This animation started out as a test to construct a building using the hair particle system with only a few low poly construction models. The result was achieved very quickly and I then had the idea of letting a rescue craft fly by and scan for survivors.

Animation in Blender 2.5 Alpha 0 was straight forward with nice features and some bugs as is to be expected from an alpha release.

I also made extensive use of the node compositor to achieve the final visual style.

Rendering speed was pretty decent with about 1m 18s per frame on a borrowed MacBook pro.

Thanks goes to my buddys Llynna and Izzy, your critique helped me to take it a step further.

If you’re interested, here is the render from 2004:

1 and 2 are Concept sketches.
3 is the almost finished low poly model.

What I see in the image is an alien lifeform, living in an environmen very different from ours, maybe even invisible to us. The creature lives in a symbiosis with whatever that tube like things are. It nourishes pure energy by penetrating those tubes with its beak, what also makes the reproduction of the tubes possible.

Of course I leave it up to you to see something entirely else like a microcosm or something…

I hope you like it.