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I've never had a problem with bump maps, they've always worked exactly as intended for me. I've done a few tests with high poly models and extreme distortions, but haven't been able to reproduce your results. It does make me wonder about the complexity of your model, though, and obviously I can't tell that just from the output video you've linked.
The only time I've encountered seemingly inexplicable frame-to-frame 'skipping' in a render is when I've had two faces in fairly close proximity, even when they're static - is your head a single mesh (and I mean the actual head model, not the hat, goggles or eyes, etc), or are you using several (two or more) copies of the same mesh at slightly different sizes, each with varying textures (perhaps to improve the realism of the model)? If that's in any way the case, there are both several causes and several solutions.

Hi Cori. Great model, but I think I see a specular highlight forming on the transparent part on the yellow feather there. If you apply your transparent texture as the specular texture too, this won't happen.

For inspiration look in the gallery to the left <. In the first image of the building/shack all the grasses are trans maps. They can be very effective.

ADSohr: I certainly don't want to contradict your good advice, but I have to correct you on this. The grass isn't transmapped in this image, every single blade (in the foreground at least) is modelled. The reasoning was to do with shadows (which you don't get with transmaps) though it didn't quite work out, but you can see the models are receiving the blue light source from left of view.

Hi Kain - Good looking work. If merge points doesn't work, it's normally because your trying to merge points on separate meshes. You need to select both halves and choose 'Build' > 'Join Solids' first, then use the merge points. Might not be the problem in this case, but it always used to catch me out.

Agreed, absolutely awesome work, Ensoniq5, genuinely outstanding. Loved the ending. Speed it a tiny bit off in places, but given the limitations of a challenge like this, it really is faultless. Reminded me a lot of the 'cog' Honda advert.

Hi everyone. Congratulations to floyd! Clearly a last minute entry is the way to do it
Have been without internet for nearly two weeks now, so I missed the voting entirely, but it's fairly obvious it wouldn't have affected the outcome.

cheatsguy: it's a technique i've used a lot, and it's fairly simple to do. Essentially just a semi-transparent object matched to the shape of the window, which doesn't cast or receive shadows. I think it worked slightly better in the stained glass window because the window shape was more complex and so created more variation in the image. I'll see if I can put together a short tutorial if people are interested. It's not disimilar to the 'light cones' outlined in the last issue of DotAN8 e-zine. It was slightly more complex to produce in this image, though, because of the chair.

Looking forward to the next contest!

3Dgeek: There are two fairly straightforward techniques you could try get some glow in your ghosts:
1) Create a local light and parent it to the ghost object, ensuring it is at the centre (ie remove the default Y+200 offset). Make the light very local (start: 5, end: 500 - depending on your object size). Then make your ghost object material two sided. Set the front to 0.0 visibility, and the back to a high specular value (1) and somewhat visible (0.4), with a low rough value (around 4). The light will cause bright specular highlighting across the far surfaces of the ghost object, and the edges will be less lit, creating the effect of a glowing centre. This has the great advantage of your ghosts actually casting a glow on any objects they fly near.
2) Create a single flat plane (a 1x1x1 cube and delete four points). Create an image of a gradient white circle on a black background (sample attached), use this as a transmap on a new texture with a strong glow (in whatever colour you require, white or blueish-white). Add this as a child of your ghost, and adjust it to be slightly larger than the ghost object. You may need to push this slightly behind your ghost object to avoid unsightly overlaps between semi-transparent objects. If you set this new object to be facing the camera, it will keep itself aligned in the scene and work even if you move the ghosts around.
Here's a very crude preview using both techniques:

I appreciate the credit, Navek, but really not necessary! I look forward to seeing how your image turns out.

Floyd's illustration pic reminds me a lot of one of my gallery images, http://www.anim8or.com/gallery/gallery18/image5.html (second image on the page, obviously.)

Will see if I have time to come up with a new one!