TITLE: Bird NAME: Cate van Alphen COUNTRY: England EMAIL: cvalphen-art@tiscali.co.uk WEBPAGE: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cvalphen/ TOPIC: Minimalism COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. JPGFILE: cv_bird.jpg RENDERER USED: Bryce 5 TOOLS USED: Bryce 5, Photoshop 5.5 RENDER TIME: HARDWARE USED: IMAGE DESCRIPTION: For this image I explored the art movement Minimalism, and the idea of capturing the essence of a thing with simple geometric shapes. The work of Brancusi, in particular his _Bird in Space_, was my primary inspiration. A squashed sphere forms the shape of an egg, suggesting the potential of a bird. The sculpture is in a sterile art gallery type environment, but reflects and enormous landscape beyond, alluding to the flight and freedom of a bird. A single feather hints at the physical presence of a bird. DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: Obviously there was not much modelling for this image, as I used primary shapes in keeping with the ideas of the art movement Minimalism. I did spend a lot of time tweaking the materials though. There are only 2 walls to the gallery, so that the view can be reflected in the egg. I also faded the walls using a gradient alpha map for the transparency so that the walls could disappear in the reflection, but be behind the sculpture. For the feather I scanned in a real feather on a black background, and used this as the transparency alpha channel.