TITLE: Jizo at a Bus stop
NAME: Ichikawa Shinji
COUNTRY: Japan
EMAIL: KHF02461@nifty.ne.jp
WEBPAGE: http://homepage2.nifty.com/redshirt/
TOPIC: Spirit of Asia
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: jizo.jpg
ZIPFILE: jizo.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    POV-Ray v3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    GraphicConverter on MacOS (for creating image maps), GIMP (for
PNG->JPEG conversion)

RENDER TIME: 
    38min 36sec

HARDWARE USED: 
    600Mhz Celeron with 128MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

    If you were to travel the Japanese countryside, you might notice a small
Jizo statue smiling at you in a wayside.
    Jizo, or "the womb of the earth", is a statue of the Bodhissattva in the
guise of a young acolyte and worshiped as the gurdian of children.
    Since the eleventh century, Jizo has been the most popular of the public art
in Japan. In the border of the villages, which is believed to be the gate to
the "world beyond", numerous Jizoes have been built by the hands of the grieved
parents in the hope of lulling the souls of their lost children.
    Even today, many Jizoes enjoy the offering of flowers from devoted
Buddhists; They are sort of the spiritual landmarks which remind you that
someone is always caring for someone else.


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

    The flower in the base is made with a picture map wrapped around a cone,
taking full advantage of PNG alpha channel.
    Following the Yamato-e tradition, I made an attempt to make the impression
of the earth spreading to the horizon, by combining the focal blur and the path
running through the rice garden which gradually disappears in the dusk.
    I spent most of my time on Jizo; it is a CSG of blob and torus modelled
mainly with back-of-envelope calculation.