you said; Unfortunately it is about exactly how much you do, and what you make it mean in the end of the day. Obviously effort accounts for somthing. If someone puts a lot of effort into an artwork, makes everything from scratch, spends hours and hours making an object polygon by polygon, rigging their character, animating.. whatever... it shows patience, and a clear understanding that this artist took an idea in his/her head, and paved the way untill the vision was complete. bull pucky- crap is crap- even if you make all the crappy pieces yourself. it's the eye- some have it- some don't tools don't mater- just end results a hundren years from now they'll look back at the beginings of photon art (hehehe) and call some of us the Masters of our age.