Grass in particular is a difficult thing to get right in any 3D package without either using some kind of modified fur effect, or modeling the grass blades yourself and duplicating/instancing/whatevering them to fill up the scene, so don't feel too bad about that.
The Duff logo treatment looks very nice, although I noticed the individual elements seem to be spaced differently than in the 2D original (i.e. the white rectangle is covering up the "point" of the darker red portion of the background, the word "BEER" is higher up from the bottom).
In the first pic, I noticed the top bit of the streetlamp appears to be solid glass; when you're comfortable enough to be making your own models, it'll help to simply follow reality's example as closely as necessary in this case, what you'd want to do is model the
inside surface of the glass cover as well as the outside, so it appears to be the hollow shell it is instead of a solid blob (then you can put a light bulb inside it, etc.). I assume, though, that because this was your first render you were making use of stock objects. As for the textures, I also noticed that the grouting (or whatever it's called) in between the stones looks like it's sticking up past the stones themselves, judging by the shadows, so you'd probably want to just invert the bump map there.
Anyway, you're off to a good start! Keep on keepin' on!
from this
