Some awesome artwork posted this morning, from a variety of sources:

• Fragclone noticed a thread on polycount showing off some cool ODST renders by Heart_Murmur.
• Leviathan has whipped up some ODST wallpaper, both simple, and with interesting extras, inspired by Bungie’s use of ‘noir’.
• TDSpiral tried a different style – and ended up with a really interesting piece that hearkens back to Bungie’s roots.

Check ’em all out! (Louis Wu 16:06:01 UTC)

Over at Hawty McBloggy’s, Antithesis is back with more clay figures – check out his grunts, brute, and prophet! (If you swing by his website, you’ll even see two more – a CQB Spatan and a Scout Spartan. Hawty manages to bring the whole thing back around to sex, of course.(Louis Wu 16:05:24 UTC)

GameStop is hosting a Halo 3: ODST Tournament where you can win $5000, or one of thousands of other prizes. Round One (held in almost 2300 stores across the US) will pit 32 players per store against each other, with the top 4 per store advancing to Round Two. The top 2 finishers from each Round Two event will move on to Round Three, and the top 16 finishers overall will advance to the finals. The first event takes place on October 2, Round Two is October 9, and Round 3 is October 23. The final round (in New York) will be on December 5. More details can be found at the GameStop website. (This is different from the local events some stores are holding on the 21st, leading up to the midnight release of the game – thanks to EnergyPigeon for the heads-up on those.) (Louis Wu 16:05:04 UTC)

Morpheus announced the end of the most painful-to-judge contest… ever. Congratulations to all! (Louis Wu 16:04:35 UTC)

Patrick Cavanaugh had a bizarre experience yesterday, while downloading Battlefield: Bad Company on Xbox LIVE – his Xbox told him he was downloading ODST, instead. Sort of. He took some pics. (Does this mean that ODST is coming to Games on Demand? Probably not. Still pretty odd!) (Louis Wu 16:04:11 UTC)

XerxdeeJ let us know that Tied the Leader continues to hound the crew members of the ODST Roadshow – a whole passel of TTL members have gotten their Firefight on as the truck rolls through the US.(Louis Wu 16:03:49 UTC)

kabu dropped by to announce the latest HBOFF Fan Fic Pick of the Week, courtesy of eb4642. Go see how it worked out! (Louis Wu 16:03:29 UTC)

Last night, Rooster Teeth posted Chapter 13 of their Red vs Blue Recreation series – this one’s pretty serious, but pushes forth a lot of story material. Go watch! (Discussion, on our forum, if you’re interested.) (Louis Wu 16:03:06 UTC)

Terra Incognita is the latest masterpiece from the behind-the-scenes crew at Bungie – it’s a ViDoc in the original Bungie sense of the word. It cuts interviews with the crew who made the game in with cinematically-filmed gameplay – no huge spoilers, but I suppose if you obsessed about the tidbits in here, you could work out parts of the story you don’t already know. For folks wondering how this game came together, though, and how it differs from the standard evolution of Halo fare… this is the one to watch. Bungie.net has 9 different flavors for you – everything from HD to iPhone-res, and subtitles on demand. (It’s supposed to be on Marketplace by now, as well, but doesn’t seem to be, yet.) Go feast your eyes – and get pumped! There’s only a week left!(Louis Wu 10:36:57 UTC)

Thanks to Blublur1, who pointed out a Tweet from Bungie that implies that staying up late tonight might be worthwhile… (Remember, we’re still waiting on a ViDoc.)(Louis Wu 00:55:26 UTC)

Spase is selling a couple of helmets on eBay – the ODST replica is currently at $285 (with just under 2 days to go), and the Recon Helmet (which finishes an hour earlier) is at $200 right now. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 22:25:02 UTC)

RevDotNed ran across a very cool feature at Digitial Photography School – 21 Great Reader Shots (and how they were taken). #14 is called ‘Master Chief’s Bad Day‘, and it’s not only a great shot, the story behind it is pretty fun!(Louis Wu 22:24:45 UTC)

Azrael stopped in with word of the latest chapter of his Halo fanfic, Minutmen: The Crucible – go check out Chapter 12: An Evening with Rachel Lynch.(Louis Wu 22:24:27 UTC)

Today’s Tag and Release feature at Bungie.net was based on the keyword ‘-blam!-‘ (which I think is subbed in for any curse). Resultant images range from sexually implicit to painful. Go see what they found!(Louis Wu 22:17:08 UTC)