===== From cmorack@relex.com: Dammit, I like a good laugh, so I gave you a 5, 1, 4. Hell, I'm probably your biggest fan! ===== From klynn@minn.net: Yeah, everyone else was thinking the same thing, but was too chicken! ===== From Revera@concentric.net: Why did the render time take so long?? ===== From castlewrks@aol.com: Like a white page being a photo of a polar bear in a snowstorm drinking a glass of milk. ===== From agage@mines.edu: Your modeling is superb, especially with the subtle interactions of shadow on shadow. The mood is unmistakably dark, with powerful symbolism of the true form of darkness. In other words, yes, it had to be done, I suppose. I am still amazed at two things: first, that it took over a minute to render (though not to create, I'm sure); and that when compressed into a JPEG it still takes up 8kb of otherwise useful disk space. With a good smoothing and RLE, which is about the most naive compression you can get, a totally black image should reduce to almost nothing. ===== From gregj56590@aol.com: Don't be proud. ===== From jjanger@mail.cspp.edu: Did anyone, and I mean anyone, not see this coming? ===== From tlyons@gnn.com: are those black Spanish bats I see or just common snipes??? ===== From appel@informatik.tu-muenchen.de: A very nice and simple piece of art! Everyone can understand it. ===== From dormammu@erols.com: Humour is all well and good.. but.. umm.. a black screen? Give me a break. ===== From karl@pemail.net: There's always one .... ===== From ethelm@bigfoot.com: Nice try! ===== From gmccarter@hotmail.com: Sophisticated use of negative space. ===== From uwe.post@gmx.de: eyes closed?!? ===== From cfusner@enter.net: Ahhhh.... this is just a rehash of that "Black cat standing in the shadows of a coal mine at midnight" image. On the bright side (who said "groan"?), the JPEG compression got the image down reeeeeeeaaaallllly small for excellent download time. I just hope it didn't ruin the trivial details. Darn lossy compression methods. ===== From peter@table76.demon.co.uk: It's good to know your limits and not to stretch so far you fall flat on your face. ===== From r@du13-251.ppp.algonet.se: Get a life... ===== From r@207.232.193.166: Ha! Ha! :-) Notable for lighting ===== From r@dialup16.grrtech.com: This took 1m33s? Whatever for? Notable for lighting ===== From r@dial-up30.webbernet.net: It took a while to find the best gamma setting to view this, but the reward for the effort was incredible! The mythic dimension of the Goddess of Night shielding the unknowing world from the chaos and madness of the Outer Gods while the Sun slept! How the stars are punctures in her cloak from the spears of the mad deities! The cratered Moon as her battered shield! The clever way you showed the mythic truth on the side she faced, but a mundane, though beautiful night scene to the rear as seen by the naive mortals! Not to mention the witty allusions to the Madhyamika-Prasangika concept of Emptiness and the brilliant symbol in the background that so perfectly sums up the abstruse concept of Interdependent Origination! The very darkness of the image, of course, was a subtle German language pun on the similarity of "nacht" and "nicht" as I am sure everyone appreciates! This comment by clem@dhol.com.