Sometime disoovering a wonderfull project after it ran for 3 years make me feel stupid, this is typically what happened when I discovered this one The Sphere project is meant to be a permanent contest with no price but much pride (if you make it to the homepage) on the Sphere thema. It has been initiated by Richard Rosenman et Michael Kocurek. The principle is amazingly simple: illustrate the sphere thema in CG using any kind of software.
Check out the official website and if you're eager to see more here is the shortcut to the gallery.
Here are a few submissions from Richard Rosenman himself ( thanks to him for the authorization to publish them here):
And here are a few of my prefered one 
visitors
