Figuring Out a New Building Strategy

Today I logged into Second Life after deleting all my plans for my theatre.  I really wanted to start from scratch and see what I can do in order to make mega prims, which are prims that can stretch over 10 meters.  If I had that, then I will be able to make all my walls to my theatre with only a select amount of prims.  I couldn't figure it out so I went into Second LIfe thinking if I could manipulate a bunch of 10 meter pieces into a giant wall.  I started making too many prims again.  I ended up getting a visit from Ann again who signed in as "Builder Flux." Her avatar looked like a big headed alien that was a tourist.  She was basically regulating how many prims we are using, but was also offering advice on what we should do with our individual projects.  She started to take a prim and stretch it to around 64 meters.  I was extremely surprised with how much ease she was able to stretch the prim that far after I have been researching forever on how to do that.  She then asked me to stretch the prim to that length but I was unsuccessful, only being able allowed to stretch it at the maximum of 10 meters.  She was surprised and intrigued why I wasn't able to stretch it so much so she was making sure all my settings were correct in the builder's pallet.  I told her everything was correct and she couldn't help me wondering what may be the problem.  She unfortunately had to get running so I wasn't able to get what I needed.  I'll just have to see her next time when I'm in class (to see her in person).  What I've learned about Second Life is that it may be easier to get help from someone in real life if they are physically next to you while you're editing in Second Life.  I looked towards the internet to see if there was anything else I could do in order to find how to build these mega prims.  I searched for so long and no luck.  I have to wait for class I guess :(

No Class

Today we didn't have class in our Arts 450 class at CSU Chico.  The BFA students held their shows in each classroom.  All the students did a great job, and let me remind you that this posting is not about Second Life (it's about reality).  I'll be looking forward to our next class meeting so I can hopefully discuss with Ann on how to make my theatre with using a limited amount of prims.  Is it possible?  We'll just have to wait and see what she says.  I'm currently close to finishing a music video that I can show on my theatre for my class.  It would make my project like far superior to what I envision since I'm combining class related material with extra circular activities.

Frustration and Destruction

So I was in Second Life today and I've been waiting to see Ann to go ahead and help me with my theatre.  I've waited to long so my frustrations have lead me to drawing down ideas.  As you can see in the pictures, I have destroyed my previous theatre.  It was made with so many prims, so the destruction of it took a little bit of time.  I have decided to make this theatre a lot smaller because realistically I don't think I'm going to be able to make it in the amount of prims I'm allowed to use.

Well, I'm back to starting from scratch and I have entered a panic mode because I have no vision right now for what I'm going to present for my final critique in class.  Back to the drawing board.

Our Latest Class Adventure

Today in class we went and checked out the University of Western Australia's Sim.  There was a bunch of projects made by different students that were competing for a wealthy prize, which I can't remember at the moment.  So anyway, this area had a big land and there was even artwork in the air, so naturally the sim provider set up teleport points for us to get around.  The HUD that is on our screen was also incorporated in one of the artworks.  I thought that this was a new way to view art, and potentially interact with it.  You never know about something until you experience it.  These students were very competitive with their projects, so they used many senses other than sight.  They incorporated a lot of music in their work.  There are also projects that you can go inside of, such as a giant head that seems to be pretty creepy (since my avatar seems so insignificant to it).  When you go inside of the head, there seems to be parts of the brain and parts that seems like an anatomy project, very cool at the least bit!  We also noticed as a class that this sim also happens to be a big platform in the sky.  We have always been used to sims that were created on land by water.  Very interesting.

The next student tour we had was a place called Enchanted Tales Sim in Enchanted Forest.  This island had so much detail with such a massive, beautiful forrest.  The trees were so huge, the biggest I've seen in a sim thus far, made my avatar seem so small and insignificant.  I spent most of my time going around the forest getting lost, but it was okay because there was a lot of nice nature landscapes to discover.  There was a lot of architecture that had "No Entry" marks.  Too bad though because it looked like the best part of the island.  There was an underwater area that had a bunch of tropical fish and sharks floating around.  It inspires me to possibly make things not just on land but also on water?  Overall, this island has so much detail from the sky, to the fish in the water.

No Progress for Me in Second Life :(

I wanted to get back to working on my movie theatre that I'm designing in Second Life.  I'm trying to make this theatre huge, like an IMAX theatre.  Apparently we are restricted to using only 25 prims for our project, and I'm already approaching 50!  I'm no where even close to done and I'm basically back to the drawing board.  My new mission is to complete a theatre within 25 prims, so I imagine I'll have to make this theatre a lot smaller, also by eliminating some of the walls.  I'm going to have to meet Anne in my ARTS 450 class that will have some tips in order for me to accomplish my goal of creating this theatre within the prim limit.

I decided to go around to other places in Second Life that could be places of common interest.  I looked all across for places that people can communicate about the hip-hop artist, Eminem.  I kept looking for places all over but I couldn't find a true place that really served him well.  There would be places that set up pictures of him, but nothing that fancy.  I stopped looking after a while because I feel like I was making no progress.  For someone that has the most fans on Facebook, he must have an area on Second Life that pays him proper homage.  I'll have to look around more in the future because I'm interested to see what people make for celebrities.

Anyways, I was playing a fan on Second Life this week, almost acting like a Paparazzi guy trying to snap photos for a story.  Maybe I should enter into some Eminem forum sites that may have something related to a dedicated Second Life sim.  Maybe I should do some research on the demographic of the percentage of Eminem fans that are on Second Life.  There is a stat for everything on the internet, so maybe that should be available if I look?

First Class outside of Chico

Today was the first day we met as a class to conduct a field trip, but this time we were located not in our physical seats at the CSU Chico campus.  I logged in from my hometown of Sacramento, CA, while most other students logged in from Chico, CA.  We met okay.  It took a few minutes to really round up everyone.  We teleported for our trip to The University of Delaware's sim.  Tyde Poole was the student that showed us around.  We managed to finally meet up and then we started to move around the sim.  There were many places to look at art, and even there was traditional art galleries that were available to walk into.  It showed many artworks of Andy Warhol and another exhibit that was focused on black music in the past.  They were mostly paintings and photos that were available to view in high quality.  I started to fly around and I noticed that everyone was traveling towards the ocean.  I tried talking to a few students but then I immediately came up the conclusion that the Second Life viewer must of timed out, or had some other technical difficulty.  I had to log out and come back in, but when I entered back in, I couldn't really find any of my classmates.  I started to look around a little bit more and I noticed there was a crime scene.  Apparently the University of Delaware set up a game where you act as a detective.  I started to travel through the trees and terrain to find a dead woman that had her underwear removed.  I was meant to believe that this body was raped before it was killed.  Oh Second Life drama!  This place had too much detail from my ariel perspective that I will have to come check out later.  I got back to the Chico State campus in Second Life to see people working on their projects and I started going back to work on mine.

Day of Building

This is my first real attempt today at creating architecture in Second Life.  I've screwed around previously just by putting shapes together but never have I really started a project until now.  I have decided to make a movie theatre that many people can come sit and enjoy watching my music videos, or any other content I decide to put up on the web.  When I teleported to my land to build, I accidentally fell off and fell for a very very long time (as you can obviously see in the picture).

I started with what seemed like a blank canvas.  I was all alone on my island and it was surprisingly hard to put my idea together at first.  Just being able to mess around with every prim didn't turn out as I expected it would.  I played around with a lot of ideas that I drew in my notebook, but I figure this project is going to be pretty time consuming by the fact that I plan on adding a lot of detail in this theatre.  I really just spent the majority of my time realizing that the theatre needs to be bigger and bigger from what I originally planned.  So I decided to make more terrain to build on.  The theatre should be able to be functionally if it's on a big platform.  Anyways, the pictures show my progress so far.  It doesn't look like much, but I felt like I've put forever into this project so far!