My Concluding Thoughts of Second Life.

We ventured into a program that I was very much interested with.  I could see myself using this program a lot in my spare time.  Now that we have reached the end of the semester, I must admit that my feeling have changed about this program.  I think it is a well designed program, but not for me.  I worry about too much things going on in my real life, and I consider that a good thing.  If I were to spend too much time in Second Life, it would effect me possibly in a negative way in real life.  I like the idea of the program because there are people out there who want to live a fantasy life, and this is the perfect opportunity for them.  The customizing is endless and I can see why it remains attractive over some other basic social video games.  I felt like the program was a lot more difficult then it needed to be.  There where way to many options just off the main HUD would send the viewer to go a little crazy.  I have looked at all the options of what I could do in Second Life, and it just seems beyond the norm of what the average person would do.  Again, I'm not bashing on the program, I just don't think its for me.  I am a more hands on kind of guy and I travel everywhere physically in the real world.  The type of artwork that I do would not pertain to Second Life in a great way because I have other options when it comes to other platforms to show my work that have proven to be a lot more effective (such as YouTube).

I really enjoyed getting the time to learn the program inside and out.  I loved how our ARTS 450 class her at CSU Chico decided to take an experimental turn in dealing with the way we present art.  I believe this is what makes CSU Chico's art program so great is because of the risks, as students, we make in these experimental programs.

I have to get going but it has been a great experience and I'll never forget all the art memories I have had in Ayres Hall and for the rest of the California State University, Chico!  Thanks for everything Nan!

Finished Theatre!

Today was a day full of finishing my theatre.  I had so many problems completing this because of the mega prims.  These prims were so tricky because editing them seemed very glitchy.  Plus, I could never adjust the size, so I had to stay with the original size of the walls that Ann gave me.  It was very frustrating but once I started to get all the pieces together, including the roof, I started feeling very confident.  I was able to  add textures, like carpets to all the floors, and fix the curtains for the walls.  I then set the screen up so it would view a trailer of the musician I represent named PREF1X (pronounced prefix).  I added all the outside walls so that it looked like a modern building that I was used to seeing in my hometown of Sacramento, CA (since this theatre was a little bit of inspiration for my finished work).

After much stressing, drawing up blue prints, and putting all the pieces together, I was finally complete with my theatre!

First Wave of Second Life Presentations

Today we went and visited each area for where the ARTS 450 students hosted their Second Life projects.  First we checked out Terrence's live DJ Performance, with strobe lights.  The bottom floor even had a gallery of his other artworks.  He played a bunch of pop music from over the years and remixed those songs with a dubstep flavor.  He had to use a lot of scripts because of the moving graphics for his DJ set up.

Next up was Jamie and Brianne.  They collaborated on a project that showed off the nighty starry sky. , with illustrations of constellations.  It was called "Spark of Heavenly Fire."  The constellations are images of females of the past. , present, and future who excel at roles that men are usually know to have.  There were notecards that told a description of each of the characters.

We then checked out Tara's project.  We arrived at an autumn color space that had a bunch of umbrellas and some that were actually spinning.  Each umbrella seem to offer different textures.  The whole place ended up being around 200 prims!  Some of the umbrellas had interesting transparencies.  Kuya said that their should be chairs for people to sit on, but the problem was solved when people started sitting on all the umbrellas.  There were so many of them that they resembled mushrooms!

Kuya showed us his land that had a basic set up of showing off his artworks.  Now the interesting part of this area is the matter of how you look at these flat artworks.  You would have to sit in a designated chair to get a perspective of an artwork that Kuya created in Photoshop.  You needed to look at it from the right perspective because the layers floated towards the viewer.  Very exciting!

Jenny was up next showing of a gallery that featured works that included 3D sculpting.  There was also even pictures that showed her avatar posing.  Very interesting to take photos of an avatar!  Very nice building that was calm and very inviting.

Karen was last up today.  She showed off a story book that was in her inventory.  She took out the book and we read it as a class.  You can click through the pages and featured all of her original illustrations.  It was very cute!

Until next time, time to finish my theatre for next class!
 

Getting Somewhere...And I'm Lost Again!

I have spent my Thanksgiving Break trying to tackle the idea of why I can't seem to adjust the sizes of the mega prims that were given to me by Ann.  She has had the freedom to play and warp the mega prims, but when I do it myself, on my own viewer, the prims will immediately shrink to 10x10 meters.  The viewer (i=I don't know if it has anything to do with my Second Life Account) has disabled me to make adjustments in terms of shape on these prims.  I have tried to move forward and begin designing the overall feel of the theatre.  It is accompanied with curtains, which I felt gave it an organic feel that I come to appreciate.  The overall feel is coming togther but it's coming down to crunch time and I can't figure out how to resize these prims.  No help on the Internet seems to lead me in the right direction.  I know I don't like to rely on Ann for everything, but for some reason she know's how to fix my particular problem, though I think out of any student in the class, I have made her wonder why certain things don't work in Second Life.

Screwing Around in Second Life!

Today I was in Second Life without the intent of doing what I ended up doing.  I was checking out the artist land of Tuna Oddfellow again.  I had such a great time experiencing his area, and you can read about my visit in my previous blog posting.  This time I found myself lost and wandering around in the middle of no where.  I thought I was reading my map correctly, but I must of not.  I flew so high in the air and realized after a while that I have no idea how to get back to where I took lift at.  I ended up flying forward for a while to end up in some fantasy world that had a bunch of dragons.  I couldn't believe the detail when I saw these giant dragons roaming around that seem to be maneuvered vy users.  They were asking me if I wanted to play in their Second LIfe RPG game.  I unfortunately didn't have the time, but I was very intrigued.  I wonder if they made a form of "World of Warcraft?"  If so, that means they may have copied the idea of the game, and are playing it in Second Life for free!  This really opens my perspective on the possibilities in Second Life!  (Below is a picture of me talking to people in this area participating in the fantasy RPG game).

A Few more Art Trips!

Today I went with the class to check out work from Sistaglro Wei.  She had set an up an island that was named the Australian Centre of Virtual Art.  The artist was very political with her message, being an aboriginal woman that lives in Australia.  It was an island with a major volcano that we first took a look at. She added these type of credit cards that were used by the Aborigines that limited them what to buy.  She showed us these cards inside the middle of the volcano, and the cards were coming down as if it was raining.  A very interesting way for here to present it.  Then she took us to an area that cleansed our souls that acted as a smoke pit.  It was awesome had she intended to put that in a virtual reference by cleansing our avatars!  She then launched us to a distant area that I would never imagine was possible in Second Life.  We stood in a circle that warped us to a cloud like area that had these nebula looking swirls that went on and on.  It was something truly amazing that I couldn't imagine that would be possible in Second Life.  I tried to take pictures but her land wouldn't allow me to take pictures so sorry folks.

We later with a magician named Tuna Oddfellow.  He really wanted to bring a different experience to Second Life by associating magic.  We all know that physics don't quite play a roll in that world, and he understood that there is still a way to incorporate magic.  We landed in his area, and it was a small cloud like feel that featured a transparent room, where I could see space in the distance.  After he gave the spiel I just mentioned, he flick the magic on and made the complete background and foreground a drug educed adventure.  It seemed like the effects of LSD or something trippy like that.  It seemed like it would be great for clubs and whatever performances he may associate with that, but then he tells us that he has incorporated live musical performance collaborations.  After a while, I seemed happy just to be in his area.  It was very relaxing and quite like nothing I ever experienced in Second Life.  See the pictures below to see what I mean!

Making T-Shirts is so Easy and Fun!

We got a little more creative with our avatars today in class.  We went ahead and designed T-shirts to help bring out our Avatar's personality.  I've decided to make a T-Shirt for my artist that I represent.  I figure it would be much cheaper to wear it in Second Life, since the production cost would be very cheap.  I also made the shirt available for anyone to have if they visit the Chico State store in Second Life.  We used a template that our Professor made available to us.  I made an image of my artist and easily applied it to the template.  After that it was a few simple steps and cost was almost nothing.  Shortly after I imported the image, my character is wearing it like very stylish!

The class and I decided to take a picture all together to show our creativity.  As you can clearly see from the image, everyone went a different direction with their T-shirts.  I can honestly say we have a different thinking class that should prove well with collaborations in the future.  We are very organized as a class and want to show the world what we can do.  If we can't accomplish it in this life, then we surely can in Second Life!

Experiencing Live People in Second Life!

As I figure my way through Second Life, I discover the possibilities of talking to real people and see what they do in this virtual.  We first visited an artist talk that I found to be very unusual but exciting.  We visited an art gallery set up by a Stanford University professor that featured many different projects.  He gave a speech on all of his work which ranged mainly in recreating the experience in Second Life.  There were pictures all over the walls that showed an installment of a hotel that the artist rendered into a project.  It dealt with the hotel being filled with dummies and having people go through the experience.  He took all of his notes and recreated what that might of looked like in Second Life using camera controls to get around his subjects and actors.  Very weird stuff but very cool at the same time.

We had another meeting with a guru at Second Life who brought us to a game show type of place.  There she asked us questions where we won real money!  She wanted to express how important the internet age really is.  We talked about how there is a lot of CGI movies being made in virtual realities such as video games and second life.  They have become so popular now that South Park on Comedy Central took this idea and created an episode using the World of Warcraft video game, naming the episode, "Make Love, Not Warcraft."  One of my favorite episodes in fact, so I know it is a successful medium.  Other renditions of this include the popular series "Red vs. Blue" that uses Microsoft's Xbox's Halo video game characters.  I also answered a question correct that won me some money.  I immediately answered the question of how many Youtube videos are watched in one day.  I knew it was 2 Billion.

Pictures below include my visit to the art gallery and being on the game show area.  Keep in mind I'm the green dragon!

My First Time Using Second Life

My first time logging in had me left with a few technical issues, so I wasn't able to log in using my own computer.  I had to use one of the computers in the Art 450 class room so hopefully that doesn't affect my Second Life experience.  I had an interesting time going in and creating an avatar and basically just walking around and learning how to interact with objects.  I was able to take off my pants and walk around in the nude.  That was okay I guess.  Everyone laughed so that made my day.  I flew around which made it real easy to fly around the terrain because walking takes a lot of time.  I'm going to explore some more in Second Life on my own so until next time!

-Noah

I've started my Second Life!

You've read the title correctly.  I'm still living in my first life too.  I have entered the online virtual world of Second Life, a community where people can do just about anything together.  The reason I created an avatar in this world is because of the Art 450 class I'm taking this semester at Chico State, which happens to be my last semester until I graduate!

I started off creating an avatar that was based on a robot, so later I can have an influence I want to create later.  I named the robot avatar "Poweezy."  This is a nickname I've used for years that most of my friends can identify myself by, plus some of the characters of the word are made up from my last name, Powell.  Everything was smooth from starting an account by logging my information in, to installing the Second Life application on my MacBook.  I logged into my account today for the first time and there was some issue with the internet connection, or something related to that.  I'm on Chico State's internet so hopefully it doesn't give us that problem often since this is where I'll predominately enter into my Second Life account. I'm hoping my instructor, Professor Wylde will assist me with the issue I'm having so I can progress with my adventure through this online community to be able to show off my artwork.  I'm heading to class today to address the issue so I'll communicate with you guys soon on how that goes!

Until next time!
-Noah