I thought I'd better post one image out here to ping the world, since I haven't put anything up in a couple of months. Too many things going on: travel for vacation and work, plus I somehow managed to become a winner in the Illustrator's of the Future Contest. First time I entered it, too. (Been trying the Writer's contest for several quarters now, but I'm just getting to the quarter finals). Actually, given my relative skill compared to so many excellent artists on Renderosity, I was shocked to win. But then I considered the rules: you can't yet be a commercial artist to enter. So that limits the competition a bit. Plus I imagine there might be a lot less competition in the Illustrator's category than the better-known Writers contest. So if you're an amateur like me, try it: http://www.writersofthefuture.com/rules.htm#illus You could win $500, a shot for the five grand and a one week workshop. Anyway, here's the image. It's a rework of something I did well over a year back, plus a test of Greg Martin's tutorial for making stars: http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_star_field.html Thanks to drawbridgep for posting the link that led to that tutorials page. I took my Bryce image, masked it off and added the starfield that I created in Paint Shop Pro (Version 11.2 , from Corel now, - still too cheap to buy Photoshop, but I figured out how to translate just about all of the directions. Still have a lot of work to do on my technique, but now that I have my prize money and a gig I'm working on, I can better justify the time I spend on this again. Here's a very short story to go with it: --- Every so often an interstellar visitor passes the Solar System. In 2156, the comet HC36 passed just inside Neptune's orbit on a fast hyperbolic trajectory. With the last of the ramships in mothballs, Captain Rajiv Kumar and the crew of the Deep Cruiser Athena were dispatched to examine the alien clump of water and hydrocarbon ices. The comet itself was nothing really spectacular, but it was headed out towards Taurus, away from the Confederation. In defiance of the decades-old Ban on interstellar travel, the Athena's entire complement of one hundred and thirteen decided to stay on the speeding interstellar interloper. They dug out caves in the eleven by five by four kilometer rock-hard ice, leaving the sun behind, until it was nothing more than a cold bright star. It would be tens of thousands of years before their descendants would feel the warmth of another sun, but at least they would be free.