"When we were ignorant about the great secrets of our planet, Neo-Dolphins arrived and landed. They’ve became our mentors, gave us a glimpse of their unlimited knowledge and technology. We’ve learned how to build a civilization. Learned our place and our role in our universe… They showed us how broad our horizons could be. When they thought that their part is over they decided to leave – they were just showed us the way, it would be our choice walk on the path. One day, they spread their wings to the eternity and left their fascinating marks for the future generations…"

Short excerpt & Scene Concept by me.

It was my entry to the Uplift Challenge on CG Society. I didn't win but it was so great to participate and challenge with the top notch digital artists of the world there. Jury was great. Even knowing they saw my work is enough encouragement. All other entries are amazing. Very exciting ideas, concepts and artistic realizations - you really should peruse all of them so have a visit to this link - http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4556

That was my first very serious entry there. It was fun, instructive, creativity boosting and great way to push all the limits.

My entry contains a lot of models, textures, paintings, particles and renderings. Final render done with Vue Infinite to disk with alpha and layer informations for final compositing with Photoshop.

Software Used:
Vue Infinite - for entire environment and final render
Poser 7 - for the girl on the hill
Autodesk Maya 8.0 - for all modeling except the girl on the hill
Photoshop CS3 - for postwork
Particle Illusions 3.2 - for fire effects (added on post)
Xfrog 3.5 - for xtra plants
Zbrush 3.1 - just for soft edged mountains on the back

Hardware Used:
Design PC
AMD Athlon 64 4400+ Dual Core
2 gigs of DDR2 800
Nvidia GeForce 7600GS

Render Slave
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Single Core
2 gigs of DDR 400
Nvidia Geforce 6600 Extreme

UC Logic Graphic Tablet
Kodak EasyShare Camera - I took some photos for cloud and other textures.

Thanks for viewing - comments & critics are welcome as always.