The Alienware Challenge 2004, run by CGNetworks from 20 October 2003 - 20 January 2004 had over 1524 artists enter the contest, of which 3876 images were uploaded and 146 emerged meeting all requirements for the final judging. From this impressive number of entries, the winning entry chosen by jury members and the digital arts community on CGTalk was from Finnish artist Jari Saarinen entitled "On the Edge of Time". Jari spends some time writing about how he created the stunning image, which won him an Alienware MJ-12 workstation.

The mission defined for the Alienware Challenge was to create the most unique alien scenery ever -- something that no one has seen before. The location seems unpopulated, but not necessarily abandoned or neglected. The feeling that something was created here, maybe even the land itself is alive. Grandness and awe, materials never seen before, the design and layout of the location defies logic or the laws of physics. This was what I had in mind when addressing the challenge question, “is anyone there?“

Sketching the idea
Finding the idea was the hardest part of this challenge. Even though the idea of creating something alien gave total freedom to my imagination, it was surprisingly hard to think anything that no one has seen before. First I came up with the idea of odd cave like view with surfaces that were oddly lit with some kind of figures. I drew some concepts of it and for a while, was pretty sure this will be it.

I decided to take the next step and opened my modeler (Rhinoceros). After playing around with the model, the idea itself started to feel a bit boring. It actually had nothing special in it. It was too simple and the concept was too obvious. I knew I could do a lot with materials, but I wanted the scene look quite impressive even without materials. I decided to model as much details as I could instead of using displacement maps or bump maps. At this point I came up with the final idea of using boxes to create something more detailed and unique. After producing some test models, I knew that I had something.