The year that is running out saw two anniversaries. I made this picture in January to celebrate one of them. Original text from www.imagine3d.org follows (minus a couple of smileys). ---------------------------------------------------- Time flies, and so do satellites, spaceships and comets. I'm about to turn fifty. I have known for a while that I was born in the year when people all over the world looked up and realized there was something Russian up there that beeped (translation: Sputnik One), but somehow it didn't occur to me to combine the two facts. We're looking back at fifty years in space, folks. So it hasn't been a continous presence, but half a century is worth celebrating either way. Anyway, here's my little tribute, or perhaps it's a mockery. What I do know is that it's a glaring anachronism. Calvin was probably born in the eighties or nineties, and Spaceman Spiff is still in the future. You'd have to tie some major knots in the timeline for either of them to encounter Sputnik 1 on their journeys. But that's what imagination is for. This is kind of a multiplatform render with material from several sources. The Sputnik is from Celestia Motherlode; I painted the antenna holders black and chromed the rest. That should be pretty close to the real thing according to the first handful of photos I could scare up. Spiff and his saucer are from Aminet; I just added the surprised expression you can see in the full size picture if I'm lucky. The comet is a Poser freebie from Content Paradise. After some unsuccessful attempts to convert the comet to an .iob I gave up, rendered the comet in Poser and used it as a backdrop in Imagine. The galaxy is a backdrop that came with the comet package. A backdrop for the backdrop if you like. The whole scene is brightly illuminated by a standard lightball. I've got to learn to use that program some day.