"Wow, you can even do perfect shadows!"

I've shown my 3D artwork to many people who aren't familiar with raytracing techniques, and some of their reactions are quite cute. Both someone trained as a nurse and a 6-year-old had the same reaction: "Wow you can even do perfect shadows!"

The easiest thing to do in raytracing is shadows-- you make an object and a light source and something for the light to fall on, and the computer does ALL the work for you. No thinking required.

But maybe there's a secret to pleasing or reaching people with animation: use shadows. Does it really matter if folks are impressed at your work, and their enthusiasm is specifically due to ignorance of just how easy one aspect is? In the final analysis, I think not.