UPDATE!
I decided to try and make this image better. I tweaked the models some, added a base light, and re-rendered using indigo. The lighting was the hardest part; it took me about a week to get it right because it took so long to do test renders. Render time was 48 hours using indigo 8, so I’m probably not going to re-render.
If anyone is interested, here is my technique for making the dots. First I modeled the cat and used “dupliverts” to create dots (each dot is a level 1 icosphere). However, most of the dots were grouped together in places of high detail, like the face and the feet. To created evenly spaced points all over the model, I set the subsurf to a high level (5 or 6), and applied it. Then, I went into edit mode and used “remove doubles” several times, increasing the limit until I reached an acceptable number of vertices (around 50,000). This results in evenly spaced vertices all over the model.
The cat model could use some tweaking IMO. The idea and effect are totally cool though! Perhaps you could concider using halo (in the material-tab) in stead of dupli-verts, it might reduce render time.
From the comments it looks like I should definitely redo some parts of this image. Thanks for the compliments from those who liked it, and thanks for the honesty from those that didn’t. I’ll try and fix the cat model. Also, I like the idea of a lighted base, so I’ll try and implement that when I re-render.
Here are some screen shots of the cat and my lighting set up. The lights are 16 area lights w/ samples set on 1 each. Feel free to make suggestions about how I could improve the cat model.
