The "tokonoma" is an alcove in the main room of a traditional Japanese home. It contains, generally, a scroll (frequently but not always calligraphy), and an "ikibana" or flower arrangement. Other items, including dolls, bowls, Buddhas, incense, and so forth may be found there.

For a true traditionalist the ikibana would be made up of seasonal flowers, and the scroll would also have calligraphy appropriate to the season. The little tokonoma I have created here is far from traditional; the main aim for it was to provide navigational links and to frame for larger monitors a gallery image sized to the old 480 by 640 pixel window many of us still browse with.

All models in this image were created by me. The doll is based on the folkcraft of Hachijo Island, in the south of Japan. The doll is wearing "ki-hachijo" fabric, a hand-woven yellow silk. That texture was pulled from a photograph of a coin purse also produced on the island.

The head and kimono were modeled laboriously in Ray Dream Designer's polygon modeller. Hands and feet were simpler metaball models made in Amorphium, and the geta (wooden sandals), hair, and bow are spline models.

As usual, Steve Cox's free UV-mapper was indispensible.

The flower very roughly resembles a California wildflower. On the ceramic is an attempt by me at brush-painting. Look closely at the "odango-atama" hairstyle; yes, indeed, that is Sailor Moon in the kimono!

The base for the incense is an image of the "Seven Good-Luck Gods " in the "Boat of Heaven." Fuji-san is in the background and a crane watches over the boat. The Seven Good-Luck Gods (Benten, Hotei, Ebisu, Jurojin, Fukurokuju, Daikoku and Bishamon) were originally Chinese, but are now popular in various places (including a brand of Japanese beer). The model is a Bryce lattice, with the height map painted carefully in Photoshop to create the bas-relief.

Texture was a modified Bryce preset, using the height map as a "C" channel so the deeper areas would have more verdigris.

Lighting used some thirty lights. A spotlight with a texture to throw the window pattern, clustered with a dozen spotlights of rather less intensity to soften the shadows. Since in the real world the bright-lit floor of the alcove would be throwing light back into the scene, there were some two dozen radials clustered around the brighter parts of the floor. All of these were set to very small values. The sun was turned off entirely, as was atmosphere.