2011-12-31

A Historical Walk With Silent Movie



Historical Places in SL have their own charm. The Berlin1920 project I have introduced to you before. But there is another place with historic Berlin: The Scheunenviertel. Not so big, but nicely done and worth a nice New Years walk. A highlight is the Münz-Lichtspiele, a silent movie theater. Currently, they show the oldest film version of Alice in Wonderland from 1903. Cecil Hepworth made the longest movie that was ever done so far and it is almost completely preserved. Unbelievable 8 minutes long is the movie ;)
I took a photo of the scene with the Mad Hatter and I wish you a wonderful holiday with a New Year's Hat of the Mad Hattery.
With the Best Wishes for 2012!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Forest%20of%20Samhain/19/213/1002


2011-12-30

Shopping With a Cold


These days are hard days. Poor BK Ansar had to go shopping although he has a bad cold. So he went quick in his pyjama and his cool bunny slippers. I could not resist and took a photo. Hopefully I am not infected now. If you happen to meet him pass him a new tissue.

2011-12-29

Wonderful Place to Explore: The Looking Glass



The Looking Glass is a poetic dream world that invites you to explore. Alone the half destroyed theater with the realistic textures is really worth seeing. In the pretty town you can descend into the sewers. 
They are so much branched that you can get lost in it. Hidden outputs lead to the other areas of the sim. I particularly like the enchanted forest. Everywhere are beautiful places to stay and is worth more than one visit.
Currently there are two other reasons to go there. At the side of the theater, there is a Christmas tree with gifts from various shops.  

Gifts under the Christmas Tree
Artwork by Scott Rolfe
And in the gallery on the mountain there is an exhibition of RL works by Scott Rolfe, Scottius Polke in SL. Inworld works by him are currently to be seen at the Nordan Gallery, at Originalia, at Project Z and  as part of the collaborative work, "The Path". And here the circle closes. The Looking Glass has been build by Sharni Azalee and Marcus Inkpen. Marcus also has been taken part of The Path.



  

2011-12-28

Travel Adventure at LEA


On all the newLEA sims happens a lot and it's fun to look around there. There will be plenty to blog in the near future. Today I came across the name of Charlotte Bartlett and was immediately curious. She builds incredibly beautiful houses with interior for incredibly low prices. I really felt in love with this one. It is already available in the Marketplace or inworld.
On the table there is a TP to an adventure trip, which ends up back in front of the house. You will enjoy it!



  

Last Christmas Show Today!

Yesterday I made it to visit the Christmas Show at the Theatre on the Hill with beautiful music. This is the program:
 The great stage set made the visit really a wonderful experience.
The last show is TODAY at 2 PM SLT!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pure%20Luxury/197/183/35



   


2011-12-27

Interactive Games: Mad Pea


We are in a special time of year. The 12 nights between 24 December and 6 January are calledRough Nights” (literally translated) and have in all Europe since ancient times mystical significance. During this time, it was traditionally not worked. My mother still does not washes clothes in these days as should bring bad luck for the new year. The function of New Year's Eve is to chase away evil spirits, which are going around in these dark nights. And since this is the time after the winter solstice, it is the right time to sum up with last year and plan for the one to come. It is told that fortune tellers and Tarot card readers have special powers have special forces and have high season.
Many of you have probably more time than usual for Second Life. A sim with great games might be exactly the right thing now. Mad Pea offers besides a beautiful winter landscape many interactive games. In the group you will be updated about current events, such as Bingo. I particularly liked the book that tells and builts the scenes on click.
And I stuck in the Kaaos Effect, an interactive journey through time using a HUD. You can stop at any time and come back to the last scene.
Many things I have not discovered yet, but the Rough Nights still last long ....



    

2011-12-23

Art & Poetry: Christmas


This week Art & Poetry is about a special poem of Carmen Auletta:
I only can agree with that. But we are blessed with the richness of artist’s creativity about the poem. I especially liked the works of Romy Nayar and Nexuno Thespian.
Giovann Cerise
Romy Nayar
Nexuno Thespian
Just for 3 days open until Dec. 25, so hurry and have a look!
Merry Christmas to all!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MetaLES/126/127/3599 


  

2011-12-20

Coincidence: Fur in Second Life


Yesterday I tried my new dress from Purple Moon and thought that the fur looks very fake fur.
My fox stole from Mimikri looks much nobler.
In that moment Eupalinos Ugajin sent me a photo, on which he wears a must-have of the Season: A baby stole made from guaranteed real babies. For only 3 Linden you can buy it here or inworld.
The baby does not fit to my lipstick, but has an interesting backround. The stole is a response to attacks, which Anya Ohmai is suspended because of this "real" fox stoles. And I think they are for only 88 Linden really a must-have. They come in 3 colours in a package. You can get them here.
How "real" is virtual fur allowed to be? Trill Zapatero told me she always writes, that she uses fake fur. But it was actually meant as a joke.

I'm just glad that my favorite otter Scottius Polke not yet has been attacked, as far as I know. His Starfish Command shoots "living" virtual starfish who die then after 3 seconds.

I wonder if these "animal rights activists" will have steak for dinner ...



    

2011-12-19

Shopping in SL - Answer of a Merchant

Yesterday I got a note card with an answer of a merchant on my last blog post. It was too long for the commentary function. Therefore I post it here:

Answers from my side as a creator and shop owner in SL, you wrote:

"Dear shop owners, if you want to make more sales and traffic inworld, here are my recommendations:

1. You show me in your stores often the same photos as in the Market Place. I want to see the stuff inworld. That's why I'm coming! And if it is not possible, have at least some examples in the store."

Answer:
Well, we would love to show the customer the quality of the products by placing inworld-examples at the store. I agree, that this will be the best way to decide if a customer will buy or not .... I am selling clothing, attachments, furniture, deco stuff, some houses ...  and i try to show the products inworld. As real as possible .... chairs you can sit on, houses to walk in, decoration you can see in an natural environment. But this only works for primed/sculpted objects, which can be rezzed. And of course, each rezzed object uses prims. Unfortunately Second Life is limiting us to 15000 prims per SIM (if you are lucky enough to offer your clients a whole sim store)..... sounds a lot, but in fact you need a lot of prims for the store, the environment, the presentation of products (e.g. easel, shelfs, tables, lights, plants, buildings etc.) As a client, please do a simple test. Just count the prims you are actually wearing while you read this. How much is it including hair, shoes, belt, jewelry and various other attachments. Are you below 100? between 100 and 200? over 200? Well its up to you to decide, how many products can be placed with a limit of 15000 prims.

Just to clarify. We offer a range of nearly 1000 different products. Store and environment (whole SIM) takes about 25% of the available prims and is well built, using sculpties, megaprims and low prim plants and furniture. (hey, thats for you, the client, to give you a nice shopping experience in a store that reflects the products. Or do you prefer shopping in white boxes?)

Sure, products can be shown with temp-rezz-vendors ..... but i doubt this will be the shopping experience you expected. Sitting in front of a box, touching, rezzing, touching, rezzing, touching ......

For  clothing, like shirts and pants there is another problem. These can only be shown when worn on the body. So you need some modelling bots or real person models to show. Be honest. Do you like the stores where 20 models are standing around? For some of the clothing sets, we try at least to show the sculpted parts and boots in real.

"2. For EVERY piece of clothing please offer a demo to try. Many of you are better photographers than builders, but some also are worse. Even if the quality is good, sometimes the Items cannot be properly adjusted to fit to the avatar."

Answer:
Its hard to show e.g. a shirt as a demo. Sure you can paint a huge DEMO across the breast, but wont this destroy the overall look? Same for pants and other clothing textures.
For anything else, I agree that a demo will be a nice idea. And I can't deny that some merchants use photoshop to "pimp up" their vendor pictures. That is an absolutely NO GO!

"3. Deliver clothes in folders. I want to put them on immediately."

Answer:
We do.

"4. If the items must come in a box, then please allow to rez. Is it customer-friendly to send me back home? If I liked it, I might have bought a different color or something else. But you sent me away!"

Answer:
For products which are in a box, it's a simple one prim box to open:

"5. I wish changing rooms to fit the clothes."

Answer:
In fact I built one...... it is never used by clients

"6. For other objects, I wish the number of prims in the description. They are an essential part of my decision to buy or not."

Answer:
For all items which have to be rezzed, we announce the number of prims on the vendor. For attached items, like belts or shoes, we do when the prim count is incredible high.

"6. Please use your creativity for the products and not the packaging. Boxes with more than 15 prims often have sent me to a sandbox. That did not made me happier with the new items. You might stand all day on your building platform of a full sim and do not understand that. But I have a strong decoration gene and a beautiful home on a low prim sim. Therefore free prims are luxury for me as for most residents"

Answer:
I completely agree:

"7. And last, but not least: Why don't you care about the number and quality of scripts and ARC? How should I know about it as average resident? You are the builder and you risk that I will be expelled from other sims because of your clothes, hair, shoes or whatever."

Answer:
There are various reasons to use scripts in the products.
Most of the merchants are afraid to sell copy/modify products because of some easy to handle copy tools in SL. To give the client at least the chance to resize, they add a resizer script in the product. Although all of our products are copy/mod, i also add some resizer scripts sometimes.For example for some belts, made of sculpties and prims, to make them fit the clients shape. I cant expect any client to be experienced enough to adjust by hand, but we still keep the products modifyable. So you can adjust to your needs, depending on your skills in SL. But under all circumstances, it must be possible for the client to delete the scripts. Thats a must! Either by an delete option in the script menu, or by deleting the script out of the content of the object.

The client normally needs to adjust the item once .... then there is no further need of resizers etc. Selling NO MOD products with build in resizer scripts without an delete option is stupid. I am providing both solutions for the client.  Delete by menu and deleting the script in the modifyable object. If you don't do one of both offered solutions to get rid of the scripts ... don't blame the merchant.

DragansVarg, http://www.huskycity.de/


 

2011-12-17

Are you Part of the 70%? - Shopping in SL


... most likely not, because otherwise you would not read this travelogue.

But let me start with the beginning. A friend sent me this link a few days ago:  http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/12/70-of-slers-dont-explore-sl-1.html

My fears were confirmed that most residents have no interest in the beauty and diversity of SL, sit almost always on the same sim and shop in the Market Place. For me a terrible idea, although I love my beautiful home in SL. I would like to comment to some points of the blog, today I am discussing the shopping experience inworld.
A few days ago I was looking for something specific and ended up with Lelutka.  Rezzing took an eternity; although most of the clothes only can be seen in photographs  :(  After a while I could walk and found what I was looking for. When I discover unknown designers I am always looking for freebies to test the quality of the stuff. Because of the good name of Lelutka here I was brave enough to buy something just for the photo. Of course, it came in a box and I could not rez  :(  So, back home! At home I could not rez either  :(  Not enough free prims. So, off to a sandbox  :(  There I could not believe my eyes. The box had 50 Prims!  :(  I was finally able to open and wear the clothes. The color had absolutely nothing to do with the photo. So, off to the trash!  :(   My mood was down. Once again I had wasted my time and 350 Linden for the trash bin  :( All this happened many times with clothes of other designers.

Dear shop owners, if you want to make more sales and traffic inworld, here are my recommendations:

1. You show me in your stores often the same photos as in the Market Place. I want to see the stuff inworld. That's why I'm coming! And if it is not possible, have at least some examples in the store.

2. For EVERY piece of clothing please offer a demo to try. Many of you are better photographers than builders, but some also are worse. Even if the quality is good, sometimes the Items cannot be properly adjusted to fit to the avatar.

3. Deliver clothes in folders. I want to put them on immediately.

4. If the items must come in a box, then please allow to rez. Is it customer-friendly to send me back home? If I liked it, I might have bought a different color or something else. But you sent me away!

5. I wish changing rooms to fit the clothes.

6. For other objects, I wish the number of prims in the description. They are an essential part of my decision to buy or not.

6. Please use your creativity for the products and not the packaging. Boxes with more than 15 prims often have sent me to a sandbox. That did not made me happier with the new items. You might stand all day on your building platform of a full sim and do not understand that. But I have a strong decoration gene and a beautiful home on a low prim sim. Therefore free prims are luxury for me as for most residents.

7. And last, but not least: Why don't you care about the number and quality of scripts and ARC? How should I know about it as average resident? You are the builder and you risk that I will be expelled from other sims because of your clothes, hair, shoes or whatever.






   

A Post dedicated to Machinima

Last week has been awarded the winners of the UWA Finale. See the list of all winners and links to joint blogposts here. I made a choice of my personal favourites of the year, not all has been taken part of the contest:

VIRTUAL LOVE by Iono Allen

As I already wrote, this machinima is a sad and heartbreaking beautiful love story:



WELCOME TO THE OTHER SIDE by Tutsy Navarathna

A Machinima about a dark journey into the virtual world. At the end the devil decides to inspect Second Life more closely:



ARTWASHERS by Friday Siamendes

A very funny Machinima about the "maintenance staff" at UWA. The tourists are so cool:



ELECTRIC HELL by SaveMe Oh

Several machinima has been taken at the great installation Inferno by Rebeca Bashly, which still can be seen here. My favourite is this funny one, because SaveMe Oh turned the serious theme to a musical. I am still laughing when I see it. The music is taken from an advertising for vacuum cleaners.

Electric hell from SaveMe Oh on Vimeo.



LOVE PRAYER by Hypatia Pickens

A beautifully mystical love story with great music:



THE DARE! by N's Lowbudget Trashproduction

This machinima is about the Aspen Nights Halloween Project , cool Sounds and fast camera moves:



REMOTE CONTROL DIRECTORS CUT by reassemble

reassemble are oona Eiren and sayzee Ishtari which have taken a machinima in their own urban, grungy style:

Remote Control Directors Cut from reassemble (sl) on Vimeo.



GRETCHEN AND TEDDY by Bryn Oh

A little bit spooky and beautiful as all builds of Bryn Oh, taken at the build in SL. I like the sounds:





Damned Cold and Damned Nice: Arctica by Rebeca Bashly


Each month, there are great new installations to see on the MetaLES sim. According to the season just opened “Arctica Dreams” by Rebeca Bashly. Make sure that you are dressed warm and have the viewer set on midnight. You'll land on a frozen desert and if you follow the footsteps, you fall into an ice hole
In there you will find a beautiful and bizarre ice landscape with Rebeca's delicate sculptures. Btw, they are available in the Marketplace.

 Now replaced bis this work.
Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MetaLES/224/185/73


   

2011-12-16

My Winter Favourite: Calas Galadhon Parksims




My favorite Sims for a nice walk at all seasons are the Calas Galadhon Park Sims. I wrote about it already in summer. 



4 Sims and the Christmas Pavilion are now covered with snow. You can go sledding on the hills, rez a horse sleigh or go and ice skating on the lake. The buildings are all decorated for Christmas. You find on the sims many beautiful places to dance and cuddle.




   

2011-12-15

Incredible Scripts: Oberon Onmura


 A few days ago Oberon Onmura presented 3 works, which are displayed in the Medley Performance Arts Center. As always, I was intrigued by the graphic clarity and sophisticated, partly interactive scripts. Since then I returned there and tried to banish the installations in an appropriate manner on photos. But as always with his works, I failed.

Another great installation of Oberon is on his LEA sim.  Boxes move in waves and cause spray. That looks incredible great! I always wonder how huge the scripts must be.


Please, please, please go and let yourself be fascinated!

Taxi:   sadly gone