Fish! process part 3/3

After finishing sketching in part 1 and modelling in part 2...

Step 6: Putting the scene together
Here's what my final scene looked like before rendering:

i used a Free Form Deformer (FFD) to bend the fish body and fins (i couldn't get good results with the Bend Deformer) and added a Stick Texture Tag so the texture matches up with the deformed body.

i added random ice chunks by first modelling a single ice chunk, putting it into an Emitter, applying Current State to Object, and manually tweaking the positions of the ice chunks.

Here are a few of the scenes i tested out. With the help of my professor, i settled on a strong red light in the back to bring out the effects of Subsurface Scattering at the fins. My professor also advised be to add a cool light on one side and a softer, warm light to offset the cold one. A weak environment fog and depth of field were also used to soften the background elements a bit:

Step 6: Final image
In Photoshop, i tweaked the contrast and added a glow to the proteins. I also did the mock journal cover layout in Photoshop (yes, i probably should've used Illustrator, i know :P)
Only AFP was rendered separately and brought into Photoshop because using C4D's depth of field killed the (not very attractive anyway) glow.

Here is the final product!

Will be doing process posts for my surgical and neuro illustrations soon!