2 back of house renders and some bad news

Hi all! Don't panic at the title...the project's not being abandoned or anything. Actually, I may as well get that part out of the way first - apparently, the free "Pro" account I've been enjoying on Flickr will no longer be valid once February hits. Now, I'll probably decide to fork over the money for another year of having a Pro account, but just in case something weird happens, I wanted y'all to have a heads-up, since it will affect what you can see. If I don't upgrade, you'll notice the following changes:

• Only 3 sets will be visible
  
• Only the 200 most recent images will be visible on my photostream
  
• The "original" sizes won't be visible - only up to the "large" versions
  

Mind you, these won't be completely deleted from Flickr's servers or anything. They just won't be accessible until I upgrade. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. If there are any renders you particularly like, it wouldn't hurt to save 'em to your hard drives before February arrives, just in case. =P

But enough of that! I have two new renders for those of you who haven't checked my Flickr photostream in the last few days.

This is the southeast corner of the It's a Small World show building, where a large red riser for the sprinkler can be seen. For a long time, I basically just had a red, vertical pipe that curved at the top to meet the building, without any real detail, and this bugged me, because I could catch a glimpse of further detail briefly from the railroad and in aerial photos such as this one. But I had never seen or taken a photo that provided the visual detail I needed to get it right, and I didn't want to waste my time inventing details that weren't there. So I took two high-res photos of the pipe with my telephoto lens when I was on the railroad almost two weeks ago - you can see them here and here. Those were crucial to me mimicking all the valves and junctions and so forth, and I think I've done a pretty good job. If you see anything wrong, let me know!

Then there's this shot, which depicts one of the areas I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours in when I was there on that same day. The rehearsal hall is in the center, with music and dance studios inside. I added that riser, which has similar (but not identical) details to the one on IASW, so I basically made a copy of it and modified it appropriately. What you don't see yet is the swirly design engraved into the walls of that building, but I'm working on creating that texture, including a large hidden Mickey that wraps around the left (northwest) corner. In front of the rehearsal hall is a parking lot where buses often park and musical groups warm up; note the drain a quarter of the way from the left, which seemed to have fallen fireworks shells in it when I was there. Then there's the show building for Mickey's House off to the right, with new details such as a bricklike texture that I was unaware of until I saw the building in person. Anyway, since I gathered a considerable amount of information about these sorts of areas while I was there, don't be surprised if you see more updates here in the near future.

EDIT: Apparently, the links to the two MiceChat threads in the box to the right weren't working, so I've fixed those. Just so ya know. =)