Going by the evidence of the spider webs, the "poor" statue has been waiting a very long time for someone to come and clean it up. It has been thoroughly neglected by humans but spiders have obviously found a good use for it .

Thanks Olga. It's amazing what we can learn from a crack in a pavement. I never imagined one would be the cause of me learning something Japanese. I can imagine the humungous Sumo wrestler too. That mental image makes me smile as well.

I also have doubts about some works at times. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether something is just a copy and paste of someone elses art or actually a manipulation, especially when the artist is using creative commons oil paintings like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Davinci or the Swing by Pierre Auguste Cot. But as you know, many of us have often used creative commons oil paintings in our work. I have done it myself. You have also done it. Is that stealing another artists work? I don't think so, as long as the art is in the free creative commons category. If we really wanted our work to be unique, we really ought to change those paintings enough to make them look different and not so obviously recognisable or just use them as inspiration to create our own unique versions with different models maybe? I also made the mistake myself of thinking a photo of a fish was a manipulation but it was not. I asked about it and I actually learned about a sea creature I never knew existed in reality. I tend to think its OK to use anything that is offered as creative commons. Other artists would not offer their work on places like Pixabay or Deviantart if they did not expect it to be used in manipulations. Even when photos are unmanipulated, they are ultimately also someone elses work unless we actually took the photo ourselves so even when using creative commons photos, we are using other peoples works. The current photo source is Olgas work and we can either copy and paste the flower into a scene where it is still recognisable as the original source which has not been changed or manipulated very much at all or we can actually manipulate it by transforming it with warp tools and changing colors and all kinds of things so it doesnt actually look like the original flower any more. There is a vast difference between actually manipulating a source photo and just copy and pasting it into a scene.

Why do you think it should have been eliminated? The aliens used were figurines not other peoples manipulations. I think it's wise to ask if we are unsure. Ultimately the end result looked nothing like the source photos anyway. It's different if someone just does a copy and paste of someone elses work but as you said yourself, unmanipulated figurines are fine as long as we actually manipuate them to make them look different in the end.

This was my favorite out of all of your personal entries. Well done.

Excellent work cosmix. This was one of my favorites and should have ended up in the top three in my opinion but overall votes are what they are.

Thank you for the response. I have been educated. I have never seen a fish like that before. It is called an anglerfish. They are apparently quite rare. It is quite amazing. Here is a video for others who have never seen one either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW93uB5fDLQ

I hate to be nit picky but the rules do say "...you can not use any other digital photo manipulations as your source. The source images should be untouched photographs." That source fish with the blue light coming from the antennae looks like a previous manipulation. Am I wrong?

To all artists. Please do your best to show the source images used for your work because it makes it easier to vote when we know what you actually did to create it. Personally, I give extra points to works which show the source images.

Are 3D wood carvings that look like wooden sculptures allowed as well or should we stick to just wooden cutouts on flat pieces of wood?