A Paladin using Greywulf's tutorial

I went for something a little more traditional this time.  Again the Paladin shows up in the Freya outfit, but with different textures.  This is Victoria 4, morphed to be overpoweringly strong with full Aiko morphs (I suspect a Strength of 18 to 20).

Since I didn't get the painterly essentials that Greywulf used, and the background was already taken with good depth of field, I have chosen to just try to do pretty much replicate the last steps in his tutorial.  What I did was use the background photo as pure background, rendered the render with a light setup that matched the background, and proceeded to load it into photoshop and photoshop away.

I first copied the background layer.  Next, I went to filters -> blur -> radial blur and made sure that the blur was of good quality.  I then also made sure that there was a spin on it at a rating of ten.  I applied it and then made the upper layer at 55% transparency.  This gave it a misty and dreamy effect (different than using a z-Depth layer).  I finally played with the Saturation settings to get a more painterly look but not too much as it would ruin the background.

I wondered if I were ready to post on the CGsociety, or if I'm getting close.  The CGsociety has best renders on display, as they have artists who are dedicated to their craft.