My boss liked the idea of the challenge, so he might be getting me to do my entry in the form of a spec piece....if so, I'll be starting hard on it Monday.
Alright guys here's the scoop....I got the simulation done (the plan B one, without the characters)...I just need to render it. So I'll be coming in tommorow morning/afternoon to pump the render out and hopefully have it up in the evening.
Ok guys...here it is! Rendered with scanline renderer and composited in After Effects.
There are some strange white-outliney errors around some of the elements that I couldn't for the life of me fix (not a pre-multiplying issue...has to do with z-depth pass being used for lightness/saturation overlay), and there are also some issues in places with the motion-blur...but other than that I think I'm satisfied with it.