===== From scooby@pld.com: Beautiful image! I especially like the ocean surface, textures, and the lighting is fantastic. ===== From roth@ens.ascom.ch: What an atmosphere! ===== From Sean_Hamilton@amrcorp.com: I like the ship, although I think the sails could use more 'life' (wrinkles, billows, etc). The warm feeling summer storm is great as is your frothy water. Lightening looks too angular and sharp for all the water in the air. This image hits a warm spot in me, as though I can taste the salt on my lips. ===== From gregj56590@aol.com: Whew! What a beauty! It appears, however, that your water is not transparent... ===== From nx@chez.com: Really impressive composition ! Boat is particulary great; I would suggest to bend the sails according to the strong wind that the storm delivers. Nice job for the ocean; maybe some splashs are missing ? The whole stormy atmosphere is simply amazing... That's the Hell !! ===== From gmol@my-dejanews.com: Very nice, I like the lightning. ===== From guilhem.christol@hol.fr: A very good picture ! :) ===== From ewgr@abaddon.globalnet.co.uk: V.Good but I thought the lighting let the scene down, it is to uniform under the sudden flash of lightning. ===== From skywise@fix.net: Great looking image, but under scrutiny some of the objects (specifically the front masts) seem a bit primitivy, if you know what I mean... ===== From bobfranke@halcyon.com: The detail of the ship doesn't seem to live up to the FANTASTIC sky and water. As a side note the ship is carrying too much sail area for the weather conditions. However, the artist always has the right to take liberties. That's way we call it art. Great image Nathan. ===== From gmccarter@hotmail.com: Funny, you worked from a model and the result looks like a model. I like the ropes and shrouds. Pretty good lightning, but I think it needs a glow around it. The foreground lighting, while necessary to illuminate the ship details, is quite intense and unidirectional, leaving unnatural shadows. Great drama. ===== From manorton@tcnet.net: The sky is fantstick, and the water is great also. I truly think this is a one of a kind. Render it larger and print it out. Man its great. :-) ===== From ethelm@bigfoot.com: Very nice 19th century painting. Has atmosphere. ===== From djconnel@flash.net: Wow!!!! A few comments: * At first I thought the bow was too square, but since it came from an actual model.... Nice modeling work! * The lightning needs a bit more work -- it needs more fractal character. * The sails show some banding. * The superquadratic connecting the two wooden pieces off the bow needs some texture work. * The top flag has a real-space texture rather than a conformal one.... it would have been better a solid color. * The sails seem unaffected by the wind. Actually, they would be furled in such a violent storm..... either that, or in shreads. * In general, the storm should have caused some damage to the ship. Things are in general too perfect. Still -- an impressive piece of work!!! The ship is very well done and the storm is excellent! The only problem is the two aren't really compatible as rendered. Nevertheless, I give this one high scores. ===== From bill@apocalypse.org: You are out of our league Nathan. Beautiful image, amazing feats of technical ability, and well executed concept. ===== From wozzeck@club-internet.fr: Congratulations, once again, the best one is yours! The sea is a bit plastic, the sails are too flat, but the overall movement is exceptionnal! Great! ===== From 101741.541@compuserve.com: Fantastic sky ! Medias have a better 3D-behaviour than halos (and are faster...); Nice attempt with the sea : the shape is good. But it looks a little too "solid". To make it more liquid looking, you could need to give more highlight, more reflection, and some transparency (but you already know that, don't you ?) ===== From r@adids3.byk.de: Looks like a picture from one of last century's british artists. I didn't like the water that much, it's too static (no foam -- presumably very difficult to achieve). The ship is great (I like ships), just the sails don't look exactly as if there was any wind at all (Anyway, under those circumstances the crew would have used fewer sails) ===== From r@cdsl246.mpls.uswest.net: great texturing ===== From r@gc-usr7.pld.com: Absolutely phenomenal! Notable for composition, textures, modelling, lighting ===== From r@dt027n86.maine.rr.com: The lightning effects are well modled, and the stormy sea has a nice white capped effect. Notable for textures, lighting ===== From r@client8788.globalnet.co.uk: Notable for modelling ===== From r@ppp-sfx201--071.sirius.net: Beautiful water and sky Notable for modelling ===== From r@dial-up46.webbernet.net: A very impressive image. The yellow-greenish misty stormy sky is the most realistic part. The lighting is quite good. The sea swells are good and the white water is impressive. The only problem is, you need some loose spray coming off of the white water. Lacking that, it gives a certain impression of solidity, as if it were some sort of rock outcrop. The lightning needs a bit of work. The thickness is too uniform and the fractal exponent may be wrong. The bends are too angular. The ship modelling is, as usual, very good. I like the rope work. The masts seem a bit thin, but I presume that matches the model. The only real problem with the ship is that the viewing angle seems to foreshorten it excessively. This comment by clem@dhol.com.