I tend to have a pretty long "think and procrastinate" stage - maybe 5-10 days, before actually starting an image. The images that I don't finish tend to stop in the blocking-out stage (where I am just putting 3d blocks into a scene file and moving them around to see how things would work out for POV or composition) and so don't take very many bryce hours at all - maybe a couple of hours for a fail. Once something gets past the blocking out stage, I tend to have a pretty tight idea of what I want to do in the picture these days and how to go about it, so it tends to get finished (maybe 90% of the finishes I am willing to show to people these days). As for time spent on the image, the pictures that I finish these days take ages - average seems to be about two months from start of work to posting. I tend to only do about 10 hours a week tops (excluding rendering time which can be done 24/7 if necessary) on 3d scene creation including modelling so its not really as bad as it sounds. Recently I've been working on projects one at a time due to a lack of remaining HDD space (20MB at time of posting my last image), but right now am planning on starting the next part 10/12 of my skel series, and devoting a bit of time to the challenge - actually have a challenge idea that may have a chance to render before August ;). Opps, an essay just appeared. Sorry.

Dreams are just nightmares on prozac...
Digital WasteLanD