Yes I know it's Tim's and I already got his permission to submit this in the contest. Thanks for the info anyway. :) I think I have the lighting fairly close. His painting seems to have it coming from 2 different directions but I'm happy with mine. You are correct that the dragon will be metaballs and some primitives. If I can I'll make him posable as well but not too sure about that, we'll see how hard it is or how well it poses after I'm finished. So you see I'm truly trying to challenge myself here and trying new things. I'll tell you so far I have learned a lot just from this one pic. Thanks for the suggstion of the dragon head but the ship file is already 17 MB and climbing and I still have rigging and people to put in it. Needless to say I'm trying (not doing a very good job :) ) of keeping the size down a bit and don't think I'll have time to model that anyway. Just the basic scene without the dragon and boat is taking 2 hours to render. This render is after 3.5 passes but gives you an idea of the lighting and all.