so i took a long time on this since I've been messing around with the dynamics in maya. It was requested that the bkg be a volcanic/burned lands sort of look and I though of drawing it but it got boring (plus there weren't enough refs i thought were good enough) so i jumped into maya and proceeded messing with the fluid effects. I have to say, lava is easy to do in theory,, but executing it correctly on the first try is tough. or maybe it's just me.

Done in photoshop and maya 9