This animation, how long will it be and what will be the basic premise? Is is the ship sailing the open sea or is it a part of the sinking?
As for your renders,it would be interesting to adjust the lighting to more accurately reflect conditions the night of the sinking. I understand the night was nearly pitch black, with no stars visible.
It would be interesting to see what was actually visible from the lifeboats after the power failed and the ship had split in two. (although from an artistic standpoint, there's little to recommend this approach - and I suppose I could just copy your image and retouch in Photoshop to get the same visual). So much for that idea.
If you were to animate the sinking, there's a lot of new information that's come to light since Cameron's movie, as you probably know: namely, that the ship buckled from the bottom up. This would be a good topic for you to do, a revision of what we saw in the '97 film. Considering that Cameron used traditional models more than he used 3D animation and CG, a 100% computer-created sinking might also make a good demo reel for you (if you're trying to find a job in this field - but your compositing skills would also need to be pretty good).
Just my two cents. Keep up the excellent work.
