Thanks so much, robo3687 
Another one done!
FINISHED ENTRY #18: SNAIL
BEAUTY RENDER:
image link - click for full 1200x1600 render
ORTHOGONAL / FRONT:
ORTHOGONAL / BACK:
ORTHOGONAL / TOP:
ORTHOGONAL / BOTTOM:
ORTHOGONAL / SIDE:
ORTHOGONAL / SIDE 2:
ABOUT THIS PROJECT…
Modeling: 45 minutes
Lighting: 15 minutes
Shaders: 2 hours (shaders + render nodes for DOF)
Total design time: Approximately 3 hours
Render time: Beauty render at 1200x1600/high OSA/AO/shadow buffering samples: 25 minutes; orthogonal renders at 600x800/high OSA/AO/shadow buffering samples: approximately 8 minutes each
Application used: Blender 2.42
Comments: In terms of modeling this scene, this project came together pretty quickly, but it became, fittingly, the slowest of all my entries so far due to what I wanted to achieve in the composition, materials, and rendering. All shaders are procedural. Grass + rocks + ground were modeled as well. Ground was the product of fractal subdivision on a planar surface and further tweaked through proportional editing. The shell was manually modeled from an extruded circle in side view. Only one blade of grass and rock were actually modeled; the rest were duplicated and modified through proportional editing. The greenish background (behind the grass) is from a photo of mine. I used Blender’s image filter to further blur that out to match the rear DOF. Render nodes were used to introduce depth-of-field in the scene. As they are one of the more recent functions that became available with Blender, I’m very exited by the possibilities they offer, since post-processing in an external application is often no longer necessary, and that was the case here, as with all the entries – no post work necessary. For the time spent on this project, I am very happy with the results. Snails are such fascinating little creatures
On to the next one!
RobertT
