Visible Structures

At some future time, we may advance to the point where the signs of human civilization are visible even from a very great distance... so to me, this is a very optimistic image

This is a 3D render produced in Modo. A high contrast black & white texture was used for micro-polygonal displacement of a simple sphere, which produced true 3D surface relief.

I composited a NASA image of Saturn's moon Enceladus using an alpha channel (also rendered in Modo) to represent the natural features of the moon (which isn't necessarily the Earth's moon). The source image can be found here: [link]

The birds were done with some "bird brushes" I made some time ago.

This image bears a definite resemblance to a painting done by Syd Mead, who is of course a major inspiration