Now for something a bit different... Introducing Professor Nicc Kola, Alien Inventor of the Old West. Though his usual job typically involves the utilization of an array of clever gadgets and elixers in order to help safeguard his fellow Alien citizens of the Old Western town of Dragon's Breath Gulch from a variety of threats... such as terrasquid rustlers, tribes of aggressive cacti, and the strange two-eyed monsters that occasionally drop from the sky in metal ships... he also occasionally likes to relax a bit with one of his favorite hobbies - building machines designed for no other purpose than to produce longer and noisier sparks than his previous versions. Here he is, testing the effects of his latest version on an even stranger, and somewhat creepier specimen of the two-eyed monsters that he had found wandering in the desert while out on a Cylopod hunt. Curiously, the bizarre creature seemed to enjoy it... and rather more than he really should have. An interesting exobiological note from "The Alien Species Database and General Mercantile Compendium": Note the rather curious lack of ears. That is because the species to which our intrepid little innovator belongs doesn't really need them. And that, in turn, is because the optical sensitivity and pure versatility of their single large eye ( inside of which their complex, photosensitively-surfaced brain resides ) is sufficiently great enough so as to compensate completely for the lack of those crude type of sensory organs usually found in more primative species. They can literally "see" sound. The eye's complex inner array of reflective surfaces, biological lenses, multiple irises, and photo-multiplying organelles as well, provides them with excellent night vision, day vision, ultra-violet vision, x-ray vision, and even microwave vision. Among other things, this astonishing visual acuity is what led their species to be among the first to correctly identify that the Universe is, in fact, in somewhat of the shape of a banana, after all. And they can spot an offensive odor coming from a mile away. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rendered in trueSpace ( 10 hours! ), and mostly modeled in trueSpace ( except for the DAZ barn... which was remodeled and enlarged in trueSpace to provide for Nicc's laboratory ). And... a bit of postwork in Photo-Paint and PSP. Probably needs more work... but it's late and I need to get some sleep so I can get up in the morning and look for a real job. Thanks for... looking.