My Artistic Efforts

	In Second Life One of the reasons I stayed in Second Life was the ability to build 3D things easily and to cover them with textures and colors, using built in tools. I started by making almost transparent hollow balls that I could get inside and run around in, like human size gerbil balls. Then I created large curved shapes with glass textures. My name isn't "Chihuly" for nothing; I love his large blown glass sculptures which inspired me. I moved on to creating sculptures - large abstract pieces full of swooping lines and columns piercing planes. I love the ability to make large things, moving and rotating pieces around easily. And I could spend hours playing with the textures, looking for something with the right amount of shine or interesting color combinations. I'm partial to tile and glass textures, and watery colors.

I've been experimenting with making things more kinetic and interactive. Mostly I have some bits and pieces laying around - ideas in search of a project. I made stepping stones that changed colors and played sounds when walked on - a cacophonous migraine inducing experiment! I have a giant almost transparent sphere that when touched creates medium size spheres periodically. Each of them creates little tiny balls inside. All of them are bouncing around inside the big sphere. And after a certain amount of time, the medium balls erode and the tiny balls explode into the big sphere to bounce wildly around till they too erode. The user can start and stop the production of the medium spheres. All the while things are bouncing they are playing sounds and changing colors. Hmm..I had serious fun creating this bit. And lost balls on my neighbors properties more than once that I had to go hunt down (something about lag and the physics engine that SecondLife uses - sometimes spheres aren't as solid as they appear and things escape)
I have been working at creating textures; it was a reason to learn GIMP. I have to admit, for me that is not as much fun as shaping the pieces and moving them into place. I am having fun playing with including alpha bits in the textures though; alpha textures make things in Second Life transparent which I do like very much. And I have been using programs like Rokuro and SculptyPaint to create sculpted 3D shapes - rocks, urns, steps. Eventually I'm going to have to learn Blender; I keep hearing rumors of a new interface that is less likely to make you want to scream while using it, so that has been my excuse for procrastinating.
		Entries June 2011 Builder's Brewery Build-off - we were each given a strange abstract 3D shape to use in our projects. We had 2 hours to build and we were judged on how creatively we used the object. This was the first time I entered but I will be watching for more of them in the future; it was a lot of fun and you got to see so many cool proects. My object is on the third page..the first object in the second row. And in the 2 pictures here.
Strangely enough I take few photos in SecondLife, even though in Real Life that is something I enoy. I take pictures of the things I create to put on flickr or for my store. Some people take amazing SecondLife photos, playing with the light and shadow settings, but not me. However, I have started trying my hand at making movies in Second Life. I changed my blog focus to be about the machinima - you can read it and see some examples here - http://profkim.blogspot.com So far I've been an actor in movies made by a friend. We've tried out some different tools, mostly for controlling the camera. I have a script for a movie I want to make and have shot some scenes. It is a lot more difficult than taking photos. I rarely edit my photos but that's not possible with machinima any more than it is with regular movies (the name for movies made in virtual environments); you need to cut together shots from different camera angles and add sound and think about pacing and continuity. Then...you have to face the video editor and I'm just using iMovie so it's not innately terrifying. I played around with using a green screen to combine SL and RL footage, experiments that showed it's possible. There are some examples on the blog. Figuring out which direction to have the avatar and how close to get the camera to the avatar sot hat it looks apropriate when laid on the video is tough!
Return to Kim's homepage	This page last updated June 2011 by Kim Gregson