Still too busy to do more than race through the galleries and check the threads (selling/buying a new house and moving)...but I like this subject and the discussion it promotes. It does demononstrate where people are coming from and I think it does those new to art good to see the controversy and different points of view. It could prepare them for the ocassional nasty who just feels like making someone else miserable, and how to separate that from a genuine suggestion. Deagol, I admire your work, thus your opinion. I know far more about paint brushes than CG. With a pencil, I could tell a person how to correct something, a problem with layers, for example, would need to be pretty basic for me to even identify the cause. I would need to rely on someone like you to point it out-and PLEASE, add a solution! I would add something my father told me when I was in danger of getting my first bad grade: negative responses can be the quickest way of learning. The example was a guided missle tracking system (everytime it does NOT find the target, it adjusts its direction and tries again). He was a career Army officer, so what would you expect? Anyway, the result was I got a B in Trigonometry and no longer looked at negative feedback as personal or necessarily rejection. Just information, a signal to consider a different direction. Something to remember about praise from the Fractal community here: everybody adores fractals and can respect the work/expertise involved. In the world outside, it's mostly "what's a fractal?" So it wouldn't be realistic to expect the admiration to translate very well. So much for my $.50.