Right so let's take a look at it. If you don't want this in the thread just PM me and I'll send it in PM and delete the post.
To start with, it's a very nice looking background. Got some great interesting textures in there and it's in the darker hues/values so it works well as a background (and not the white flimsy colours I have used in some earlier backgrounds - shame on me
).
Now my main concern is - even though the entire scene is on fire, there is a staggering (no pun inteded) lack of highligts from this fire on the characters. Light from behind is never easy to work with, but it would still create some highligts on what you see in the foreground. Also I don't know if it's you or WMV that applied shadows on the cat, but the cat is on fire. The cat itself would be a lightsource and hardly a place to introduce shadowing. If you wanted to shadow on it, you would have to do it on the armor or face.
Did a very confusing marking chaos on your image:
First of: the light blue around the borders of the character and creatures, would be the highligt from the background. Where it's more intense, the highlight would be intense, since metal reflects light harder than skin and leather. Feathers can also be fairly reflective, but definitively not as intense as metal. If you want to apply these highlights, control click the layer to load the selection (can't remember if you work with Photoshop or GIMP, but in Photoshop you can do this), and then you can paint with a soft brush around the edges. This will ensure you don't paint highligts on the background, and only on the renders.
The red pretty much just marks where the shadows on the cat seem to be wrong.
Dark blue shows that the cat itself is a lightsource and would shed light on the character/Staghelm as it would also affect its surroundings.
I hope this helps.
- Soko