I built this in cycles and have been working hard on it for a while think its about time to get some external advice. Its a picture of some pyramids (with an Egyptian Temple on the side) along with a UFO flying into a wormhole depicting the joke of the aliens being the builders of the pyramids. Any suggestions/critiques?
It’s a good start, IMO. The sand is a bit strange though. I think it has too much texture in it. Assuming that the Pryamids are suppposed to life sized, that the sand you see in the front would be boulders.
Ok I think the sand looks a lot better now, I hope you agree.
Is the temple on the far right taking the attention away and detracting? Im considering taking it out because I think that it might be.
Hmm, Maybe try adding some sort of texture to the pyramids, as they seem to have just normal default colour at the moment. Also maybe try experimenting with the size of the sand (maybe even decrease it slightly). Also maybe do something with the wormhole. Maybe add some effects around it like lightning or something. Try looking at some wormhole references, it will really help :P. & I think the temple looks fine as it is so I don’t think you will need to do anything on it. But yeah! Keep experimenting on various parts of the scene to get the best out of it 
Ok thanks for the advice. I actually do have a texture on the pyramids right now but its way to small to see at the sample number and size I set it to, but ill play with the size a little. Ill play with the sand a bit more. Also I did look at some reference photos but all of them were in space and didnt give the best help, but ill keep working on it.
Thanks,
Eagleflyer
I think if you made it so the “opening” of the wormhole was facing the camera more and the UFO was not yet in the wormhole but flying towards it it might look better IMO.
ok Ill try that. But sorry I dont have the best computer in the world and for some reason blender keeps crashing so it takes a while to make the updates. :o
Ok I changed the sizes of the textures on the pyramids and the sand just a little and experimented with that idea of adding something around the wormhole though I dont think I could do lightning, maybe it would just be better off without it. What do you guys think?
Change the background. The current one has too big of a contrast when compared to the rest of the scene.
Look at some images of pyramids. You should use a displacement texture to give them the faults and blocks a pyrimid has. It will add a lot to the scene. The easiest way to do it would be mixing a brick texture and a noise texture. It looks like you have a bump map (maybe) but you should also have it displace the mesh. Add a few levels of simple subsurf, and then the displacement modifier.
The wormhole looks very out of place. If you keep it, it needs to have post-processing blur effects (look into render layer or object index compositing).
And the background should be different. I like the sand much better in the last render, but it might benefit from subsurface scattering.
If you do those, I think the temple will look great there. It’s mostly the contrast between the rest of the scene (low detail pyramids, flat background) and the very well defined temple.
The wormhole should throw some blue light (and shadow) onto the scene.
I think there are too many clouds. It’s a desert after all. Try a dark, but uniform evening sky (it would also put more attention onto the wormhole).
Some people, looking stunned into the sky, would be good.
Think about image composition. Try putting the main objects (front pyramid, wormhole) into a better place (eg. 1/3 of the image). Try putting something in the foreground (might be some stone, people, or the viewer could look through the gate of another temple).