Short trip and new contract

I'm off to Ise for a few days to do some sightseeing and picture taking before starting a new contract in the middle of this month. Ise is in Mie prefecture and home to the most important shrine in Japan - Ise Jinguu. Also much fresh seafood, bays and the Pacific ocean on the south part. Looking forward to riding Shinkansen again (only 3rd time). It's gonna be HOT though...things are steaming up over here already. Will post some pics and notes when I get back.

The new contract is with a German company just starting up in Japan and I will be doing CG car lighting and rendering. Just finished a sample that I had been working on (seemingly forever) to try to get the feel for this kind of thing. It's a real learning curve, but hopefully they can teach me some cool tricks. This is what I came up with so far. Note that I didn't do any modeling (its from CAD), just materials, lighting, render and composite. Does it look like a real car? i dunno... anyway, back online soon!