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!

Mardi Gras Masque 2009

It may seem a long way away, and when other merchants are thinking of hearts and white and red, the mask makers think of Mardi Gras.

It's almost time again to don your purple and green and gold, bake up your King Cakes and get with your krewe!

Although the day itself falls on the 24th, some folks do have to work on the weekdays, and so we'll celebrate a bit early. It also allows for the possibility of RL revels!

The theme is obvious, if you come in green, purple and gold you certainly won't be out of place. However, if you want to depart from that to be utterly fabulous, you're more than welcome. Just keep in mind that this is a formal affair, and keep that leather harness tucked away for your boudoir escapades.

When assembling your costume, please keep these rules in mind. For the sake of all of us, if each party-goer abides by them we should all be able to dance and camera around without molasses.

Please keep your prim attachments in total to 200 or less.

You can double check how close you are to the limit by using build, and holding down shift to click each item you're wearing. The build window will display the collected total of those prims.

Streamline your AO, or leave it at home

Nobody likes looking like a noob while being a wallflower. However, if you don't plan to dance, fill a veritably lag free, low prim ZHAOII with your two or three favorite stands. You don't need a walk or any other anim if you're not moving. Otherwise, just go without.

No particles, and no listening scripts
Turn that bling off, and make sure you don't have any items on you that respond to chat commands. Try to avoid scripted items at all if possible.

As always, there will be a costume contest, determined by vote, to vie for the title of King and Queen of Mardi Gras. Two previously unreleased, themed masks will be awarded as the prizes, along with 1500L each. I will also have the 150L fee to join the Masque group raffled off to the members, the winner receiving 5000L.

Make sure you join the group early, do not put it off because you don't have a group slot. Spots will go surprisingly fast, and I will refuse to add a single soul more than 50. I will, however, have a waiting list just in case anyone leaves the group, which has happened before. There will still be hope to get in even if you hear about it too late.

This may very well be either the last party held in the current event hall, or the first party held in the new one. As I'm working on renovating my sim, it's very possible that we'll be breaking in the new hall with this bash! I'll be providing a SLURL when the position is certain.

Masks are required, but a freebie mask will be included, which is the mask shown in the invite. I know the costume rules are tough to follow, especially when it's so tempting to go for the excess, but I have the utmost faith in your creativity to be able to work around the limitations, and flourish. I can't wait to see you there.

Illusions Mardi Gras Masque
Saturday, February 21st, 6PM SLT
Illusions Event Hall, Carnivale
(Join the "Illusions Mardi Gras Masque 2009" Group)
Formal Dress and Mask Required

Divis

Ok, so yes I'm a tease. The reason I didn't say what my breakthrough was was because it's incredibly simple and I'm just embarassed. But I might as well share, at the jeopardy of actually proving to the world that I have almost no clue what I'm doing.

So basically what I never knew how to do, was work on more than one object at a time in Zbrush. Anyone who's familiar with Zbrush... shut yo mouth >:( So this means whenever I wanted to make two pieces of a mask that fit together, I'd have to work on each separately, then upload to see how they looked, then go back and edit them both to try and make them fit better. Then I'd upload it again and again until it finally looked right. That's how I made my boots, all of my masks, jewelry etc, each piece individually and completely independent from each other. No longer! It turns out that in about two clicks, I can work on any number of integrated pieces at once, all together. So yes, that was very embarrassing.

So one of the perks of my new found ability is being able to build a mask right onto an avatar's head. Like this! Can you believe I've never been able to do this before?



Divis is very different from my other masks, as it's actually made from torii, not a sphere. It has eye holes, not just eye wells, and obviously it's made from two prims. This means people who have had problems with fitting my masks to their faces will find this one a breeze... no nose to worry about, no disappearing eyes, and it should be easily rotated to fit.

Since it's two prims, I made it so each prim can change texture independently so you can have one side be one color, or another, or even invisible if you'd like to show off some neat eye makeup :)

I think you can expect a few more divided masks like this one in the future!

I made a break through with my sculpting. I'm finally able to do something I've been wanting to do for a year or more, and it's so incredibly simple that I'm incredibly embarrassed I didn't figure it out sooner.

But it just made things a lot easier for me. Perhaps there shall be a few releases here and there :)


Work is still going on with my model/mockups as Miriel finishes architectural sculpts for me. I'm also working on something for Shir, I'll explain that more when I figure out what I'm doing. Just wanted to share my "I'm an idiot for doing things the really hard way" revelation and give you a status report :)

Slow Releases For a While

As I mentioned earlier I'm currently working on rebuilding my sim. You won't be seeing any changes until much later (I'm sure I'll mention them), but it is going to be taking up my creativity, productivity, and of course time, for the next month and a half. At least, that's my estimate, and we all know how those things go.

I'm sure as I work, I'll reach pitfalls and obstacles and I'll want to do something different for a while, so that means there might be a release or two to keep you guys happy for a bit. But the main point of this post is to say... hang in there. There will probably be a release drought for a while.

I also want to mention that I applied and got added to the Fashion Feed of SL, which means that every post I make will be posted in a major fashion feed. It does make me feel a bit more self conscious about writing rambling posts or small substance-less updates, so I might be a little slow to post until I have something I feel is worth sharing with the world. I might also be making those little "I'm still alive, this is what I worked on today" posts with a "what I wore while I was working on this darn thing" section, just to be interesting :D

Today I burned through what must have been ten ear tone requests. I think it's time for some revisions, I might be combining the "proprietary" skin options (the TRAP and Aether collections) with the Drow and just make a "Fantasy" skin tone collection. It would certainly make things less confusing. I also have a very large number of skins I'm accumulating in the Naturals collection from various popular skin makers, and I think I could just stick those in there too.

Any vendor revisions I'll be doing will be for the sim opening/unveiling. And by the way, I don't plan on closing the sim for any longer than three days. I'll be assembling all the architecture in the sky beforehand, so all of the actual building should be done when I close. From there, it'll be like playing in a big doll's house where I get to arrange and place everything.

Thanks in advance for being patient with me :)