible. Besides, I thought it would look better than plain surface… :o
(like 2 seconds before the scene) put the glass down, so that the ripples caused by this action are still visible. Besides, I thought it would look better than plain surface… :o
make the liquid slosh out of the side a bit and maybe some movement on the teabag string. usualy when you set something down you dont set it strait down, its usually slightly from the side. maybe spill some on to the paper a bit, use the sculpting Idea gregzaal sugested for the water drops on the paper.
To make the string would actually be very easy. No curve modifier needed! Just add a bezier curve and set it to 3D and bevel a bit (not the bevel modifier, its an option in the curve’s properties). Oh and make sure ‘front’ and ‘back’ are off too. I’ll show you a screenshot when I fix my pc, and only if you need it 
It looks nice, especially the mug and liquid, but the textures are too low-res and the shadows are too dark.
not that great!! what are you talking about this is great.
I wish my images are as nice as this.
@hiyatran its good, but its definitly not that good - its too simple to be brilliant, there needs to be more detail. Higher res textures and some thing to add interest to the picture, like sloshing liquid or something.
Is there AO enabled here? the shadows are very dark…
and if i were a super critter, i’d say that its hard to tell what kind of perspective there is because of the plain grey table - there should be some random objects maybe or just a different table texture… but this is definitly a good start
the shadow on the pencil is too harsh and dark compared to the one on the cup regardless of transparency, IOR, translucency blah blah blah… anyways… great model, lighting could be a tad better but overall, well done… 2-3/5