Well well well, what do we have here.

I've had this idea for quite a while. I actually had originally planned on using pictures of the space shuttle going into space. But then i wouldnt be able to sell it through dA Prints. Sure enough, i went on vacation and took some pictures, which are the ones you see here.

So whats the idea behind this?
If you want a graphic idea, then its very similar to the ending of Men in Black. Where you see the camera zooming out and it turns out that our galaxy is nothing more than a marble, which happens to be some aliens' collection.

At first it was simply going to be a beach with a space added on top, but then i got the idea and started working on it.
As you can also see, and if you have been following my work, this is my first work with completely new starfields and nebulas. In fact, this is the first time im painting nebulas like these. They arent as good as i hoped for, but i had to start somewhere, and im gonna post them so that you can see my progress.

The image quality isnt top notch for 2 reasons:

1) the pictures that i took were at 1024x768 ( i forgot to set high resolution, was worrying about space on memory card)
2) I thought about dial-up users, so i made it as small as possible without losing quality (about 300 kilobytes)

Special thanks to:

~alphaosiris For giving me the idea of including marine wildlife.

~agarash For making me realize that i got too excited painting nebulas and overdid them quite a few times in a few regions

+musicinmyhead for helping out a bit dealing with the whole margin thing.