Check out this thread: http://polycount.com/discussion/56014/how-the-f-do-i-model-this-reply-for-help-with-specific-shapes-post-attempt-before-asking#latest
I posted this a while back already but I forgot to post it in this progress thread. Small project that took a few days. It's the F-Ray from Futurama from S2E04.
Ah, I wrote a plugin for that: http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discussion/topic.aspx?f=83&t=77919 But it's useful sometimes to be able to tweak normals on a mesh at a per-vertex level.
on a serious note, this is F****ing me up, tons of dislikes, messages blaming me and what not thanks to 1 spammer, there is nothing we as artists can do to block this?
oh maan, 30 million is the production budget. the news http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=2&t=830033 and his cgtalk post is there ... bbc news is being fancy ....
Posted a couple of days ago. Might be of help. http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=100319&utm_content=buffereb577&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Like I said you can find it in the Zbrush website under the "Effects" Mat cap ^^ http://download.pixologic01.com/download.php?f=/library/matcap/digitaldecoy/al_normal_map.zip
you should get a thread started here http://www.polycount.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=47 and get working on those concepts! Good luck with the contest and welcome to polycount.