Looks a bit like one of my car designs ^^

Grouping an element won't avoid intersecting. Make sure that the emitter mesh is not crossing any other surface.

When I talk about black or white that's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know what software are you using to render, but you have to check that the color assigned to, for example, the wall, is more like a very light gray or beige, and not white (RGB 255,255,255) that does not exist in nature.

Also, depending on the rendering software you are using, you can use a higher preset, or an unbiased.

maybe the emisive mat is intersecting other geometry.
Are your blacks 100% black and whites 100% white? If so, make it 95% or so
Also the tv looks too bright. If it is emiting, lower its value

@thomthom said:

If a client expects a render for $20 - then walk away. If anyone questions your rate, explain how you need to charge per hour spend like in every other profession. If they don't understand that - walk away, they are not dealing with you professionally. Spend your valuable time on finding good clients instead.

That sounds logical (and fair), but the problem comes when you live in a city with more than 20% of unemployment, where besides, the few jobs available are for bartenders and shop asistants.
Then when you find a client, they expect to see you crawling for that "small job", and if you don't someone will be more than happy to take the job for whatever he can charge...

I think you can get this result with layers in the gimp or photoshop. Yo make a realistic render and overlay a line drawing from sketchup.

Hi jgb
I made it kind of tileable -with a lot of repetitions the pattern is too evident -
but it doesn't look like carbon fiber.
There are a lot of already tiled textures if you make a search on google
http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ESES335&=&q=carbon+fiber+map+tileable&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1408&bih=920
Also you can find one in cgtextures

If you need stills, maybe sculptris could help you, but it depends on the model you are working with. You will need a lot of subdivisions, export in triangles and is betther with organic forms.

It works with shaders and I've seen a couple of them that look toonish. This is one that I used, but you can find a lot more or create your owm.

Well I have a (poor) salary and no matter how many models and images I complete in a month, I earn the same.
Sometimes I have to work against the clock, sometimes I have a week for something very simple. But, of course, my job is not always about modeling/rendering...
If I do something freelance, I'm also lost when they ask me how much, and I think I tend to ask for less than I should

Yay!!! short but nice

And thanks for that video. You work fast even at a normal video speed

Explode the image and draw directly in it