===== From bobfranke@halcyon.com: Nice napkin and the smoke is excellent. There is something about the lighting that make is very hard to distinguish the floor from the table and the table from the ash tray. The cigar ash is also pretty good. ===== From grimmg@hotmail.com: NO SMOKING ===== From gmccarter@hotmail.com: Pretty good smoke on the cigar. ===== From tina@tezcat.com: Very cool idea. ===== From djconnel@flash.net: This scene is close to being a really good one. The one small problem is it is a bit surreal-looking -- is it a tabletop? A somewhat broader view would help. Also, the cigar needs just a bit of work -- a bit of glow, perhaps? I don't make a habit of looking at lit cigars, so don't have a reference. The writing on the napkin isn't quite right -- it appears to be with a felt-tip, but that would "bleed" heavily on a porous napkin. I would have scanned actual napkin-writing. Still, a few improvements and this would be an excellent image! ===== From east103@dialaccess.com: The 'marbled. surfaces could use some specularity. Nice job with the cigar though I would think there might be some orange glow at the end. ===== From ethelm@bigfoot.com: Good idea, interesting arrangement. Objects on tablecloth seem to be floating in the air. ===== From blaineholmes@hotmail.com: Nice galss. ===== From clem@dhol.com: This image has several good points, balanced by some definite flaws. The dirty floor, the nasty, poisonous smoke and the stupid, disgusting cigar (yes, I have opinions...) are very well done. The ash is particularly good. The dirt on the floor adds ambiance. Some ashes in the ashtray would have helped, too. The story and topic connection are conveyed by the image, although they are nicely implicit. on the downside, the construction of the ashtray and shotglass are much too massive. The yellowish tinge of the shotglass is also poorly chosen. The strong reflection of the napkin while other items show little or no reflection is jarring. The quilted texture you mention on the napkin is a good idea, but after resizing and jpegging, what is left of it just looks like a noise artifact. Why did you resize from 1200x1024? Taking that down to 800x600 involves a change in aspect ratio and consequent distortion. It is nearly always much better for quality to work to the target size and fiddle with AA if necessary rather than downsampling. The biggest problem with the image is the ugly mutant jade bartop, especially that bizarre stretching around the edges. ===== From jaime@ctav.es: Sorry, Sean, but your intuitive spanish translation is not correct. "Cifuente" it's the last name of someone, supposedly one of the cigar manufacturers, bcos the particle "y" means "and". So, the word you substituted by "POV" is the last name of the other manufacturer. In spanish, usually this is the name of a company with two partners, as in english "Hamilton and Smith" would be the name for a company created by you and your fictitious partner called "Smith". Well, apart from the free spanish lesson :), your cigar is very nice, with a nice ash and smoke, also with a realistic bumps on the tobacco leaves. Perhaps the color seems to "yellowish" on my monitor (gamma?). The glass is also very nice, but the table/ground is not very clear. Also, the connection with the theme is not very obvious.. ===== From r@haka.saunalahti.fi: Marble countertop? That's the oddest marble I've ever seen, could've sworn it was green slime. Especially as the note seems to be sinking into it. I suppose that for a place with a countertop like that, the non-conservative designs for the ashtray and the whisky glass shouldn't come as a surprise, but even if I accept the glass I'd be suspicious of any whisky that has the color of ripeseed oil. The dirt on the floor is well modeled.