And this is the point where where I was instructed to follow a few tutorials (effectively start over). This was the end of week 2 of 4 weeks allocated for the project. So a few deep breaths and long days later...
And another week later:
And then I realized that we were limited to 6000 triangles, not 6000 polygons (each square "quad" has two triangles in it.) Some elective surgery later, and the final result:
...Whew!
