Nice job, I'd fix the shadow though - maybe add a bit of blur and have a play with different blending modes.

He's chunky chubby!!! good luck author

Ya iam agree with RayTedwell..
apply guassin blur and change blending mode to mutiply or overley
than it's natural to see i think.......

Using only three legs is a clever idea, but at the moment it looks like the leg is on his left side, which suggests that he's missing a leg instead of being naturally 'compact' The leg should appear to be in the middle, between where the two legs would be. That, of course, is quite a complicated thing to achieve, so maybe the original 4 leg design or a 2 leg design, that way the anatomy doesn't look odd. I also agree with the above, play around with the shadows until you can get a more realistic outcome.

Again, good idea and nice implementation... great work

Thanks for the suggestions! Actually shadow was slightly blurry, but now I applied blur filter a bit more...
@ ponti: sorry if you thought lion has only 3 legs! It has 4 legs, it's hidden by other leg, but paw is visible.

the shadow is really distracting. work on that and you'll have something

@elficho: how do I have to work on the shadow, if the original one is something like that? I just tried to reproduce it... Pls, take a look and you'll understand what I mean.

i think you misunderstood me.. the shadow is about the same as the original, but it was done too quickly and it doesn't really look realistic. look at the detail on the original. now look at yours. also the part you don't see in the source looks kinda weird. anyway, good luck!