Another one?!

Only recently it struck me how much I enjoyed fiddling with my avatar's appearance in Second Life, with regards to hair, skin and clothes. Oh and of course shoes! :P

So, as a result of this revelation, may I present to you Second Thought, my new fashion review blog! Now, I must confess I have never written reviews before, but I have done a little researching and am intending to improve vastly during my time writing on the new blog.

I'm hoping to keep the readers updated with any new yummy goodies that I find whilst logged into Second Life, showing them what each product is like and the pros and cons of each item.

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing and taking the pictures ^.^

More Arty Farty and Fun..

I'm sure you're all getting fed up of my arty farty random posts by now, but one more won't hurt huh? Since I last took those pictures featuring Ryker Beck's skin Candace I have, once again, picked up the bug that is random picture taking. No reason, no meaning, except that I enjoy taking them and editing them up for the sake of it.

So I went back into Second Life, and bought myself a new skin. Yes, OK, it was another of the Candace skins from Genesis (soon to be rebranded as Exodi) but this time with more makeup, a more striking look called Spring Reign. The skin itself is beautifully made, the makeup being just enough without going overboard.

In addition to this new buy, I decided to search out Rrishanna Regina and Mr Prad Prathivi's (I don't know why I always call him Mr, the name just has the ring to it don't you think?) newly rebuilt home at Southsea Point. I haven't been around to see the new build and so, wanted to go and check it out. The landscaping is stunning, with a beautiful waterfall in the gardens, rock pools and plants scattered tastefully. The house itself has an appealing simplicity to it, each section leading onto the next with a winding path, which is then echoed by a slatted wooden roof that is just dying to be sat on.

So that's what I did, I sat on the roof and took a couple of pics. And, graphics willing, I think they came out quite well!

Digital Art and Trying Out Ryker's New Skin.

I have been seeing many different pictures go up around Flickr showing Ryker Beck's new skin, Candace, in it's final glory. So, me being me, I had to go and try it and join in ^.^

It was also an opportunity to log back into Second Life for a second, update my avatar's look a little and take a few pictures. Thanks to Ben who let me use his computer ^.^ (Can I have nice graphics please?)

I'm quite pleased with how they came out; I took one showing the whole body and a closer one for more detail. Used a bloom effect on both to highlight them a bit, and they look pretty ^.^

I hope you like!

Gone But Never Forgotten

I have wanted to write this post for a couple of days but have not been sure how to approach it. I wanted to get past the initial surge of surprise posting and state my own thoughts on the subject after the dust had settled.

Recently, we have had to say goodbye to one of my favourite bloggers, Mr Prad Prathivi.

Prad is a good friend of mine, very talented, very dedicated to his work and as such, his blog proved to one of the few blogs that I enjoyed reading regularly. It provided a good, healthy combination of comedic satire, thought provoking pieces and general good natured ranting whilst never taking himself too seriously.

It’s an honest shame to see him go, and I hope that the other bloggers on Metaversally Speaking manage to keep the blog up and running in the absence of this prolific writing figure.

Prad, your posts will be missed by a great number of people and I can only hope that in the future you may decide to take up, again, what has been another string to your bow.

Reaching for the stars..

As you have seen in previous posts, I have been trying my hand at Poser ^^

Well, yesterday me and Ben decided to sit, chill and generally fiddle with a picture or two. Little did we know that we would be up for a further three and a half hours, working late into the night.

It began by me setting a stimulus. For a while now I've wanted to create a picture that captured the lyrics from a certain Nickelback song that means a lot to me recently. So, yesterday I suggested just that, why not make a picture to the lyrics: 

"Would you make your mark by mending a broken heart? You know it's never to late to shoot for the stars regardless of who you are.."

The rest of the picture I can only really credit to Ben. We found a new software called Terragen, through which we created the landscape and lighting with much trial and error. Then, after creating our model in Poser - flowing dress and all - we brought the two together in Photoshop and added the final touches.

Well, when I say 'we' I mean that Ben did the majority of the graphical work, and I watched and suggested ideas.

I'm really pleased with the end result, it looks very realistic and I'm hoping to work on bringing both Terragen and Poser together in more pictures in the future ^^

A Rare Visit

Today I decided to go and visit the Crown and Pearl again in Second Life. I'd heard they were playing a game of SLopoly so that, along with the fact I was missing my friends in general, persuaded me to log in for a little bit and join them.

The game was already going when I joined, however, I sat and chatted for a good while whilst getting very confused by the monopoly game itself (and learning a few things about Monopoly in general - like you trade in it, perhaps that's why I've never finished a game). It was fun to visit again and great to catch up with the people there.

As usual, I managed to get some snaps whilst I was logged in and decided to quickly edit them up before I go to bed. I caught Mr Prathivi playing the piano and a rather nice sunset over the sea (seen at the beginning of the post)

I hope you like them. I'm quite pleased with them considering they were just quick edits.

And now I'm off to bed!

The Next Development

My next picture from Poser ^.^ I seem to be writing a lot of little things on this blog, all of them about nothing in particular, but I'm really pleased with this!

Let's try something else..

OK, so after several more experiments and attempts at getting some extras for DAZ Studio, I have decided that it didn't give me the detail and look I was going for and wiped it off my computer! And now, thanks to Ben, I have Poser to play with ^.^

I've only had a couple of plays with this software, but so far it seems a lot more detailed, easier to use with extra options for editing the character's features and the end result comes out looking a lot better than my experience with DAZ Studio.

Me and Ben spent a good two hours playing around with it the other day, experimenting with different characters and then exporting into Photoshop to play around with it further. The progress of our playing around is shown below:

So here is the first result of our experimenting, just playing around with the positioning of the character and adding in a little lighting.

The result of Ben's editing the picture in Photoshop :) I think the zoom blur really adds to it and creates a feeling of power in the boy's hands.

This is my first attempt at a full blown picture. It has very little editing to it, merely adding in a background and border along with highlighting the eyes. I'm actually really pleased with this.

Ben's final picture. The small version doesn't do it justice, but we had a lot of trouble getting these two to render. I love the sense of intimacy in this picture :)