I saw a documentary once on R. Crumb, the underground comic artist - some of you may have heard of him ;-) Anyway he used to have a friend drive him around (he didn't drive) so he could sketch power lines, utility poles, transformers, etc. Stuff most people tune out when they are driving down the street because it's so ugly, but that is essential for realism. He had a whole sketchbook full of just that kind of stuff, so he'd have a reference when he needed to add it to an image.

These days he'd probably have a collection of cell phone antennas as well. Those things seem to pop up everywhere.

Unlike CD covers, wires are a devilishly hard problem. Hard to pose, they add lots of polys to a scene and slow down renders, all for detail that's barely visible in the final image and unsightly to boot. :-P

• Jimdoria  ~@>@