Haaaaaappy Maaardi Graaas!

A slightly late blog post but at least I wasn't late with my freebie. I hope you guys are all dancing around and eating lots of pancakes and wearing masks (*innocent face*)

But anyway, here's a gifty that got sent out to Masqueraderie, and you can join and fish it out of the notices if you like. I won't tell.


The outfit is a beautiful and festive creation by Ghanima Uriza of Blue Blood, who is getting increasingly skilled at bringing her creative ideas to life in SL. I can't wait to see what she does next!

Les Roi et Reine du Mardi Gras

On Saturday Juana Manuel and Khamudy Mannonen were awarded with the two event masks, and the title of Mardi Gras King and Queen for being the most fabulously dressed of fabulously dressed folks.

For the design, I decided to do something a bit more contemporary. I've been loving being able to use torii for each mask half, as well as oblong sculpts, and so I was able to meld the two together into something elegant, modern, fun and interesting.



When names fail you, head to the translator :P I didn't just want to call it "Mardi Gras __ 2009", so I went for the next best thing. Next year I'll probably be forced to make it Italian!

Anyway, enjoy these, they should have some of the best fits of any larger masks, and beware of feathers getting lost in hair.

Mardi Gras Masquerade 2009

Seven hours later, I'm all partied out. What a bash, seriously! As always, the costumes were simply magnificent which is the more impressive because everyone was working within the 200 prim limit. I would almost think the best part of it was seeing all the costumes if everyone wasn't such good company :)

Ghanima Uriza

There were so many wonderful costumes, I had to pick only a few of my favorites for this blog entry, but there are far more on my and my store's Flickr streams from me and other party goers.

Myself and Miriel Enfield

Dream Resistance, Aria Eldridge, Sabina Takakura

Hehe, "the evil twins" as they were dubbed turned a lot of heads with their original concept, and so they won an honorable mention in the costume contest. But the winners who took the titles of Mardi Gras King and Queen were the impeccably and fabulously dressed Khamudy Mannonen and Juana Manuel.

(See their original costumes here and here)

It was an amazing send off for the Event Hall, which will be destroyed and replaced with a new one for the new sim build. It has seen four glorious parties and hundreds of amazing costumes within its walls, and I'm sure the new one will only serve its legacy well.

I want to thank everyone who could come for sharing your company, your wit and your beautiful avatar with us. It wouldn't be a party without you. Happy Mardi Gras, everyone :)

Happy Valentine's!

Yesterday I was busy with my RL Valentine's Day, but I still made sure I took the time to make up a goodie. I had a couple of projects with a heart theme from Shir Dryke's fundraiser, but they met their goal before I was able to work out the kinks and then I ended up dropping it. I thought of just sending those out but they were very much female oriented, and the guys in Masqueraderie would have just had to delete it. So I worked on a possibly familiar face to make sure everyone would have someone to snuggle. I remade my stuffed kitty plushy in a new and more cuddlable than ever incarnation. This one is decorated with an old experiment when I was first trying out oblong sculpts, and it didn't turn out well enough to sell as jewelry but is absolutely perfect for decorating a stuffed kitty.

You can fish him out of the notices of Masqueraderie for the next thirteen days :)

There will be a black one too of course, who will be one of my new freebies when my store reopens after the sim has been rebuilt! Still not sure when that is going to be, but it does look like the Mardi Gras Masquerade will be the last party I hold in the current event hall.

Lateris Mask

Working on more things for the sim, such as furniture and bugging Miriel for extra pieces for the model, but since I can't focus on one thing for too long, I got distracted and turned the Mardi Gras mask into a proper one.

Lateris is a bit of a cop-out, name wise, any of my friends can vouch for my struggling to figure out what the hell to call this. I was going to do the same thing as Divis and make this mask able to be worn on one side or the other or together, but it ended up looking like a pair of enormous bushy eyebrows! So just one side at a time, and thus, one sided, lateral... yeah. Sounds pretty anyway!

So it changes texture into pretty colors, as well as the feathers. And again, this is a torus mask, made so that you don't have to worry about your eye holes disappearing if it doesn't quite fit right. But it might be finicky with your hair if it isn't parted clearly, this new hair from Naughty (Abigail) fits it perfectly though!

It's made for the female face, and I felt it was feminine enough that I didn't bother making a male form as well. But, I figure any guy who would like to wear these fabulous feathers probably won't mind a little jerry rigging to make the mask fit. But if this isn't the case, let me know guys :)

"Miriel" Granny Boots

As I've been working on my sim, I've been commissioning sculpts from my good friend Miriel Enfield. I'm very good with organic shapes, but when it comes to the hard rigid lines required by architecture (or at least the architecture I have in mind) I needed to outsource. She has been far too much of a sweetie with me, and has refused to allow me to compensate her monetarily. So I was stuck for a way to show my immense gratitude for the large variety and number of sculpts I was asking from her. But I caught her longing for a good pair of practical and traditional granny boots on SL, and I realized I'd love a pair too.


So thank you Miriel.

This is truly the first proof I can show you guys how much that breakthrough did for me (agh don't remind me what an idiot I was). Each piece was made together in Zbrush3, without any photosourcing at all! Even the stitches you see delicately applied were all made on the high resolution model, and then grabbed in the texture. I'm incredibly proud of that aspect, considering I wanted to photosource and then couldn't find a good enough reference. I dug in myself, thinking I'd have to settle for something not as crisp or not as detailed, and was very pleasantly surprised. I even was able to add a pretty swirly detail, muahaha. Hurray for stitching alphas! (Zbrush reference, don't mind me).

The reason behind the "version 1.21+" note is because the laces utilize oblong sculpts. They're not supported on all viewers, so for some people they might seem incredibly rough or look like they're not rezzed all the way. In that case, you need to upgrade your viewer in order to see the laces as you do in the picture.

I'm dying for a good, solid pair of real life granny boots too, so if anyone knows any place for me to acquire a similar pair, I'd be delighted. But hopefully this might satisfy my longing for a bit!