Here are the rough drafts for my midterm project. Jeff needs to be imported to the scene and have a simple interaction with the UFO. Getting his rig built and moving was a very tedious process; I ended up scrapping it and starting over twice. I'm fairly certain the issues were all caused by locking the skeleton or joints too early, and forgetting to delete the history. The scene itself was time consuming but fairly easy to create and animate. Though it's not visible in the playblasts, there are several types/movement of lights as well. 

When Jeff was imported to Mars he lost his coloring, so I took the opportunity to add more detail with 3D paint. I adjusted the plants to create a better visual frame and adjusted some light settings. The beam from the UFO was originally a spotlight but it didn't quite look right; a column polygon with high emission(glow) and transmission(translucent) turned out great.