"Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due" DEPT: That Big Thing Back There, courtesy of James Cameron, who displays a triumphant mastery of the concept in the above images from Avatar. (Click for larger versions.) This stuff is so good that I was frame-advancing through the sequence just to watch the Michael Whelan painting move three-dimensionally, like a magic View-Master. Awesome. If I remember correctly, there's more where this came from. This flat copy of Avatar is, I have to admit, a visual treasure-trove.
[Edit by Octpunk: I just had to stick this picture in for comparison. This thing is a real-life digging machine that is, I think, the second largest machine ever built by man (after the supercollider, which is far less cool-looking and underground, so it will never be That Big Thing Back There). I'm doing the obnoxious move of sticking it in Jordan's post for easy comparison to his first screen grab -- because just think about how much bigger That Big Thing Back There is.]
