Very clean work, looks quite realistic. Well done!

Excellent job! The tutorial may not instruct this, but if you put a smaller and slightly darker shadow directly under the saucer it will really help the realism. Nice work.

Very well done. Excellent following of the tut and super finished image.

woooowwww .. that's my cup of tea.... well done author...

Fantastic reproduction of great tutorial...well done author and well done Anoop for creating this priceless tutorial...GL

You almost need a third owl to balance the effect (and since you have the ability I would turn the owl to LOOK INTO the image and not off the page.. old newspaper layout rule LOL..).. the middle finger got slammed pretty hard in the masking process.. but it's only visible in the high res... Your overall design is quite nice... (watch the distort when enlarging the OWL.. hold down the shift key when resizing.. his head is a tad bit squished... Puppet Warp would be best but gentle liquify and/or warp can work as well... (when repeating the same image it's important to alter the images slighty so they don't look like perfect clones.. unless that is your goal then go for it...

Good Luck Author.. and welcome to PXLeyes

Thank you so much for your feed back......the best way to learn in my book......i will try to look at it again if time allows. Thanks for your welcome.......must say entering my first contest made me quite nervous :0 lol

Your color tones are a bit off, with your tree somewhat yellow and sickly looking, and the hand too pale. You can (if you wish) correct both of those with Image>Adjustments>Selective color, choosing yellow adjustments for the tree (increasing the cyan and decreasing the yellow) and the reds (slightly increasing the magenta and black) if you have the hand and tree on separate layers.
Your overall composition is somewhat compromised because you have the background lighter areas too large, resulting in a whitish "halo on the RH side of the sickly tree, and too much light above the hand on the LH side. This subtly pulls the focus outwards.
The owls are also now a bit too large and distracting within the overall image.

A very nice tutorial you found, the effects used can be applied to many other types of images.

Thank you MossyB for your feed back, have made a few adjustments along the lines suggested.

Ooooh! MUCH better!
Now you've improved upon the tutorial with the sky behind the owls, and the eye is drawn to the tree, and then moves around the image.

Nice work.

Looks good, not sure about the green bit on the palm.

Thank you MossyB I agree that it looks much better now with the changes, the feedback was so appreciated.

Welcome and nice finished image!

Nice work, the message is strong. Very effective use of texture

great work...gl

nice again

Fascinating and great work ... it looks quite "real" if a pie chart of water without anything spilling out can look real! Seriously though ...nice image.

Cheers for your comments. Thought about putting some spillage in but decided against it.

this is very good...I'm gonna try that tutorial

Thought I should re-comment to let you know I wasn't suggesting you needed spillage! Definitely ... no spillage ... it is perfect without! The clean edges really add to the whimsy of the image. I love the clean lines and only mentioned it because I liked that about it .

Now THIS is cool!!! I would have never thought of manipulating an image in this way. GL!

Author, by far this is one of your best.

Nice slice

very nice work author...gl

lovely one! i like the colors!!

Agree with Nisha ... love the colours and great work

Awesome work, more highlights on it's edges( like in the tut) would make the cube stand out nicely.

Many thanks to all for the suppport!

very very nice piece...gl

hmmm, not sure if the photos from NASA are according to the rules. did you get permission from NASA? also, as far as i remember. unless rules were changed. no premium images and such, can be used. i could be wrong on that 2nd one.

NASA images are .gov, so they are considered public domain, I believe...
From the NASA website:
"NASA still images; audio files; video; and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format, generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video, audio, and data files used for the rendition of 3-dimensional models for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits, computer graphical simulations and Internet Web pages. This general permission extends to personal Web pages.

This general permission does not extend to use of the NASA insignia logo (the blue "meatball" insignia), the retired NASA logotype (the red "worm" logo) and the NASA seal. These images may not be used by persons who are not NASA employees or on products (including Web pages) that are not NASA-sponsored.

NASA should be acknowledged as the source of the material except in cases of advertising. See NASA Advertising Guidelines."

But I agree, that a "premier" tutorial that can't be publicly seen shouldn't be allowed...Just like tutorials in a book can't be used, because those without the book can't see the tutorial...

Without the tutorial to compare to, it looks like your exploding moon is wonky.

"Find any tutorial on the internet and follow it (and possibly give it your own interpretation). Don't forget to mention the tutorial you interpreted."
NASA has been credited. See my description I posted the link to the tutorial. You may not have total access to the detailed tutorial, however you can plainly see the jest of it. MossyB, you are certainly entitled to your opinion about my moon, mighty strange remark considering you also have an entry in this contest....

That Image of the Day on the NASA site has been a bookmark of mine for a long time, Dragoncide, those images ARE ok to use on this site, or for non-commercial purposes, as MossyB states. As far as this particular tut, yes, it's frustrating if you're not a member, but the images and video that they DO show should be enough for an artist to come up with something like they show. Author, you've done a very commendable job here, looks good to me! SBS is well done also.

nicely done

i wasnt sure about the image being legal or not. thanks for the clarification everyone. it is a fantastic image. and still i must say is very unfair for everyone else who wish's to learn how to do such a thing. but as the rules do say yes your results are very on par.

Dragoncide, I do understand what you are saying. You too can become a premium member, there is lots of cool stuff there.

will you buy me a premium membership? =D

The tutorial had a highlighted simple planet to make contrast with the dark moon, and a saturated sky (meaning very blue, even if space is black) to make contrast with the gray exploding moon.
Even if this was not explained in the tutorial ( i can only guess, i don't know) - these tricks create the point of interest, the equilibrium of the image, so that the exploded moon really stands up.
In many tuts the authors don't explain this stuff, either cause they think it's obvious and well known, either cause it's in their blood and don't realize when they're doing it. But you should pay attention to these details - you can't really learn skills from others, but you can steal them ..

whatever...

Just trying to help, not to criticize or anything, it's a good attempt.