TITLE: kilrsqrl
NAME: William Hale
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: wil@cal-business.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.cal-business.com
TOPIC: Horror
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: eyes.jpg
ZIPFILE: eyes.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.1g

TOOLS USED: 
    sPatch for modelling, Jasc Paint Shop Pro for conversion
and CR

RENDER TIME: 
    31 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Dell Pent II 350, 4MB ATI Rage, 64MB RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 


A rather persistant gust of wind brought me partially awake that night.  As I
rolled over to look at my clock I was startled to find my oldest son, Travis
(4), staring back at me.  He does this sometimes when he wakes and wants to see
if he can sneak into our bed.  "You need to go back to bed, Buddy." I said in
my most pitiful sleepy voice.  "I can't", he replied, "There is a monster in my
room."

In truth I had been waiting for this too happen.  He like Beast Wars and Star
Wars and just about anything with a modicom of action and cartoons.  I informed
him that there is no such thing as a monster.

"I heared a noise like this..." and he proceded to perform one of the best
impressions of nails on a chalkboard I have ever heard.  We went throught the
whole gamut of possibilities and in the end I got up. (Any of you with children
will understand the winning a discussion thing.)

We walked into his room, a very odd shaped narrow number, and sat on the bed. 
It was then that I noticed how eerie the room is with just the night lite
shining.  All of the shadows being cast up in a distorted reflection of thier
parent objects.  A few more minutes in here and I was going to  see monsters.

We looked around but didn't find the culpret.  I was tucking him into bed when I
heard the noise.   I realized that my son had not been that far off in his
intrpretation of sound.  The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere in the
room and it was moving.  Now, the screeching lasted for a couple of seconds and
was followed by a scratching then a thud.

Of course Travis was out of bed yelling, "See! See!"  they so love it when they
are right.  When we both calmed down we intensified our search.  As we tiptoed
around the room (why do we sneak around when we are looking for monsters), we
heard the noise again.  This time it was coming from his closet.  The closets
all connect to the attic for storage.  The door was already cracked and as luck
would have another gust of wind blew in.   The opened of its own accord and
reflecting back the glow of the night light was a pair of beady red eyes.

He screamed, I jumped, the beady eyes chittered, and we all went different
directions.

The next morning Travis awoke, rolled over and said,"Thanks for saving me,
DAD."

Epilogue:  It was a squirrel.  The screeching was him sliding down our tin roof.
 The scratching was him trying to get into the attic, and the thud was him
landing on the floor of the attic.  I have since closed up the hole that the
little bugger used for access.  I dont think he ever got out...and to this day,
when the wind is blowing just right...we still hear a scratching and a thump.  




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 


This Image was modelled entirely in sPatch.  I am new to sPatch but find it very
easy to use.  The only problem I had was that sPatch allows only 8 layers (if
it allows more please tell me).  To compensate for this I did the first eight,
exported it to POV, then would changed one of the elements.  Copy it and past
it into a new project and export that.  This allowed me to keep the relitive
position and size.

The room is a cube with a light blue marble texture and high turbulance.  The
floor is an Image map I created in Paint shop pro and tiled onto a layer. The
poster (Phantom Menace II Society) is an Image map on a rotated hightfield and
placed very close to the wall.

The curtians are a grid with a black and white marble texture in which the
colors and finish were modified.

The night light is a cylinder with a plastic texture.  the light source is right
in the middle of it.  Had to use fade settings to get it right.


The whole thing took 9 hours to create.

rendered at 800X600 with the following settings
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.00
Sampling_Method=2
Antialias_Depth=2