Recently in Creative juices Category

I am still alive :P  I've been fighting with beanbags. If you are like me, you would have looked at beanbags in SL and thought: "Hey, they're just blobs. How hard can they be to make?"
 
Well, let me tell you, those blobs are extremely deceiving. It is simple enough to apply a sculpt map to the prim (thank goodness I don't need to make the sculpt map or I might not have any hair left after tearing all my hair out) but texturing the blob is darn tricky. I have been fighting with beanbags for ONE WEEK and I'm still not done.
 
Meanwhile, I've commissioned the one and only fantabulous Laleeta of Pffiou! to custom-make animated poses for the beanbag. I intend to sell the thing if I ever get it textured. Something that is costing me so much blood, sweat and tears -- well okay, no tears yet so far, *phew* -- ought to bring me some money dammit!
 
 

 
 
I'm using Karl's workspace since I only have 15 prims left on my own land, so I'm littering his space with copies of beanbags. Everything in the above picture is mine, except for the huge diamond at the back. That's his -- he's a jeweller ;)
 
Karl is probably the only man on earth who would not mind me messing up his space. He claims he litters just as badly as I do, except that his litter is way to small to see, since he works with tiny prims; plus there is no problem since we have plenty of room. "My space is your space. Build away," he said to me. How could I possibly not love this man?!
 
 

 
 
**Yes, I am participating in Alicia's Big Bad Blogger Challenge. I just didn't follow the topic for today :P

Everybody and their mother knows that Long Awkward Pose is having a crap hunt. I don't mean the hunt is bad, I mean we're looking for shit. Err... gobs of dung. You know, crap.

So anyway, I subscribe to the LAP group, and I got the hunt info, which came in a lump of turd. I rezzed it to get the info out, and then left it lying on my lawn right in front of my house while I went off to start on the hunt.

Aureis logged on shortly after that and sent me an IM: "Why on earth is there a big pile of poo on your doorstep? A big pile of poo that belongs to you, no less?"

"Pose hunt," I enlightened her briefly. "All the prizes are in lumps of poo."

"Holy shit Batman, who comes up with these things?"

"The designers," I laughed.

Dove Swanson of LAP definitely outdid herself with this one. I was falling over laughing at the names of each lump of turd, including:

Shit Pile
Crap Plop
Dung Heap
Poopoo Platter
Turd Lump
Doodoo
Butt Missile
Colon Cannonball
Toxic Turdle

ROTFL! I didn't even know there were so many ways of talking about poop :P

Also, I have managed to make shiny textures! And applied said textures to my staircase for an awesome finish. Behold the before and after (right is before, left is after lol... if you can't tell)

I am ridiculously proud of myself XD  I totally rock!!! *turns virtual cartwheels*

I wonder is it wrong to take the measurements and specs from an existing object, and then apply it to a prim of your own? That's how I made my pose stand, the very first thing I ever built in SL, and that's how I made my new 1-prim staircase. Behold:

The thing is, I bought the previous staircase on SLexchange.com for $1L and I was fairly happy with it, except for 2 things: 1) it was no-copy, so when I linked it to the house it made the entire house no-copy also, and 2) the texturing was not well done, the texture had not been adjusted and so the it cut off abruptly at the top of the staircase, instead of having a 'finished' look.

But despite making it no-copy, the seller did make the staircase mod, so after buying 4 copies (at various stages of building) I finally remembered, it's mod! I can see the specs! I could use that to make my own staircase! So I did. It feels like cheating, in a way, but even if I had fiddled around with the numbers and stuff, I'd probably never have figured out to make the stairs on my own :(

In other news, I bumped into someone today at the Adam n Eve hunt (which is only on till Sunday 10am SLT, hurry!). His profile said he's an alt account, created for testing purposes, and that he probably wouldn't respond to any socialising. But he's the one who IM'd me first, asking about my group tag.

I keep forgetting to take my group tag off when I go out, it's the tag for my rented land, and it's a bother to have to keep putting it on when I go home, especially now that I'm building more often and need to rez stuff most of the time. So I just leave it on, and it says "Renter". That's all - "Renter". This guy who IM'd me was the second person to ask me, "What do you rent?" They figure I'm the one renting things out... I only wish I were :P

So anyway we chatted briefly and he said that he was on the hunt because he needed stuff for a female avi, to take vendor photos for his products. I gave him an extra miniskirt I had from SecondWave Apparel (all her stuff is transfer) and then we parted ways. I thought that was that.

But shortly after that, he IM'd me and asked if I'd like to see the result of the "transformation". I said yes and TP'd him over and got to be fashion critic :P  Then brought him to House of Zen to get the free Another Shop skins because I didn't quite like the skin s/he had on. We parted ways again after that.

Knowing he's an alt makes me wonder who his main is... I'm insatiably curious, it's one of my greatest weaknesses. At the same time I usually won't ask, I figure if people want to tell me, then they will. Or maybe I'll ask once, but I won't press if they're reluctant to divulge. Anyway this time I didn't ask at all, which makes me wonder... I could bump into his main anytime and not know it was him. You might think it creepy but I just think it's intriguing, kinda like you never know whom you might meet sorta thing. Probably I'm weird lol. Or maybe it's the lateness of the hour -- way past bedtime for me!! XD

Penn, the Prim God, modded a sculpty pillow into the shape I was looking for -- *smooches Penn* -- so I embarked on the challenging journey of trying to match the pillow with my couch.

OMG. I never dreamt my couch would be SO HARD to match. Trust me to make things difficult for myself!

I thought brown would be perfect, so I used brown. I made textures from scratch -- no "borrowing" from the Web this time -- and I did four shades of brown. Four shades, and none of them matching properly. Despite being very proud of myself for finally making my own textures, I started to despair of ever getting the perfect shade. Who knew boring ol' brown could be so varied?

In desperation, I called for help. Peter came to help me figure it out and advise me on colours, and then Elora Henig from the awesome Ch'know group offered assistance as well. Peter liked the second cushion from the right (see pic below), but I wasn't 100% satisfied (you DO remember I'm picky, don't you??).

Then Elora said she thought it should have less blue, so I reduced the blue in the hue, and came up with the first cushion on the right. I still think that's the best match so far. What do you think? (Yes, that is the couch in the background)

Click picture for a larger image (will open in new window):

And have I mentioned how proud I am of the fact that I made those textures all by myself? BooYEAH!!!!

EDIT: After Penn and his friend Charisma both chose the pinkish cushion in the middle, I realised you guys would need CONTEXT... because the pink totally doesn't go with the rest of the room's decor :P  Ta-dah!

 

Even though Cel Edman's free sculptie pillow wasn't exactly what I wanted, I was experimenting with making pillow textures so decided to slap a texture on it to see what it'd look like all prettied up. Sometimes a thing looks completely different with a texture on. You never know, I might fall in love with it after all and decide that my hunt was over!

Didn't happen :P  I mean, it's a great cushion but not exactly what I'm looking for. (I'm a woman, I'm allowed to be picky!!) Still, I went a little crazy and uploaded 14 textures, so made 14 pillows (click pic for larger view... will open in new window):

The textures aren't the best, plus they aren't really mine. I got them off various pictures on the Web and modded them a little before uploading them to SL. So I won't be selling these cushions, but I gave them out to the Ch'know group and the Great Chairs Exchange group, and if anybody else wants them, just contact me, I'll drop a box on ya ;)

Yay so I have new hard disk and new Nvidia card and everything seems to be working fine now. *breathes a sigh of relief*

It's one of the older Nvidia models because my motherboard is old and the newer cards are made to fit differently (jargon alert: AGP and not PCI-E). So I still can't do Windlight - I tried and the lag was insane - but I can SL without much problem and that's the most important thing!

So, now I'm continuing my decorating spree and furniture shopping. Has it ever occurred to you that most SL cushions are round? I've been looking for a square sculpty cushion, something square but plump in the middle (ie. a sort of convex shape) to put on my couch, and have been having the devil of a time finding one. I need something like this:

This one is from Melino Style. But not only is it no-mod & no-copy, it comes with poses... in an invisible pose ball. So it's 2 prims. And since it's no-mod, I can't unlink the pose ball. Grrr. Lovely texture though.

This one I found at the Sculpts Only Mall: a pack of 96 pillow shapes for 400L, by Rusalka Writer. But I'm not a builder, I don't build things to sell. I just want the 1 pillow. I don't know what I'm going to do with 95 other pillow/cushion shapes...

These I saw at the La Sylphide store. Upon inspection, I found that the cushion is called "bonussculpty_pillow #01 by Cel Edman". So I TP-ed over to Cel Edman's store, Pixel Lab, and found a freebie sculpty package, but this particular pillow wasn't included in that package. He has several other packages of sculpties for sale, but like I said, I really only need the 1 pillow, to use on my couch. He happened to be online at the time, so I thought I'd try my luck... I IM'd him and asked him if he would sell this pillow to me separately, but he wasn't keen, so I didn't press the issue.

I'm so discouraged :(  Who knew finding a simple cushion could be so hard??

I am broke. I have exactly L$9 in my account. *boohoohoo*

Well, maybe this will help to cure my shopping addiction. *grins*

What with moving house in RL and all the associated extra costs, I can't justify buying Lindens, and since I don't have a job in SL and haven't gotten a RL job yet (first I need to get through exams this week and next week!!), I'm trying to be responsible. You know, like a grown-up??

Sometimes I don't feel very grown-up. *giggles*  Since I couldn't decide whether to study or to pack... yup, you guessed it... I went in-world. And built my first ever useful thing - a pose stand!

I figured it out by looking at a full perms pose stand I already had - a gift from Sn@tch - and also modded the script inside to make the av float higher in the air. That's to make it easier to see the feet when you make adjustments to shoe prims. So, I must really thank Ivey Deschanel. She's one of the most generous designers in SL and hands out great freebies to her group all the time!

The flower pattern on the top surface of the stand comes from a box of free textures in Sioxie Legend's store and the side texture is from a freebie box I got at the Digital Dragon Designs freebie area. Yay for freebies!

Now, I know a pose stand is probably one of the most basic things ever a person could make, and they're a dime a dozen since many clothing stores bundle one in together with their products. But I was so ridiculously pleased with myself for managing to make it - and, more, managing to successfully mod the script. I don't know anything about LSL, the scripting language used in SL, but I do know a bit of HTML (just enough to be dangerous) and so I kind of felt my way around. And experimented. heheheh.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to create anything worth selling. I haven't the first clue about Photoshop or GIMP, unfortunately. Of course, one could always learn. Then again, it might become too much like work? SL is entertainment and a hobby, I don't want it to become like work. Hmmmm.

As an aside: I'm now using the 1.19.1(4) viewer with no problems, except (you knew there was gonna be an 'except') I find that the lighting is completely different from 1.18.5.3. I'm not running Windlight settings because my PC can't support them, but still... where 'sunrise' used to give great lighting for taking pictures, now it makes everything all orangey; 'sunset' is too dark and 'midday' gives shadows and makes the av look washed out. So now my pictures look like crap again. Gaaaah.

And I was trying to make a light, when I realised it didn't work because I have local lights turned off in my graphics preferences. *sigh*