This image was an experiment using the simple metaball modeller Blob Sculptor (available for both Mac and PC). The alien was built up piece-by-piece (head, torso, upper and lower limbs, hands and feet) in Blob Sculptor, and the results were exported as DXFs and assembled in Ray Dream Studio. The resulting model is fairly crude - which explains why I needed to hide it in semi-darkness - but Blob Sculptor at least showed its worth as a quick and easy way to build organic shapes.

After import, the alien was dressed in Bryce textures and its eyes and 'harness' were added using Bryce primitives. The doorway behind the alien was made from primitives and Booleans, while the texture on the back wall is based on a bump map made in Photoshop.

The pretentious title means "the killing of minotaurs", and is a pun first made, as far as I know, by Pablo Picasso (by reference to "the killing of bulls", 'tauromachy'). It was suggested by the fact that my alien has a rather minotaur-like appearance. Earlier drafts of the image made the killing part more explicit by putting an armed Poser figure in the doorway, but this was later suppressed on the grounds that the image worked better without it. The result looked something like Joe Camel about to be butchered by an angry ex-smoker, which has a certain political poignancy, but doesn't really work well as science-fiction. The figure can now be found in the "Out of the Shelter" image.

I'm not entirely happy with the alien figure or the texture of its 'armour', but it was an interesting experiment.