Praise Of Shadows

Member : Ivanhoe

Image description

"In Praise of Shadows" is a short essay by the Japanese novelist Junichiro Tanizaki written in 1933. I can warmly recommend it and the English and German ("Lob des Schattens") translations are still available.

I'm aware of the problematic history between Japan and China and misusing the title of an essay by an Japanese author for a Chinese scene can only be explained by my western ignorance. If it helps here are other explanations for the title:

"Elogio de la Sombra" is the title of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges. He was almost blind when he did write it.

"Praise of Shadows" is also part of a dialog line from "Xena, Warrior Princess" said by Xena's sidekick during a trip to China.

And finally as Bob Ross did put it within his famous BBC series "The Joy of Painting": "You need deep shadows to bring out the light".

Description of how this image was created

I wanted to create something unspectacular for this round. As I wanted also use the the title of the essay I did start with modeling a Japanese room that was meant to be illuminated only by global illumination to give this delicious soft and calm lightning but obviously I did end up with a Chinese room and illuminated by electrical light.

The main reason for this change was this small Chinese cabinet that got my attention in an antique shop round the corner where I live. I did immediately fall in love with it but actually it would not fit into my home so instead of buying it I did create a fairly accurate digital model based on photographs and measurement of the real thing. But I did buy a book about Chinese art, architecture and ornamentation.

The wood carvings on the cabinet and wall panels are hand drawn (but based on ornaments seen in the book) digitized by a flatbed scanner and used as hight fields. Combining hand drawn/painted elements with CGI is definitely something with great potential and I should explore more of its possibilities.

Lilies are almost always somewhere within my images but usually not as prominent as seen here (if you look closely you'll see them even in the IC logo), most of the time they are only visible in reflections or are not visible at all for the given camera position but they are there.

The octagonal window is "hand crafted" CSG and the ornament is made of small wood pieces arranged in a way to actually give the impression of a knot pattern.

The statue is the "Happy Buddha" from the Georgia Tech "Large Geometric Models Archive".

The long render times are caused by the usage of media for the whole room and also media based SSS for the vase. These effects are subtle but they are there and make it real slow. Anyway I do not care much about a long lasting final render, on the contrary, I usually think I did miss something when the render time is not measured in days.

General statistics
No of ratings	:	8
Min. overall rating	:	28 (10 / 10 / 8)
Max. overall rating	:	55 (19 / 18 / 18)
Sum of rating	:	362 / 480
Date uploaded	:	2009-12-13 11:30:22

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	10 : 19 : 122 : 160
Concept	:	10 : 18 : 114 : 160
Technical	:	8 : 18 : 126 : 160
Overall	:	28 : 55 : 362 : 480

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   31-12-2009 Fantastic realism. Very few problems there. Maybe the triangular shadow behind the flowers looks weird? If I compare it with the (too bright?) lampshade shadow, the border should not be that sharp. Even though the artistic and concept are not as striking as the technical, you put up yet another excellent entry. - DrNo 2.   26-12-2009 It's not bad ;) [SMcA] 3.   24-12-2009 I cannot find fault with this image so I am affraid I have no constructive criticism. The lighting and textures are excellent especially the wooden textures. 4.   22-12-2009 just beautiful... specially that woodwork. 5.   21-12-2009 all the wooden parts are impressive. I like a bit less the window (where JPEG artefacts are quite strong). Any a very good image. 6.   17-12-2009 Excellent! Just right