Some feedback for the images, inspired by Jim Charter's wonderful analyses.
And he's right, we all clamour for it! I've spent a bit more time over
these than I would for the IRTC because there's only 11 images... :-)

Malcolm's "Evolution of TINA CheP"

A simple image, but it captures the idea of the topic nicely. At first
glance it seems trivial, but the mannekin is nicely done and I can
sympathise with how tedious it is to pose CSG figures! The blending of the
two environments seems quite natural. I like the way the figure starts off
as the classic cliche, only to rise out of the ground like a T-1000
terminator reassembling itself after a nasty altercation and sprint off in
search of a new life in a far more appealing clime.

Thomas's "Perils of Tina"

This seems to have a slightly cryptic story behind it... the Checkered Man
in Red is certainly being vociferous about something, and looks pretty
angry. Is he the Plane Checker? If so, what is wrong with the other man's
plane? Or is the Plane Checker around the next corner, having already
rejected the slightly downcast-looking entrant just walking through the
shadows on the left? Whatever's going on, the girl to the right seems
resigned to waiting for an outcome with her large green ball.

Good posing on the figures, especially the Checkered Man. Nice to see such
experimentation with camera angles, too. This image might work quite well
as a caption competition...

Verm's "tc2"

I like this concept. As described in the text file, a squad of chessmen
tromp out to have a game, only to find their patch usurped by a pot of Go
pieces. 'What shall we do now, sarge?' 'Dunno, lads.'

The gloomy setting works pretty well - perhaps this is an illicit gaming
cellar beneath a seedy bar in an ill-lit street on the disreputable side of
town. Perhaps the chess-men are actually raiding the cellar during a highly
illegal Go death-match. It's quite an achievement to be able to
anthropomorphise this scene despite the realistic approach - I don't think
it would work so well if the chessmen had eyes, for example.

Andrey's "Crash"

This looks like it might have been generated using the most slovenly POV-Ray
engine ever seen. You start the render, and it half-heartedly slaps some
paint in an approximation of a checkered plane, breaks someone's greenhouse
in the next street with the reflective sphere, then carelessly knocks over
one of the paint tins whilst scratching its backside and swigging from a
can of Carlsberg Special Brew. To crown it all, it probably saved the image
in an 8-bit Atari sprite format that hasn't been used since 1987.

Inventive effects for the paint drips, and I like the checker paint-stroke
effects. The wide-angle view makes it more than it could have been, too!

Steve's "Tina entertains..."

I like this a lot, going straight for the name that everybody got so
enthusiastic about in the first place. The floor's really nice, very
mid-eighties Russian computer-gamey ;-) but I have to say, I didn't
immediately notice that Tina is completely naked - the dark shadows at
first appeared to be clothing of some kind. Stronger radiosity or
additional lighting from the side would help here. This revelation of
course brings out the very tasteful camera angle - no bits on display here!

Steve's "2mice"

Interesting approach... no checkered planes, damn, that only leaves cheese!
That cheese is just the right colour (it can be surprisingly difficult to
pick a good shade of yellow - unless your version of colors.inc has a
helpful "LeerdammerYellow"), and the mouse whiskers look fine depite your
misgivings. I can almost smell it. The fly and the mice definitely smelt
it, and presumably are tucking in with gusto. :-)

Mike's "Here's looking at hues, kid"

The plane puts me in mind of the Indian haulage business. I once travelled
across India, and was struck by how colourfully all the truck-drivers
decorated their vehicles, seemingly by coating every available surface with
glue and dipping the whole affair into a lucky dip of plastic flowers,
swirly paint and very small shrines to the Hindu Gods.

This is great. I think this is possibly the best checkered (or not) airplane
gag I've ever seen! And I'm very impressed by the plane - until I read the
description I had it pegged as either a well-made mesh or a library object
- but no - all CSG! Brilliant. Wise move toning down the photorealism too.

Jim's "This is not a checkered plane"

This is a brilliant image, both artistically and technically. I was hitherto
ignorant of the camera_view pigment feature in MegaPov, and to put it to
such inventive use - the POV-Ray authors must be continually astounded by
this sort of creativity. It's like a checkered transporter beam... there
must be some ST:NG techo-babble dialogue somewhere that can explain this
effect - probably season 4 or 5, and probably spoken by Geordi laForge.

Aside from the checker effect, the cold and isolation are particularly
tangible, although one suspects the image wouldn't be nearly as captivating
without the checker. A fascinating result, which demands rumination (and I
don't mean semidigested grass).

Bruno's "Povlab"

Wasn't there a modeller for POV-Ray called povlab once upon a time? This is
quite a busy image, and certainly demands some attention. A lot of detail
is only obvious after viewing on a high-gamma (i.e. laptop) display, and
boy is there a lot to find. I couldn't even see the casks mentioned in the
text file on my CRT! So much comes to light when the image is brightened -
the mantel to the right, the 'danger-of-death' logo on the lightsaber
display case, the hearth in the far corner, the shaft of light falling
across the desk, the circular mirrors placed around the domed skylight, the
sword hanging over the door...

This is a digital alchemist's abode, stuffed with the arcane tools of his
trade, dusty crucibles fomenting bubbling SDL mixtures in his attempts to
create graphical gold from base  16. The door is ajar, so perhaps the
alchemist has popped out for a quick game of backgammon to soothe his
nerves after his most recent failure to generate a checkered plane...


Well, thus ends my critical marathon of the 'not a checkered plane'
POV-Rally. Hope you all enjoyed it folks; I certainly enjoyed looking at
(and *seeing*) your images!

Bill

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