To my readers, who by now are probably wondering why this place looks so, uhm, empty:

I’ve grown a tad bit tired of Blogger, so I’m turning this blog into a Wordpress-type one in what you can call “the very near future” (read: this week-end). As I want to keep this URL though, for evident reasons of easiness, I had to “delete” the current blog in order to install the new one, as it relies on a database. I’ll thus be re-adding posts as well as comments, with the right timestamps, over the next two days, perhaps even less than that depending on the time I have. I’ve also kept a copy of the former entries, in case I botch a blog-editing roll along the way

Sorry for the inconvenience. This blog will be fully back soon, even though you can expect much template-tweaking as well once this is done!

This is something pretty usual for me… starting a “new” activity on the web, and then getting the need to do something more than just idling in it. So I’ve decided to set this little blog, helped in that, I admit, by a few examples of “Second Life blogs” I’ve had the chance to see in the past two weeks.

For a quick introduction… I go in Second Life’s world under the name of Tanaquil Karuna. I’ve actually been in this world for a few days only, and am still trying to learn the ropes. Unexpectedly – or maybe not that much, given some of my activities – it won my interest pretty fast, faster than I had thought to be honest, and I found myself having a good deal of fun toying around with some basic settings such as clothes and avatar customizing.

Although I know that all of this will still change in the future, so far it really seems to me like something I’ll be doing for more than a few days only… so here I am, slowly getting into my creative gear. I have some projects in mind, mainly clothing for the moment, and I hope I’ll be able to do something nice someday with that, once I know more.

One thing that struck me after one hour or two of trying my hand at clothing is that, well, one can feel quickly limited. Not exactly by the amount of possible combinations – after all, there aren’t that many games out there allowing such an extended customization – but by the feeling that “with a few hours on my hands, I’m sure that I could do this, and this, and that!”

Of course, my first attempts at “designing” clothes have been very basic, to say the least.. Playing with the long/short toggles, getting the grasp of how the various settings make said clothes fit on my avatar, applying a few textures to see how they look like once a shirt of skirt is put into proper shape… I just couldn’t go outside in the vast world with the basic set of clothes – matter of personal pride! – so I quickly threw a few things together, and made what I could call a very basic set of clothes, quickly followed by one with skirt rather than pants (yes, I like red and satin… that’s easy to see!). I’m aware that it pretty much sucks, it’s all “beginner’s clothes”, so to say, but it was still better than the basic set, and I could at least say that I was the one who had made them.

In any case, I won’t stop there. I have plenty of ideas, that I’m writing down as sketches for the moment before jumping to the real making-of, and toying with these clothes helped a lot already in getting the feeling of how things look on an avatar. It probably looks different from one avatar to another though, but this is something I haven’t been able to check yet.

Now I just need my new videocard to be ordered and delivered, so that I can actually go on really working on clothes on my own, and taking a few shots of them, too…

While I’m sitting here, between browsing some SL blogs and being unable to actively play, my mind has been wandering on thoughts of possible changes to bring to my avatar once I can log in again. I absolutely need to plan a “pony-tail” version of her hair – or anything similar, that will leave her neck bare – so that I can properly test clothing on her. Tanaquil has very long hair, and of course it doesn’t help in checking these things.

Then, it brought another thought to my mind: why had I chosen on this specific persona in Second Life? Especially in an online world such as this one, am I recreating “a persona I’d like to be”, or am I acting as in every other kind of roleplaying game?

For the little story, Tanaquil is a character I created in a story I’ve been working on for a few years now. A long, 3-books based story, so not entering into too many details. Her name is actually a historical, Etruscan one, and comes from Tarquin’s wife, who was known in latin texts as a seeress. In my story too, she’s part of a race that could be called “Dark Elves”, except that contrary to the AD&D drows or any kind of classical dark Elves, their hair is usually jet black, and their skin bearing a slight blueish hue. I don’t think that’s very classical in itself in fantasy stories elves, although I could be mistaken. Some of this race’s characteristics are also specific, in my story – pointy ears, but also slit eyes, and a definite “Far East” feeling in many parts of their culture and clothing. This kind of came by itself, as I’ve had a definite interest in (notably) Japanese and Chinese culture, and I freely admit this influence.

When I came to Second Life on my first minutes of trial, I hadn’t any specific plans regarding creating a character. First of all, I was thinking of a name. The one I tend to use the most often on the web wouldn’t have looked very nice once one of the SL family names would have been added to it, and I tried with them all, really. I didn’t want to use my real name, of course, nor the one I use in AO, and thus decided to use Tanaquil, as after all it’s a name I like. After this, as soon as was in the starting area and learnt how to customize face features, hair and body, the avatar kind of followed by itself. To my eyes, Tanaquil will always be ‘the dark Elf’, and before I even truly realized what I was doing, the result was what I’m currently using in Second Life.

It’s a somewhat weird feeling, seeing now that I’ll be playing her for way longer than I had intended. A hastily-chosen name, just for the sole purpose of using my seven days of trial, turned into a character I’m quite fond of, an avatar I like, and a few projects that I’m keeping locked in my mind until I can actually make them become true in game. I suppose that, upon deciding to stay, I could have thought “I haven’t thought about this character at all, let’s make a new account, ditch this one, and recreate something I really want”... but it’s not the case. I’m quite happy so far with what I’ve been doing. Even though the Second Life setting doesn’t really match what the original, novel character was, nor her world.

And thus, this “avatar choice” has quite taken off by itself, leaving me as her creator behind, so to say. I don’t think it’s a matter of really trying to create a “what if?...” persona in this world. I’m wondering if it’s not, all that simply, the pleasure of being able to work on a character that I wouldn’t have been able to shape this way in many other games (not to say in no other game), and without any “race constraints” to get in the way…?

Currently taking these little notes as a future reminder of what my first days in Second Life were… I’ve never really done that in any game, to be honest, but here there are several things that really impressed me from the start, I must say, and made me feel like it’d be worth more than just a quick tour. I’m still running on a basic account so far, too, so for the moment I haven’t really dabbled in anything related to housing. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to do it too… we’ll see.

First of all… it’s big. So big. It may not seem so when we’re still on the training island and see these little maps in front of us in the temple, but once in the world itself, it takes all its meaning. What is nice is that, thanks to the teleporting and flying functions, I was able to do something I usually can’t do in other games: explore from the start, without any limitations of level, skill, accessing zones, etc (there may be some, but I haven’t seen them yet, at least). Thus, after some required avatar remodelling (required for me: non-edited templates have never been satisfactory for long to my eyes!), I slapped on some better clothes, and spent a few hours simply teleporting randomly from one sim to the other, looking at the land, buildings, shops, architecture, at what had been placed on said lands… Trying to spot little shops and specific names is pretty interesting in itself, and it gave me a few landmarks to keep in mind for the day I’d come back to really do some shopping or anything, if I decide to do so.

Second, designing one’s own avatar and clothes turned out to be way more fun than I had thought! I’ve never been especially talented at 3D modelling, so at first I was convinced I’d have a very hard time to craft clothes that ‘fit’... yes, I know, I wasn’t very optimistic about my skills regarding that, as I had some bad experience with 3D softwares at work. It seems to me now that it’s not that hard, or at least, that I’ll be able to do something more than just pitiful little shirts and pants in basic colors. I really like this feeling; it tickles my creativity, and gives me the urge to draw a few clothes and try to reproduce them on world.

I still need to thank Sezmra again for having pointed this game to me. What I was at first afraid to try due to thinking “I’ll never have the time, and it looks too complex”, actually turned out to be something that pretty much fits my tastes. So, if you read this: THANK YOU! beams a smile

While taking a little break from moving prims in my garden this morning, my e-mail box chimed out as I was getting an offline IM from Snakekiss, to whom I had asked about a stall in the market yesterday night. Thus I came back online to chat with her bit about all of this, and it all turned out like a very busy end-of-morning and afternoon.

Not only did she give me a stall to sell my clothes on, but she was as kind as to explain me step by step how to pack them into prims, set a price on them, apply a texture on one side of a prim only, set permissions, and various other little tidbits of good advice, including giving me nice textures to use as prints for my works, and hair sticks to work with (with these, my little bun of black hair looks so much better than before). It turns out that indeed, nobody else makes kimono and other similar Japanese clothing in Second Life, save for a few people who have either stopped now or left a long time ago, and thus this is all pretty unique. It added more excitement to the already existing fun of working on something I like, and if things go well, it may evolve in a really nice way.

Of course I couldn’t stop on such a road, and I had this urge to go back in during the afternoon to try and set up a vendor. For this one I used Hiro’s script (which is excellent, really, and I’ll highly recommend it), and will try to use the version with arrows later on or tomorrow, to display several colors of the same model without cluttering the stall with the same images. It was a nice surprise to see that, not even two minutes after I had installed my first panel, another player had already bought one. Who said that there wasn’t any market with these articles, really! I’ve put up geta and tabi as well, for people to not go walking bare-footed in their shiny new yukata.

I’m glad I had this done today. I still lack a name and a logo for my creations, but this will have to come in time, as I’m certainly not going to slap some lame name just for the sake of it, or on the contrary, wait weeks until inspiration strikes. I’m too excited by this to wait anyway!

Finally I could take a moment to go have a look at the second edition of Burning Life, in Center Camp, which everybody is talking about, and even though the snapshots I have of it so far are likely not the ones of “completely finished works” there (depending on who made them I assume), I was already amazed by what I saw. Better yet, while it should have ended on the 7th, the fact that it got prolongated until September 13th will help in coming back and see how things evolve there. I definitely need to take more pictures again in a few days, to check if some scenes have changed.

I wasn’t sure at first of what exactly Burning Life was though. As I saw it mentioned on the forums, then on the launcher, it came to me that it would, all that simply, be a place where people could let their creativity explode, and this is indeed what it looks like. I also got a look at the Burning Man project web site, given that Burning Life seemed directly related to it, and it’s very impressing as well.

I’m not sure of who has done what as of now, I was too awed at the constructs, flowers, items, represented characters and whatnot to really think of checking who their “owners” were… so I’ll try to get the names a next time. For now, here are all the nice pictures!

In the past days, I’ve been making a few more attempts at creating something worth a look when it comes to clothing. So far the result doesn’t seem that bad, which is already a good point, although I know there are people out there who can craft way better clothing than I. But we all need to start somewhere, do we.

I also came back to the little project I had been working on. Even though it’s not my native culture, and I’m very aware that it’ll be more for my personal satisfaction than a really accurate representation, I wanted to give a try at Japanese-inspiration clothes. Not simply using a few patterns here and there, but real clothes, such as yukata or haori. It’s currently proving hard enough to do, especially for men’s clothing and for the whole floaty aspect of clothes, but that’s another matter, and probably it’ll go a little more smoothly once I’m more used to play with templates and patterns. Sezmra is the one who got the first (and only) sighting of my “purple yukata”, before I was locked away, but I need to rework it more for it to look fine. Perhaps even use prims in certain places, for it to look right.

Pondering these clothes made me write a little post in the artists forum recently, too. It didn’t seem to me that there were many people around doing this kind of clothing (not necessarily Asian, but “traditional costumes” from various cultures in general), so I went ahead and asked. Zana Feaver confirmed what both Sezmra and I had noticed already – doesn’t seem that anyone is really into this kind of things. Zana has worked on historical clothing though, but this seems to be the closest that could be found. Looks like if I want to see more cultural costumes, I need to work on them myself then smiles

I’m still a little surprised in any case. Surprised that, with all the diversity around in Second Life, there isn’t really any person who has designed this type of clothes. Even if only for a certain event, or locations. I’ve been wondering why, maybe it is simply that the general people base isn’t interested in this, or that it’s hard to do, or that they prefer work on different, more modern types of clothes? I know of one person who has designed priest clothes, so I assume it’s already closer to “culture”, yet it’s still not what I was looking for. It’d have been nice to be able to talk of such themes with other people, ather than design clothes in my own little corner.

We’ll see though. Because it wasn’t posted on the forums, doesn’t mean that absolutely no one has ever thought of making such clothes. Time and more exploration will tell, I guess.

And it’s not me who added this word to the name!

It was doomed to come… there would be a day where I’d finally spot this place, and this day, well, had finally come. I set myself on my little trip to the Sci-Fi Geeks Museaum & Theater, in Indigo (64,192), and as was to be expected, took quite a good deal of pictures on my way in. It indeed is very nice to visit, even though I’m not sure I know all the references that are actually made in it, between posters, 3D displays and reconstitution of spaceships. Of course, I don’t like not knowing, so I made my own little research when there was something I couldn’t catch… and now I’m less ignorant (or more geeky, depending on how one will look at it).

The entry part of the Museum, as can easily be seen on the snapshots above, is a vast room filled with posters from various series; it leads to two holo-rooms, where one can easily activate a 3D-display of some known, various spacecrafts. I’m a sucker for Babylon 5, so it’s the one I added to my little galore here, but there are some others, of course. The central room also sports a StarGate ring transporter, and two small rooms that evidently urge one to shout “Beam me up Scotty!”.

So, what’s the next thing I did? Beaming up, of course. Warning, trek love inside. One of the teleporters (let’s cal them this way) leads to a reconstruction of the “Defiant”, the other to the Klingon”Bird of Prey”. Both pretty well-done, and it’s fun to roam one’s way in them, looking at how they’ve been built. I’m really not a Star Trek fan (free admittance here!), but I can’t deny that it’s really a nice building job that has been done on them.

Last but not least, the first floor of the Museum is actually a huge theatre, one with a very ncie cosy feeling. I suspect that it must be a place for events, as I do’nt see the interest of a constantly empty theatre room of this size, but whatever – iy has this nice touch of a room perfect for old 50’s sci-fi movies, and I’m certainly not one to complain about this.

And now, I think I can add this one to the list of places that are worth a look and visit.

Since I had read the article about it in the New World Notes, I’ve wanted to go and have a look at it. Today it’s what I did, and flew to Sedig to go to the ‘schizophrene’ experiment by myself. The least I can say is that it was pretty troubling, not so much at first, but more so after a few minutes. I had to wear a badge – which was used to stream the ‘voices’, in fact – and even though they were all in English (of course), it was indeed pretty disturbing.

Voices keeping on telling how ‘evil’ I am, that ‘I’ am just a scumbag… whispers, highlighted words in the newspaper, underlying suggestions of death, troubled reflections in the mirror, changes of ground, and all of this in such a sudden manner usually that it really contributed to surprise me (in the “what the hell?!” meaning of the word, hum…). The clinical environment adds a lot, too, to the whole feeling of insecurity and of being ‘lost’. Of course, one has the opportunity to get out at will, yet I wanted to do it till the end, and stay a litttle longer after this, just to see how it was.

I’m not going to list everything in here, as to not spoil it for potential readers, nor post more images, but yes… it takes its full meaning only after some time. Maybe it’s just me (not being a native English speaker usually causes me to need more time to ‘understand’ spoken things, and the voices were part of this), or maybe it’s this way for everybody… I have no idea. I just know now that it’s extremely disturbing, and also, oddly enough, helped me in getting a better grasp of something I thought I knew before, yet without knowing that much about it.

Somehow, it reminded me of A Beautiful Mind a lot. A lot.