This is a new scene I finished today:
This took around ten hours to get right and about an hour to render.
Blender 2.41 + Photoshop (manual DOF, color/contrast adjustments).
Thank you very much for viewing my work.
Take care,
RobertT
My god thats excellent :o,
though the wind up key seems very bright.
Good Work
And what is Grace’s dream exactly? Becoming a female wrestler on steroids?
Ha, sorry about that. The overall image is nice, but the ballerina… not very ballerina-like. Though you’ve come quite far for 10 hours work.
Love ya,
Sago
Btw. very pinky-girly-image… I can totally level with you.
mastersword: Thanks! The key is a “key element” in this image, so I accentuated it a little.
Sago: Thanks, Sago. A lot went into this as you could imagine. Good question 
Without revealing too much about this piece, Grace could be the girl, the dancer, or the concept. As for the dream, well, I’ll leave that up to the viewer to decide. It’s probably evident by now that not one of my characters or works are intended to conform to any particular aesthetic ideal, in proportion or any sense. I just create them as I envision them, so they are often very imperfect, just like me. The main thing about this image is about attaining grace, even if the characters depicted are a little less than graceful. As for colors, yes, the whole spectrum is ours
RobertT
That looks beautiful, bu then again I think that of most of your work so I’ll stop and post sarcastic negative comments 
Nice detail on the base. I like the design of the circle-thingies. The girl’s eyes have a glare (was it intentional or just the contrast/glow?) that really sends out the message of this render. Without it you’d have to put “I WANT TO BE A DANCER” written in bold text somewhere. Great work, as always.
Now, back to my hideout…
I really enjoyed looking at this one. Great mood.
The puckered cheeks on the girl in the back is very distracting to me though. Especially since the actual ballerina has anormal looking face. Why not make them both look more normal?
BgDM
Nice job! I have always been impressed with the way you use color. You choices always seem to fit just right. Keep it up.
Robert, your concepts are definitely improving, and that from the point of view that you were allready doing pretty cools stuff.
beautiful agian, you’re going to make me retire from Blender in shame.
Great job, the look in her eyes is perfect
-XrQLz
Very interesting concept, I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but I like how the ballerina is more “realistic” than the girl in the background. Makes me think you were trying to make the point that dreams are hard to live up to (or something similar). I like it.
The one thing that bugs me though, is that I can’t shake the impression the the ballerina’s right leg is actually her left. This mainly comes from her ankle. It looks like it’s bending towards the camera, which is a little improbable given the ankle’s range of motion in that direction. I realise that the ballerina wasn’t the focus of the piece, but this was the first thing that jumped out at me.
beautifull work on the box - very nice “shinnieness” (for lack of better words) on the key too
Friday13: Thank you very much. Yes, the background was set up to partly convey some of the ideas you mentioned. The background is on its own layer and has its own lighting.
BgDM: Always a pleasure to hear from you, BgDM. I appreciate your feedback. There’s a bit of stylistic contrast here I was going for in terms of degrees of realism, with the foreground dancer being closer to a real figure and the background character being closer to more of a CG character. It goes towards a duality of appearance/reality, the idealism of youth, the “realism” and realizations of age, and goes back to what I was saying to Sago as to the dream portion, whether it was the child dreaming of being a dancer one day or the dancer remembering her youth or a dream deferred – not to mention any more of that, to preserve the interpretive potential of the piece, but just to give an idea of what I was thinking of trying to put into this scene.
.:Tr@ceR:.: Thanks so much! I spend a lot of time tweaking and test rendering, so comments like that are especially appreciated
deathguppie: Thanks. I’m trying to push even further. In so many ways I feel I’m just starting out. So much to do and learn.
xrqlz: Thank you. Eyes are always a challenge yet essential to get right for each character.
Fade: Thanks, Fade. Yes, that was intentional I was just explaining this in my reply to BgDM, and it’s cool that you picked up on that. The ballerina is deliberately imperfect, as a “dream of grace” is also hers.
Dwarfose: Thank you, Dwarfose. I didn’t want the key to get lost or lightly considered since it has a central role in this piece, so I’m glad I seemed to find a way to make it stand out without competing too much with the other elements here. In some ways this key is literally the key to understanding how dreams can turn.
RobertT
Great composition, beautiful colors, and good modeling.
I think It is great!