Happy St Patrick's Day!

I took a little diversion from working on my current projects to pop out a top hat for St. Patrick's Day! Whether or not you celebrate it, there's no reason to pass up a free hat. Plus, it's good practice for me!This is a brandy new top hat, not just a re-texture of an old one so it is mesh, and one object. If you haven't upgraded your viewer to be able to see it, why not? Get to it, you fabulous fashion conscious luddite!

You can find this festive verdant chapeau in the notice history of Masqueraderie, from now until the 31st.

If you're celebrating St. Patrick's Day, please do be safe and make the right decisions... or bring people with you who can do it for you ;) Have fun!

Mezzaluna Puro

An oldie but a goodie from way back in the ancient days of 2007 is my Mezzaluna mask. Despite being over four years old it still has looks pretty decent, I have to say. It's exotic, beautiful, and well in need of a meshtastic remake.

The picture is a little homage to its ancestor. I think you'll notice though, that this one is a bit simpler, without tassels or chains like the first one. That's where it's earned the "Puro" in its name, this one is just the shape for those folks who like to keep things simple.

You now have the twelve color options I offer with all of my masks, instead of just being locked into purple, and this one is properly unisex! I did a special shape just for men with a more prominent brow and nose.

I have plans to make a more ornate version, but just for now I'm going to try and offer as many basic shapes of masks as I can. So the tassels and chains will come later! (wow, that sounds pretty raunchy...)


Out now at the store: 175L
Buy it on the Marketplace

Volto Altezza and Altezzoso

When mesh first went into beta, I wanted to give it a try and see what I could do with it. The first thing that came to mind was a volto mask, because I have never been happy with my attempts to make a full face mask with sculpts. I had a lot to learn.

For about eight months all I did to play with mesh was mess around with a volto. I made literally dozens of them, starting over and over again until I could sculpt a pair of decent lips in just a few minutes. Every time I did, I learned a bit more about topology, how the polygons could work together and what to aim for.

The evolution of my topology, from left to right

You can see how the picture on the left has a lot of points and lots of "snags", parts where the lines aren't neat squares. That's the sort of thing that would get ugly if you tried sculpting on it, and would prevent a smooth and consistent surface. I finally got the hang of getting rid of those and managed to figure out how to make neat loops and keep my detail where I needed it most.

So believe me, this mask has been a long time coming.

After so much tweaking, revisions and refinement and then finally another round of neurotic scrutiny, I am very proud to share this mask with you. The Volto Altezza is an ornate and elegant visage, with a proud crown of coque feathers. Altezza is Italian for "loftiness", and "sua altezza" is an equivalent expression to "your highness". With the refinement and detail of the delicate metal work, no one will doubt that you're worthy of the title.

We can't have a fine lady without an escort though, and so a worthy gentleman had to be produced.
The most notable difference aside from the features is that he doesn't have customizable lips. I found it just far too feminine on him, so I hope you'll find the feather crown enough color. Speaking of, I've made the mask and crown separate. If you like, you can wear just the crown or just the mask, and I've even included an option for just the crown with no feathers if you want to wear something in your hair.

For the first time, I used Photoshop brushes as alphas for the details on the crown and center mask. I had to, to achieve the detail and intricacy I hoped to. I'm happy to credit the incredibly talented Coy Dreamer. I used selections from her Decorative and Floral sets as imprintable patterns on to my high detail model. I doubt I could achieve such a beautiful effect without her efforts.

When you try to create a neutral, beautiful face, it's amazing how much of a challenge it becomes. There are so many little details that our minds are especially attune to being able to detect the slightest error in, and they end up needing scrutiny and heaps of patience to fix. After all this time I'm finally happy with my work, and I have something I can be proud of for hopefully a long while. I hope to use this mask a base for other patterns and variations in the future, and I look forward to seeing where I end up next.

Out now at the store: 450L
Volto Altezza (f) on the marketplace
Volto Altezzoso (m) on the marketplace

Mardi Gras 2012 (Aftermath)

Another party come and gone, though this one went a little differently than others! On Saturday, my sim suddenly stopped accepting teleports and when I crashed, I was locked out of my own sim! I kept the music going for an hour as I spoke to Lindens to get them to reset the sim. By the time it was fixed, a lot of people had had to go, and so I decided to continue the party on Sunday.

It was a very unique feeling being actually ready for my party. I felt like I twiddling my thumbs because I had done all of my last minute scrabbling to finish everything the night before. As if to make up for the trouble on Saturday, everything went perfectly smoothly for the entire night.

Part of the fun of effectively having two masquerades was seeing even more amazing costumes and outfits. Some people that had come the night before changed outfits, and more people that hadn't been able to come showed up and dazzled us. There was so much eye candy I took over 200 snapshots! It didn't help that people even did mid-masquerade outfit changes! So in the interest of keeping this blog post relatively short, here are just a couple of my favorites. You can find more on my Flickr.

Anigma Eulenberg

Sonya Marmurek

As you should probably know by now, every year we vote on the best costumes for male and female, to see who goes home with my new event masks. For the third year in a row, Aceius Hax was voted the Mardi Gras King.

Can't say I'm too surprised to be honest

His partner in this year's royalty is a newcomer to my parties, her newly minted highness Sarah Treplicki. She stood out amongst a sea of color by rocking an oldie but goodie, my harlequin set and some fab horns.
Aceius and Sarah took home the debut of a mask that's been almost a year in the making. One of the first things I tried making when I was accepted into the closed mesh beta was a new Volto mask. It was almost the first thing I did after signing the NDA and I worked on it off and on until I could get a good base mesh, and then neat geometry, and then finally start playing with shape and form. But more on that later when I actually release them, I need to do the colors first!

Considering this was my first party without needing a registered group, I did need to remind a few people to keep their prims down but aside from that it was a definite success. I think from now on I will simply remind people of the guidelines but no more need for group registration!

I had a marvelous time with everyone who could attend, my fingers are tired from chatting with all of you. If you missed it don't feel like you need to excuse yourself, stuff happens and there will always be more parties!

Myself in an outfit by Surreal LeShelle of Deviance, I coerced her into doing a recolor

See you at the next one :)

Scaramouche

I'm making up for lost time, can you tell? I'm on a roll with traditional Venetian masks and I'm absolutely loving working with unrigged mesh. Weight painting and rigging is another matter, but I just can't get over the freedom and flexibility I now have for masks!

While I was working, I watched one of my favorite movies: The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I knew immediately which mask I had to make next.

The Naso Scaramouche is another classical Commedia Dell'Arte style of mask in the same vein as the Naso Turco. Like many traditional carnivale masks it's based off of a character: in this case, Scaramuccia or Scaramouche. His character was a dashing lady's man who was clever and witty, and always ended up turning tricky situations into an advantage. Scaramouche was first and foremost a comedian and was always well received by audiences.

For this mask, since I wanted a lot of detail but not to tax people's systems too much, I'm experimenting with it being only one sided. That means in the back it's transparent, like a plane. This is just an experiment, so please let me know how you feel about it not being able to be enjoyed "360°" like my other masks.

I had quite a bit of trouble getting the texture to a point I was happy with. I wanted it to be rather matte like papier mache, yet I couldn't get it at a point that looked crisp, matte, and had enough contrast to be interesting. I finally got it to a point that I'm happy with, but it may not be as luxurious and amazing as the rest of my textures :)~

So, only one thing needs to be asked. If you buy this mask, will you do the Fandango?

Out now at the store: 250L
Buy it on the Marketplace

Mardi Gras Masquerade 2012!

Time creeps up on you, and before you know it it's the most important day of the year. Anniversary? Birthday? Christmas? No! Mardi Gras!


Can you believe this will be my sixth annual Mardi Gras masquerade? This year, I've decided not to do my usual "event group". So there is no need to join anything, if you can come, come! There will be a free mask for the party (shown on the invite), prizes to be won, as well as exclusive event masks to be unveiled and awarded to the two people with the best outfits. The theme, as always, for Mardi Gras is purple, green and gold. Please also keep in mind that my sim is rated General, rather than Mature, and think Venice, not Rio. Because how often do you get an excuse to break out the ball gown and tuxedo and truly dress your best? Just please, when planning your outfit, keep an eye on the following so that we can all have a relatively lagless experience:

Check your Avatar Scripts

This info can be found in Place Profile->About Land->Script Info->My avatar. Check the list to see if there's any scripts you're wearing that you could delete from copiable items or remove, such as HUD's, resizers, invisiprims (switch to alphas!) etc. Your total script memory total should be as low as you can get it, under 100kb would be ideal.

Keep your prim count low

In the past I've had a solid guideline for this of 200-250, but this year with the new prim equivalency it makes things more muddled. For this party, I just ask that you leave the extra fluttery petticoat layer at home, and not wear the 256 prim wings with your alpha flexi hair made of 180+ prims. Remember, you're going to be on a sim with a lot of other avatars and please dress as if you were going to the classiest expo ever.

I've done my best to do my part at the Event Hall by making it secluded from the rest of the island, and keeping the number of unique textures, sculpts and resolution down as much as I could while still providing an elegant venue. With a collective effort we can all enjoy everyone else's outfit as well as our own, and not end up dancing with gray ghosts.

Alright, enough technical talk. I have music to find for my playlist and masks to make! I hope to see you at the Masquerade, don't miss it!

Illusions Mardi Gras Masquerade 2012

February 18th, 4pm SLT
Held at the Illusions Event Hall on Carnivale
Costume contest winners will be announced at 6pm SLT

Curia

As I'm getting more comfortable sculpting with mesh, I realized that compared to my newest creations my signature mask, (the Velodorno), was starting to look a bit dated. So, I set out to create a new one.

My signature mask is always something traditional, elegant, and with ornate and delicate curls. Making that in mesh was an interesting challenge and taught me many new things about efficient geometry and UV mapping a complex shape. But of course it resulted in something beautiful I'll be proud to put in my header.

I think you'll notice that along with this release I've changed up my vendor layout a bit. I was getting a bit dissatisfied with my other layout and wanted something crisper, cleaner and more modern. I also wanted to start showing off the mask! I won't be updating the vendors of older items, but I did go back and change my other mesh creations to this layout. It also helps add another visual cue to people who might still be unable to see mesh items that these are different.

The differences between these two masks are subtle, the most noticeable of them being that one has a nose piece and the other doesn't. I simply couldn't decide if I liked it better with or without so I compromised. The other difference is in shape: the Civetta is always more "owl" shaped (Civetta actually means owl) with a pronounced pinch in at the nose. The Columbina is a more feminine line that goes straight across the face and curls up to a taper by the temples.

Doing all of the little curls was a delight and a torture at the same time. Playing with high definition to add little flares and definition to each little taper was fun, but then facing the ordeal of UV mapping it wasn't. If you're not familiar, UV mapping is the process of trying to "unzip" a 3-dimensional object into a 2d one for texturing. Imagine a map of the world, and how it's a bit distorted because it's trying to describe shapes that are a part of a sphere. That sort of map is very simple... a map for all of these curls on the other hand, looks like this:

I wasn't even able to stack islands due to a glitch D:

That took me literally all day, but it was well worth it. I had another draft of a map that was more clumsily done, and saw a dramatic improvement in the invisibility of my seams as well as detail which is always nice to see!

I'm sure I'll get better at it as I continue, and look back at this with the facepalm of hindsight and wonder what I was thinking.

Out now at the store: 300L each
Buy the Civetta Curia on the Marketplace
Buy the Columbina Curia on the Marketplace

Naso Turco

I've set a goal for myself to make as many masks as I can before Mardi Gras. It's a chance for me to really get more comfortable with mesh and to expand my collection of classic Venetian masks.

The first one that's been completed is one of the most instantly recognizable:



The Naso Turco is a traditional mask from Commedia Dell'Arte. There are a few different types of Naso masks (meaning "nose"), but this is one of the most iconic and popular. The Turco in the name might refer to the noble family of Verona, or perhaps to Cesare Turco, a renaissance artist. The Naso Turco has a very distinctive arching curve to the nose, as opposed to others which are perhaps shorter or more crooked.

I made a mistake in planning with this mask. I had a bit too much fun with drawing details directly onto the model and didn't think that I might want those aforementioned details to be a different color. I was playing around with it just being a solid color at first, but ended up preferring how it looked with contrasting trim.

(Still looks awesome though)

So, rather than my usual 3D trim, I decided to try an alpha overlay with this one. I think you can see in the vendor picture that it hardly suffers for it.

I went a little crazy with color options, which is another reason I had to resort to an alpha overlay for the trim. There are over thirty color options, including my usual 12 solid colors, and half and half "bicolors" of those in different combinations. They come paired with black, white, and a selection of twelve additional pairings I quite liked (such as purple and green for Mardi Gras!).

This mask is a mere 400 vertices! If you think of how sculpts are 1024 points each, it's just amazing how much detail can come out of having every point placed where it will do the most good.

I still have no affinity or skill for rigged meshes, so this is once again unweighted and freely modifiable. I certainly am getting the hang of it though and so far am just loving the freedom.

Expect more soon!


Out now at the store: 275L
Buy it on the Marketplace

I realize that I haven't released something in a while now. I had a mesh project in the works for all of December, I had hoped to complete it by Christmas and just ran into too many problems. That didn't stop me from sending out a holiday hat though!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, spent with family and friends. I decided at the 11th hour to just let it go, and enjoy the holiday without stressing over releasing it. Unfortunately, that mesh project is not the only one I've run into trouble with since then, and right now I have multiple projects in varying states of completion. That's usually how things are, but even then I usually release something in the meantime.

Since it's now creeping into January, my silent shame of incompletion has come to the point where I feel I have to address it. If you worried that I was sick or at all unwell, I'm alright! I'm just taking to mesh very slowly, and my progress was not at all helped by Skyrim or Assassin's Creed, or the holiday itself.

I have set a goal for myself to get a good selection of mesh masks released in time for Mardi Gras. I'm hoping you'll see a nice steady influx of new things as I get better and adjust to my new workflow. Expect to see some classical Venetian masks coming soon!

Mythic Masks

They're finally ready! The event masks for the Mythic Masquerade are finally completed. I ran into a lot of problems and hurdles but after a few weeks they're finally ready. I ended up redoing a lot of things several times over but it was well worth it.

If you recall, I gave a preview of the mask a couple weeks ago. So, if you've seen that then you can see what an improvement this is.

The Mythic Masks are regal dragons, with crests of bone and outswept wings. The two versions have distinct personalities, and even though they're labeled as "male" and "female" please don't let that stop you from trying the opposite gender. They're made of mesh, so they're one solid prim. However, they're not weighted, so they can still be moved, stretched and modified just like a sculpt.

With these masks I wanted to really experiment with color. I've been pushing myself to go beyond my normal "hue+20" approach and branch out and explore the depths of gradients and accent colors. There are eighteen colors available for this mask, separated into two sets. The "Dark Dragon" colors are mainly black with colored highlights in my usual red through purple selection. But the "Elementals" are what I'm really proud of:

There are nine different elemental dragons, ranging from Ice and Fire to Gold, Silver and Twilight. I hope that when you look at these you can see what took me so long. A lot of fiddling with layer masks, gradients, brushing and filtering to bring to life such vibrant and varied options. I'm more proud of these than of any other texture or color selection I've done. I can't even pick a favorite! (Twilight might be an obvious choice but the Golden is so captivating...)

Please do come by and try out the demo, and see these colors for yourself.


Out now at the store: 600L
Dragon Queen Mask on the Marketplace: Buy it now
Dragon King Mask on the Marketplace: Buy it now