Exploring the Ruins

The funny thing about this is that I have two other things that have been waiting to be finished for a few weeks and I started this yesterday. Anyway, I think this was worth it. So basically the idea behind this scene is Shiek exploring some ancient ruins in the forest. This was originally going to be Ganon's castle but then I started messing around with the textures and thought the mossy rocks/dirt/mud texture looked interesting. Then I added the hole in the ceiling and walls, along with some trees and leaves coming through and it became this. At that point, this took only about two minutes to render, but when I added the mist/fog to make the light rays, it was bumped up to almost a half hour. Finally, I added some Photoshop editing to make the colors a little more vibrant and I made the design on the door in Photoshop as well. Like I said before though, I think it was worth it as I really like how this turned out.