I also added a slight gaussian blur and some noise to the fur. I usually render a separate rim or kick light pass, but as fur can take ages to render (especially in high resolution) I chose to screen a copy of the fur pass, make it brighter with curves and mask the parts that didn't need enhancing.

I also tweaked some shadowed areas of the fur by creating a new layer and painted with a very soft brush and multiplied the layer on top of the bear. The compositing process for me was really a matter of experimenting and it was a fun process at that too. I did a lot of tweaking and even some minor painting and as a final touch I added the volume effect in Photoshop. I'm not going to go into too much detail now because otherwise this would turn into a novel, but you can take a peek into the comp here (Fig.09).


Once the image was almost done I tried out some variations on the color scheme (Fig.10). Though the variations may be slight it sealed my decision to follow through with the cyanish image on the bottom left. Now all there was left to do was to pump up the red of the ladybug to create more contrast and to add the volume light pass to add interest to the image (Fig.11).
 




To sum it all up, I had a great time making this image and it seems like I reached what I was aiming for, judging by the feedback. The hard work (rendering and compositing) took around three days and I then came back to the image on a few evenings to receive some critic and add the ladybug and the finishing touches.

Thanks for reading and I hope this was of some use to you! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.