EMAIL: KHF02461@nifty.ne.jp
NAME: Ichikawa Shinji
TOPIC: Spirit of Asia
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
TITLE: Jizo at a Bus stop
COUNTRY: Japan
WEBPAGE: http://homepage2.nifty.com/redshirt/
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.










