I've worked on this picture for over a year. I started it in April 2008 as an entry for the Uplift Universe contest (the theme of which was human/alien interaction) and as a small way to honor my wonderful cat who had died recently (I patterned the lady's expression on a photo of my cat looking up at me). But my final entry was inferior to my vision so that even I didn't think I deserved to win an award. After the contest, I struggled with it for months making slow progress. Finally, I had a bit of a breakthrough when I put a reference photo in the background in order to evaluate the quality in the scene. Suddenly all sorts of flaws became obvious and I was able to make faster progress.

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