Advice for a Newbie

[Alecthar]

First of all, thanks for the encouragement and the advice.

I'm having some trouble getting the Shadow Drop stairs to look right. I'll fiddle with it till it works, though I think I'll end up using some gradients regardless, so that the first step doesn't look so odd.

I understand the idea behind the cloud masks, but right now I'm having trouble putting things together that don't look like I put some oddly textured fog over something else.

Edit: I put something else together. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of dropping shadows and bump mapping a bit. The pool of blood texture needs some work, but overall I think it's pretty serviceable. I tried a little wave filter on some clouded shades of red, I'd love to here about anything I can do to make it look better.