How I did it. Basically, I am just telling you what I used to achieve the pictured result. Pixel painting or digital painting is what I call my method of doing digitals. The airbrush set at lower settings of opacity and hardness can be used to apply some of the shadows in the larger areas, then blended with the smudge tool. But, the detail is always achieved by painting pixel by pixel.
Dimension is achieved by the use of a midtone, shadow and highlight.
Start with the middle color first, then add the shadow and last the highlights. Thank you Candeekis for sending me the texturizer filter. It worked wonders to give the animals life. The fire tube is from Hoods . The Noah's Ark is copyrighted by Christen Hayes and was scanned from an ironon pattern book.