Anim8or Community

Another way to do this is through texturing.  for example, for your spinning fan you create a texture (and transparency map) that mimicks what a frame of the fan looks like with the motion blur on it.  You can then spin that object and get something a bit more realistic (though it wont have depth.)

It's true triangles are often frowned upon, but in truth it depends on the situation.  Most times quads are smiled upon because of subdivision objects which require good edge loops.  This is also very important in animation and the way muscles and joints deform.  To be honest, with still objects, the topology doesn't matter at all as long as something looks good.  The end product is always what matters, it doesn't really matter how you get there (as long as you don't steal others work!)  The interesting thing is, games for example use only triangles because they're what game engines process.  3DS Max actually works with triangles, but it hides this often and often treats the two triangles as quads.
In other words, triangles are perfectly fine in particular situations.  The thing is, being an organic modeler I wish it had some kind of a retopologize tool.  Perhaps a free one can be found somewhere to add to the program.  Still, it's an awesome looking program and I'll certainly be playing with it!

Often times sculpting programs like zbrush or mudbox are used to create normal maps or bump maps for lower poly objects (this is even true with higher poly models, because the details are so small.)  Do you know if the program is capable of exporting a normal map or bumpmap?

No worries mate!  That's the difficult part about these shorter time-lined competitions.  Perhaps I'll think about running a slightly longer challenge later for animation!

I don't see the big controversy over animation challenges.  In fact, my last challenge explicitly said you could enter an animation!  Sadly none of you fella's entered.  Many times we do simply stick to still renders, and that's simply because the time constraint makes animation a difficult art to perfect in that time period.  Perhaps if you asked nicely though you'd see more animation challenges!

benzjie that's an amazing jellyfish, I seem to remember you making a similar one before?  Or is that the same one?
Great stuff by everyone that's entered so far though, I hope for a nice turnout!

Hm, that's an interesting problem.  One thing that I would make sure of is that both figures are fully closed, otherwise it wont work.

I would advise the skinnier pant legs.  I think the toes of the boots could also use some alteration, they come together at too much of a point in my opinion

My only major criticism is that the bump on the black parts of the car is too strong, I would turn it down a lot and make it much more subtle.
Otherwise it's looking great though! You always do a fantastic job with your renders.