Thank you, Renderosity and everyone who voted, for giving me such an awesome Christmas present! I ran straight into my kids' room that morning and woke them all up by squeeing and whispering loudly, "I won!" They have almost forgiven me, now, for what they are calling Christmas Contest Coronaries ;-) Thank you, thank you, thank you! (And a big thank you to my spouse-who-does-not-complain when I buy content and hunch over my computer for hours, and is, in fact, supportive of my hobby in every way, and my friend-who-shall-remain-nameless (yes, you, Snoo!) who got me started on Daz by saying, many Christmases ago, "Look! Look what this program can do! ...and it's free!" Yeah, right... :-D ) Created in Daz 4.10, with postwork in Photoshop As the time begins to fly before Christmas preparations and the to-do list just seems to get longer, my youngest confided in me that the elves have to work all the time, too, to get everything done in time for Christmas Eve. I immediately imagined red-eyed elves hunched over worktables, drinking high-test coffee, struggling to finish all the toys and deal with the last minute issues that invariably crop up. Then, finally - the last eye painted on a doll, the last wheel screwed into a toy train - and it's off everyone goes to snatch a little sleep before the big night. Every elf needs to be on hand for the last-minute loading of the sleigh, getting the reindeer harnessed... there's a lot of work before Saint Nicholas takes off on his flight! This poor guy slept through his alarm ( I feel immediate kinship with him), and the train has already taken all his fellows back to Santa's workshop. He has no choice now but to slog through the winter gale in order to make it there in time, so he begins the grueling trek with a glint of determination in his eyes. This took a couple of evenings to lay out - I rarely have uninterrupted work time, so I'm guessing it was three or four hours over the course of it. I rendered it in a few layers to make my postwork simpler; a couple were 38 minutes, the last was about 6 hours. Postwork was an hour. I was done, of course, and then an offspring wandered by and made a suggestion... so add another 15 minutes to that :-)