If only I could favourite single pieces of artwork on here. A GREAT piece this, you should be proud! Personally I think the Steele and Balto concept would have only curdled the story, but I think that some parts of the sequels could have at least mentioned what happened to Steele after the epidemic. ^_^

I saw this on DA, it's awesome! I agree with natt though, for my snow, I use a simple feathered brush and turn on the pen pressure, then I do snow specks of snow to make it look "walked it"

No worries; I can wholly relate. XD Something that I've found about it over time, though, is that backgrounds look better when you take the time to draw the effects yourself--lighting, shading, and everything--rather than relying on filters or pre-build effects like I used to. Not to say that you do that, of course, but I have found that the more time I spend hand-drawing the little details in the background, the better it looks. Just like fur--as annoying as it can be to do, it looks much better if you sketch each hair than if you rely on a shortcut or texture of some sort. -nodnod-

Yes, I use a tablet and a similar technique. The snow that really get me is the snow thats on the ground, I'm still practising with backgrounds and elements of drawings that aren't the characters.

No problem! Yes, snow can be difficult. What often helps me is, rather than making uniformed lines, kinds of randomly dot my pen around in a particular direction, if that makes sense, and perhaps use Motion Blur in the direction that the wind is blowing. Of course, I don't know whether or not you have a tablet and that particular technique would be hard to do with a mouse, so...yeah. -shrug- Just a suggestion.

Thanks Nattikat ^^. The snow was a bit of a challenge and I kept stuffing it up. I think drawing snow hates me XD

This is actually really good! The only thing I'd suggest is not as soft a transition between the deep snow and the legs--the fade makes it look a little more like powder than snow--and perhaps more flurry-like snowflakes. Over all, though, a VERY nice photomanipulation!