Well, looks like it could be interesting… you need to work on your lighting and render settings. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page
This site has some great info on both.
I also recommend working more on the character. Looks very unfinished. Suggest moving this into WiP…
I’m a big fan of that poem, which is written by Lewis Carrol. I think your pictore can be good if you work more with the ligth and maby on the background as well.
Major improvement! Of course now we see the jabr a little better.
A good way to make scales is to set up a texture for your model. The link I have earlier has info on materials and textures. Also look into the bump mapping info on that wiki site as well.
Bump or displacement mapping is very easy, if you know how. But it also requires lots of verts. LOTS. Subdivided 3 times with a detailed base mesh. Of course all the subdivision happens in the render, so it doesn’t really affect the file size that much. Your subdivision also has to be fairly “regular” if you want to apply a consistant scale texture. You can also try normal mappind, and spec mapping. Or all 3 together, as I do sometimes. You can make scales in photoshop, or gimp, or search the internet, or buy them. Turbosquid.com has some nice free scales.
cross-hatch shading… yep there’s a few tricks for that.
My favourite is to use toon shading, shading between black and white with no softness, and add a greyscale cross-hatch texture to the bumpmap (or normal map, as it’s sometimes called) . You could probably use the “magic” texture to create cross-hatching. I use the effect, with a rock texture, here
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