Bats asked me to do a picture for his Picks portion of his profile, so I dressed up in my most favorite outfit and started snapping pictures in the Photosphere. I took several shots, with a few of my favorite skins, but this picture is definitely my favorite.

I took the image, then edited it a bit in Photoshop. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I smoothed my skin out, sharpened my lips and eyes, and made the whites of the eyes a little whiter. I really enjoy editing pictures like this - sometimes I wish he would ask me for more pictures. O.o

O.O Whoa, where I have I been lately?! Well, lets see here. I've been struggling to get RL and SL Christmas shopping done, and frankly, I haven't even felt like building anything in SL. I've been going around from various shops daily to grab their free items each day (Ivalde, Second Mirage, Wrong, Reaction, among several others), and believe it or not, its very exhausting on the brain. Afterwards, I'm constantly thinking: "Did I grab the freebie from [insert shop name here]?". However, the most time consuming thing I am doing right now involves this thine here:

What is it, you ask? Its the Fashionista Filing Cabinet. Also known as the Fashionista Closet, but the closet was 10 prims, while this little thing was only 2. So, what does it do? Simple answer, but very complicated and time consuming process: It holds inventory items. You take pictures of your copyable items, put them in boxes, put a image of the outfit on the box, and store the box in the cabinet. My process is:

1. Put clothing items on.
2. Take pictures of it in the photosphere (repeat these two steps several times for several different outfits).
3. Open Photoshop.
4. Resize each image to 256x256.
   
5. Put 16 of them on a 1024x1024 image.
6. Upload to SL.
7. Put clothing items in box.
8. Retexture box and fiddle with texture settings until I see the image of the item in the box.
9. Take box into inventory.
10. Put in cabinet.
11. Repeat.

I tell you, its a nightmare. Especially when I have over 20,000 items... this kills me. However - I have come across some interesting transferable items that I don't want anymore. I am thinking of either visiting a newbie sim and handing them out to new residents - or just attending a inventory swap. I am not social at all for any of these type of things. Both would be a terrible challenge for me, and I'll probably end up just keeping all my items. T_T

Wow, its been a while since I posted here. I've been so busy with running the shop, shopping and my Fashion Labyrinth blog. So, anyways, someone was talking about a Christmas sim on the Fashion Emergency group, so I knew I had to go check it out. I love Christmas, snow, and Rezzable. Rezzable has done many of my favorite sims, including Toxic Garden and the Greenies Home. I had to go check out their Christmas sim.

Bats and I teleport in - and it doesn't seem to be Christmas-y at all. It was a race track. However, It had snow, and adorable little penguins, the fact of it being a race track didn't stop me from wanting to explore! I set my windlight settings to the "Blizzard" preset, and started snapping pictures.


Under the ground, there was an actual race track. It was indeed pretty cool, with falling ice and all. But, you also see some really cool things, like this mammoth that had fallen through some thin ice.


Also - don't forget to go under the racetrack to see the underwater city. This place was oddly beautiful, in a grungy, ghostlike way. Getting pictures underwater is a pain with all the fog and all. Luckily, I found out how to turn off the Fog rendering in the Client menu. Made exploring and picture taking a lot more enjoyable.

SLURL: Stratos, Stratos Home Rezzable (157, 33, 71)

I have been waiting MONTHS for the return of Windlight - and its finally back! .... However, it isn't all I was hoping it would be. I downloaded it yesterday, but finally played with some presets and settings today. And, I was standing at home while I did this, so my pictures of the awesome Windlight is taken at Bats' and my SL residence. Hehe~


Yes, Windlight is amazingly pretty. I love it. However - my PC is over a year old, and apparently can not handle many of the features. When I turn on the pretty clouds, my SL performance goes downhill. It becomes very choppy, which is very annoying for me. The clouds are great for picture taking, because my computer can't handle them all the time.


Another thing - it messes up my facelight. For those who know me well, you know that is catastrophic for me. Anything that interferes with my facelight is trashed. Because of this reason alone, I don't think I will be using this viewer too often. Also - I also noticed that after moving the camera around, and reseting it - things refuse to rez. This morning, I was out shopping, zoomed in on something, and my avatar refused to rez when I reset my camera. I had to relog to be able to see myself again. O_o

Wow, its been a while! What have I been up to? Well, for starters, I've visited the awesome sim, TheAbyss! If you haven't been there, you are really missing out. This place is incredible, and kind of reminded me a little of "The World That Never Was" in the PS2 game, Kingdom Hearts II. Its very beautiful, in its surreal way. No picture can show the true beauty of this place, you should really check it out in world. SLURL: TheAbyss, The Abyss (96, 136, 237)

I've also learned a lot about animation overrides last night. I had purchased a Vista AO, and decided I didn't like the walks. So, I set out to find a new walk. I purchased a walk, put it in successfully, then decided I wasn't fond of the fly animations. I waited until Bats came on, and we spent a few hours looking for fly and landing animations. (Well, I was looking for fly ones, he was looking for ground sits).

I finally found some that looked halfway decent, but then decided I might as well update to the newest version of the Zhao II. Bad idea. I picked up a copy, and Bats did as well. So - we spent the rest of our night in utter confusion of how to program these things. We finally succeeded, just in time for us to test our animations and Bats to go to bed. *Sigh* Someone needs to make a "Zhao II for idiots" guide. Actually - I learned so much about what NOT to do last night, I could probably write that guide on the Zhao II.

Anyway. So, I woke up this morning, logged in at class, and decided I didn't like the fly or jumping animations this time. Yep. I went animation hunting again. I think I finally got my AO working how I want it this time... but - I can't seem to stop the face plant animation. You know... the one where you fall from a high distance and fall flat on your face? Yes, I hate that, but can't figure out how to make that go away. Ah well.

I am a major fan of horror movies - I love them to pieces. So, I immediately caught some of the movie references that was in this house. Pieces from Saw, The Shining, and more were used in this house. Creepy. As if watching horror movies all night tonight isn't going to be enough for me tonight...


If you make it to the attic, you even get a prize for braving the scary house! That is ... if you want to fight the giant spider for it. O_o


And yeah - I had to.

SLURL: Rave Nation Haunted House, Candyland (83, 198, 421)

If you are into Halloween things, there are a few places you can visit to get into the Halloween spirit. Two of the most popular places are Octoberville and October Country. Because Bats loves Halloween, I decided to take him to these two sims. So, we both dressed up - him as Jack Skellington, and me in a Last Call costume called "Enchantress".

Octoberville is only seasonal, so you should visit now, before it turns normal again. They have some weird hunt going on in this sim, and you have to find tons of items through the island. You do get a HUD to keep track of the items you have found, and it lets you know how many you have left. Lots of weird things are hidden in this sim. SLURL: Octoberville, PixelTrix (159, 105, 22)


Another popular one is October Country. Here, they have ghost stories being played for a good portion of the day, and many places to explore. This place made my computer spaz with all the particles and stuff, but it was an interesting place. I am told that this sim stays open all year round, so that is good for those of you who can't make it here by Halloween. SLURL: October Country, October Country (81, 184, 65)


And, here we are in our Halloween gear. We were trying to be as silly as we could be in this picture - because we just looked so goofy. O.o

Gah~ its been a while since I updated. I've been totally obsessed with making poses, I haven't really felt like doing much of anything else. So, I suppose I will talk a little about pose making while I'm on the topic. While searching for, crazy, silly, having fun poses, I was disappointed in how few good ones there were out there. So! I decided to make my own! I shelled out quite a bit of lindens and purchased the in-world pose maker, The Mannequin.

This thing... is really nice. Its easy to use, you just click on one of the little silver guy's parts, and a menu will come up. You choose from the menu what you want the part to do, and the limb moves. Easy. However, at $5000L, its quite expensive. I love this thing, but there are quite a few limitations on the movements. Which really is not a good thing. I've struggled a lot to get the perfect pose, and failed because the limits are so great on this object. However, it was a good learning tool. I got the basics of moving limbs, uploading animations, and how the avatar moves. If you want to check this tool out, you can do so at Tink's Creations, Drakul (242, 188, 68).


After reading Natalia Zelmanov's recent blog post, I gathered my courage and jumped into Qavimator. I have only one word: WOW. This program is so easy (though, I have to admit: the cracky skin is kinda creepy). I'm not sure if my experience with the Mannequin helped me understand the movements or something, but Qavimator is extremely easy, free (well, besides the $10L animation upload fee), and allows me to move the limbs in the exact position I want them in.


Now - on to other things. Bats and I have sold our mainland Flounder house, and moved into a quiet, West facing residential lot that is on the edge of a sim. We have absolutely nothing on two sides of our little island. Its totally perfect for us.


I swear, we have the best sunset in SecondLife. I set up our favorite slow dance on the dock we made next to Bats' boat. So awesome to go out there after dressing up to dance and watch the sun set. ^_^


I've also moved my shop out of Flounder and into a commercial sim in the Azure sims. Its totally huge, with 1120 meters, and 384 prims. I have set up a separate blog for Imperial Elegance releases, if anyone is interested in reading about those type of stuffs.

I love anime. So, when I visited Yaoi Kingdom, I really had no idea what to expect. After doing a search on shrines, that came up as a search result. So, me, being the curious oddball I am, decided to sneak in there and see what its about. Many nekos seem to hang out here, which is cool, because I sometimes put on a pair of neko ears myself. This place was surprisingly interesting.


I managed to find an interesting shrine hidden away in the corner of the sim. It was apparently on someones land, who decided to keep his house public. I went in, quickly snapped this shot, and ran away quickly. Shh~ don't tell anyone!


A second part of Yaoi Kingdom, an additional sim called Yaoi Providence, is apparently under construction. Its a beautiful lake and filled with hills, landscape and trees. It kinda of reminded me a little of StrayLight, with the light beams and textures, but it was plenty beautiful itself.


Throughout the two sims, there are plenty of poseballs all over as well. This is a cool place to explore, whether you are into the yaoi thing or not.

SLURL: Yaoi Kingdom, Yaoi Kingdom (166, 187, 24)

It finally happened. Our beautiful mainland beach has become overrun by a moron. Everything was fine until one person moved in and bought tons of land next to our house. Now - its a club. And its all we can see from the front of our house. Its totally nauseating and uncool. Bats wants to move away from the new club but I wasn't to sure... I mean, this was our first land together. But, we went land shopping around privately owned islands anyway, and I have to say - I was impressed. I was looking for a nice sandy beach on the edge of a sim that faced west (so we can have a good view of the sunset). I found quite a few, which was good.


But - Until we are able to move, we are stuck with the club in front of our home. Our temporary solution? A furnished skybox. Its depressing to log in and have a club glaring at you from the shoreline outside the window, so it seems the skybox will become our main home until either the club disappears, or we move.

I didn't think I would be excited to move away from our current land. But seeing how much people care about their land on private sims, and reading the covenants that protects the residents from morons, made me feel better. It will also be nice not having to worry about people terraforming our water away, and blocking our sunset. ^_^

[EDIT] So, its official: Bats and I are selling our mainland beach home to move to a private residential sim. Interested in it? Its 5,040 meters, 1153 prims, waterfront mainland for $44,080L. SLURL: Flounder (155, 108, 22)

I've been a little busy neko lately, even if it doesn't seem like it! I've been doing tons of work for my shop, I haven't had any time to do much of anything else in SL. But! I finally finished it all! Oh? What have I been doing? Well, I updated all my images for my vendors in my shop with new pictures, backgrounds, and more detailed layouts. (Gah~ that $400L in upload fees killed me!) But thats not all I did. I also updated every skirt in the shop with the new SmartSkirt script.

But no, thats not all~ I also updated the boxes in my SLExchange vendor and my OnRez vendor. Now, all landmarks are correct, SmartSkirt is up, and vendor images look great. Now, all thats left to do is package the new skirts up and put them up in the shop on Wednesday, so I can send my FashCon notice out.

I am excited about the new SmartSkirt script as well as the new vendor ads. I think this will make my shop more attractive, which is really cool. Shameless Plug: Flounder (46, 120, 33)


Ah, and on a side note... check out what I hatched! In search of a dragon avatar, I came across Grendel's Children, where you can buy an egg for $30L, and walk around the sims for a place that your egg will hatch at. I spent the next hour looking for somewhere to hatch this egg. It was, without a doubt, one of the weirdest things I've done. But - It hatched, and I got a gnarly, scripted dragon out of it. I call him Chi. ^_^