War Zone

All has not been well in Second Life these past two weeks. We've been able to deal with failed deliveries, failed transactions, the consistent announcements on the blogs that have said "In world money transactions not working right now: {RESOLVED} (oh, wait, nevermind)" that have caused a big rise in customer service requests and refunded money. I'm sort of used to that, I can deal. But today we got this message from the blog:

In World Services Down

Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 2:05 PM by: Kate Linden

Our database has crashed and caused in world services to go down. We expect it will be ten minutes minimum before we are up and running again.

This caused a lot of people to say "the sky is falling the sky is falling!". It also caused me to realize why my sales have been so bad recently. I've been making about half of what I normally do, because people are terrified to go shopping in this climate, where they can't even rez a cube. It's just inexcusable. It's been feeling like a war zone, where you're not sure what is going to be hit next, what services are going to go down or who's going to become a victim of these "outages".

I'm rather stressed out about this, as good ol' April 15th is coming up, and since this is my first full year of being in business, I have to pay my taxes in one lump sum (which I really don't have). I was going to throw a large sale for spring cleaning in this, the last week of March and have it go 'till tax day, but at this rate I will have to ask for a loan from my mother.

So I say to you Lindens:

FIX IT!

Oh man, you guys have no idea how hard I've been working on this one project for the past few days. This would be because I haven't told you. Allow me to change that!

Remember my elf ears? The cool ones that come in all those colors, and that people want pierced?

Well, let me tell you a story:

There once was a Siyu who made pierced elven ears. She made them in silver piercings with a nice creamy pale skin tone to match hers. She loved wearing them around, and consistently got asked to sell them. So she decided "sure!" and started to make the piercings in different skin tones... then different metal tones... then different ear styles... and realized that she simply could not bring herself to work on this when there would be over 400 objects involved. She dropped it in a huff, and determined that it could not be done reasonably without scripts.

Enter Ziggy Puff, the indefatigable and erstwhile creator of the oh so incredibly famous ZHAO, who happened to like/need tips on how to use Zbrush3. This put me in the position to ask about scripting... and less than a half hour later I had everything I needed. I could change the texture of the ear's skin tone, and the jewelry, and everything was absolutely peachy!

The End... or is it?

For Siyu realized that with this magical script she could possibly revolutionize almost everything in her store, or at the very least everything that was to come out of it. But that might be another story...



In short:

Ears.

They're coming.

Iris Ophelia, one of the editors of Second Style and a lovely friend of mine IM'd me recently to ask me to make the plaque for an award! I was quite happy to accept that, since I knew it wouldn't take me too long. I whipped together a nice logo in sculpts, plus the textures, and then I realized that if Second Style is going to be passing out awards made by me, I still haven't submitted an ad. The last one I posted (that you guys were very kind and generous with in your comments) still didn't seem right to me, so I went back and took more pictures. I used the same concept and the same "wardrobe", but changed the approach a bit. Let me know what you guys think of this one:


I really love the cheating of the "bits" in this one, as well as still having a sexy naked woman and I think it shows the wings really well. Ok, I know it shows the wings really well, dayem, I want to go and buy them and I have them already! You can compare it to the other one via this link

Still, feel free to post input and opinions, but I'm pretty sure this is what I'm going to be using unless someone has a great suggestion :D

Happy Undead Jesus Day!

I don't think St. Patty's and Easter have ever been so close together, certainly not in my lifetime, and I heard not in my mother's either! It means you didn't get a chance to recover from your OD on Guinness before you OD'd on Cadbury eggs and jelly beans, and it means that again, I'm mildly late in blogging my freebie, but not in releasing it.

Last year I released a simple, "edible" chocolate mask that had jelly beans on it. To me, Easter means exactly that, chocolate and jelly beans (we weren't that religious). So I sent out another mask on Sunday that is quite nibbleable, and in fact I couldn't resist biting an ear off of mine:

Best thing about Second Life chocolate masks... is they won't melt on your face! You can fish this out of the notices of Masqueraderie like the top hat :)

Happy St Patty's Day!

Hope you all enjoyed the wearing of the green, and the day where everyone can be Irish! As per usual I'm a tad late on the blog entry, but at least I wasn't late in sending this little goodie out to Masqueraderie:

Everyone needs a leprechaun's top hat to top off their tux! Or whatever green you found to wear. If you didn't catch it as a member, or you'd still like to grab one, you can join the group and pull it out of the notices. It'll be in there for a good month but don't miss your chance, I mean, it's FREE!

I apologize for the silence. It's due completely to my "monthly vacation", where I take a few days to goof off, take care of my real life, and in general relax and feel the pressure "work" ease off. I didn't want you guys to think that I'd abandoned you for St. Patty's, so I'll just let you know I'm planning on sending out something fun tomorrow.

I haven't made it yet, but whatever, it'll still be fun!

No sooner than I release a series of furry facial feature frippery, but I find out that there was some rather amusing synchronicity going on. Apparently, March is the official "Moustache Month".

Again, my creative mind seems to tap into some well of mass consciousness.

Fun with Folicles

Not too long ago, I showed a hair style that I made for my Mardi Gras Masquerade outfit. I made it because I had a specific line in mind, that beautiful accenting of the neck, the Antoinette feel, royal and I needed it without bangs. I needed tall hair, that curled forward. I tried looking all over for something similar to what I had in mind, and failed! Thus, I was forced to make The Sweep:


I wore it to my Masque, and stole the show. But now after I had made it, and worn it, it sat in my inventory. I made it in a variety of colors, even passed it to the Fashion Consolidated Cafe ladies to see what they thought (they loved it). Yet I didn't have the same sort of variety I really wanted from it if I was going to sell it, and so I looked to have it scripted so that I could do things more efficiently. Thanks to Ziggy Puff who I can quite confidently say I will never be able to provide a scripting challenge for, and am so fortunate to be acquainted with, you have your choice of over 50 different colors, in 6 different groups.

The way I set this up is that when you pay the vendor, you'll have your option of having a set of ten different colors, grouped into Naturals, Jewels, Pastels, Crazies and Black Tips and White Tips. The black and white tipped ones are both tipped with the colors from the Jewels collection. Once you have your hair, all you need to do is just touch it to change the color. Now I had enough variety, and enough usability to sell it!

But do you sometimes watch cartoons or animated movies and wonder why no one has made hair like that yet? I certainly do! Now that I had my own hair style, and textures for it, I realized thanks to Pandora Wrigglesworth that hair in SL doesn't have to try to look like real hair. It can be made of anything, it can violate the natural laws of the universe, it can be five foot high and made of cotton candy, and it can be truly fabulous.



(This Bowl one is my personal favorite. It's "tame" compared to the others, and I love the way the tips look on it. Also, if you feel rather Emo, it looks fab if you stretch the bangs down over your eyes ;)

As I was doing the colors, especially the "Crazies", I found myself wondering "Who on all of SL would WEAR something like this?"

One name came immediately springing into my mind:



The incomparable, the impeccable, the ever fabulous queen of color herself, Swirly Cyclone. Upon receiving hair with her namesake, she squealed and asked if this was the tallest hair on SL. If it is, it is certainly appropriate that it bears her name! In fact, it's half the height of the lady herself, which I was thrilled to coerce into being my model for it.


Now, if that wasn't enough fun, to have a tower of hair raising the necessary average height of prefab ceilings across the grid, there is also the Must Have fashion accessory of the spring season.

Haven't you always wanted one? I'm well aware that I have a male avatar, who looks quite good in facial hair, but I wanted to capture the whimsy, the silliness, and the spirit with which I first made these. I also find that they accentuate the beauty of the feminine features! They come in the same varieties and colors as the hair, but they're available in transfer as well.







Personally, I'm enjoying sporting the Fu Man Chu:

They're terribly comfy, and I think we'll be seeing these on the inserts of Vogue.

I make some pretty darn weird stuff some times, I tell ya. Let's just say that my next release is going to prove to the world I don't give a tap dancing fig on wheels what will sell or not sell, as long as I have fun making it.

I will also be fulfilling some weirdass niche market, I'm sure!

Be prepared for oddity!

Horsies!

I've been more busy than it seems recently! Just these items required a lot more effort and time on my part than most. Creature masks always do! Which creature? Well, I gave that away in the post title.

OMG now you TOO can be a pretty poneh! And be the type of horsie that wears fuzzy sweaters and a tanktop. I especially like wearing this mask with Riann Maltese's satyr legs and crazy big hair from Naughty or Aden Breyer. I took special care to make the shape as expressive and realistic as possible, and it's more forgiving with hair styles than most of my more complicated masks. Still, try the demo to make sure you really want to be a pretty horsie.

When I asked the Fashion Consolidated Cafe what color they always wanted their ponies when they were little girls, unfailingly everyone said pink and purple. I was going to be a stickler and only include real horse colors, but I realized what fun was that? If the people want pink and purple ponies, who am I to deny that! Speaking of, check out this add on:

Oddly, unicorn horns seem to be in demand, and have been asked about a few times. Since my original Horse Mask was actually a Unicorn Mask, I wanted to honor it with having an optional horn that could be worn on a separate attachment point. Yes, it's sculpted, and I love it, it's very pretty. Best part is, it doesn't require any special fitting to stick to either your forehead or the mask, it works either way! It's available in my 5 metallic colors of gold, copper, and the three silver shades, as well as bone, black, and white.

This may not quite fit in, I was tempted to make another blog post for it but eh, might as well consolidate.

After some experimenting in Zbrush, I found a way to build things right onto the SL avatar. It doesn't work very well the way I'm doing it, but it worked well enough for me to make a skin tight head cap that fit to the scalp. Well, after doing this of course I wanted to make a mask out of it, and that inevitably became this:

Sexy, no? My worry is that it's actually too sexy for my modest, PG 13 sim. But then I found myself dressing up in thigh high boots, Nicky Ree's Justice League outfit, and fighting crime... and realized the real crime would be in denying people the fun of being a Catwoman super hero type person! It includes the posture collar, which comes with a simple ao pose to keep the neck straight and avoid the avatar mesh from poking through the sides. Since it's modifiable, if this bothers you or messes with your AO, you can just delete it and let your neck go freestyle.


Coming soon: BIG HAIR!