Keeping Busy
Haven't done much that is terribly blog-worthy lately, but I thought I'd take a moment to mention a few projects that have been keeping me busy lately. In my ongoing quest to fight off boredom whilst simultaneously paying my tier costs (been more successful with the former than the latter, to be sure), I've been dusting off a few shelved projects and getting them ready for sale.


Here's a video of the Kaleidoscope Carpet in action. The Carpet, which is a greatly improved version of a not-terribly-popular product from 2006, takes any image and turns it into a kaleidoscopic whirl. I was encouraged to come up with the upgraded version when I was contacted by Evaluna Sperber, Italian Second Life performance artist. Evaluna takes avatar animations, particle effects, prim sculpture, video streams, original music, and poetry readings and combines them into one harmonious whole. Several videos of her work can be found here. The videos don't do them justice, however. I was privileged to experience a private showing of a couple of her pieces, and they must be seen in person to get the full impact. Simply amazing.

In any case, Evaluna had purchased one of the original Kaleidoscopes (a simple, wall-hung affair with touch controls), and asked if I could make her one sufficiently large to appear in her performance. Or, rather, after a half hour or so of back-and-forth via Google Language Tools, we managed to sort that out! The above is the result. As usual, I went far overboard and overly complicated, and ended up having to scale it back and simplifying it. The end result turned out to be kind of nifty, if I do say so myself, with HUD controls, programmable speeds, and so on. I'm sure this kind of thing can be found on dance club floors and so on all over the grid, but to my knowledge this is the first one that allows the user to supply his own photos. Kind of a nice feature, anyway. We'll see if the market agrees. In the meantime, if all goes well, one (or more) of these will appear as one of the backdrops for her upcoming shows.


And, lest you think I've become too cultured, this is the other big addition to Mo-Tech Industries' catalog: X-Ray Specs. Not a lot to say about them, really. They have hypnotic "X-ray vision" animated lens effects, just because I could. The picture above is the promo sign used in the various SL storefront and online locations. Never underestimate the value of sexual harassment as a marketing tool!

In case you're wondering, yes that is me in the picture, sans beard. The slider-enhanced leer was distorting the facial hair, so I swapped in the clean-cut version of the skin. Probably for the best, all things considered. I have to say, though, SL-me's chin is huge.

Finally, the Audience Reaction Chair project I mentioned back in July is finally live! This was a joint project between MenuBar Memorial and myself, and I think it's turned out pretty well. Menu did the particle artwork and sound design, and I did the scripting work. This is the first of what I hope will be many joint projects to come. As I understand it, the mechanics for the Chairs now built into the for the latest season of LaurenLive, soon to appear on Treet.TV. So a bit of indirect fame there, I suppose.

Eh, keep the fame. I'll settle for loads of L-bucks. Take a look at the Audience Reaction Chair and its spinoff product, the Audience Reaction HUD, on XStreet.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 4:01 PM