An Otter Award Ceremony

Photo: Red carpet at Tiny Film Festival 2010 © Teal Freenote

This past weekend, I announced a date for our second ever Raglan Film Festival!

Last year, we had the Festival of tiny-oriented machinima just before the Oscars; this year however, I've been bogged down with dealing with an RL move of house, so couldn't commit to anything sooner until we really knew what was going on. However, I've now set a date for Sunday 12 June 2011!

More detailed information is on the Raglan Shire forum page here, but essentially, it's a festival (rather than a contest) to celebrate the joy of being a tiny in Second Life. Last year's event had about 10-15 films in total, a list of which is here and it was great to see how different people approached using different tiny avatars.

It's really open to anyone, and of any ability level. Toxic Menges gave me the chance to share some information about the event at this weeks' MachinimaMondays meeting, so hopefully we'll see some interest from machinimatographers from outside of the Shire too; and as an added bonus, EVERYONE who enters a film into this year's event will walk away with a Golden Otter prize as a reward!

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The Echelon SFX

I occasionally attend meetings of the group Machinima Mondays, a group started by two of my favourite machinimatographers, Toxic Menges and Chantal Harvey. The meetings are a chance for machinima film-makers to get together and share work, advice, solutions to problems and, if a Linden is there (as there was this past week), a chance to offer suggestions for a more-dedicated machinima viewer, or what elements would be useful to have in a viewer.

This week, I actually feel like I contributed something of use! I was able to share the link for my last piece of work (my Echelon Effect video) and talk about it. Some people asked whether I was using Space Navigator (a type of mouse) and had a really steady hand; however, I did explain how I'd done the single shot zoom effect using the SL viewer's Debug menu.

It was actually a tip I found from Torley Linden's video tutorials on YouTube - and if I could find the video again, I'd be posting a link to it now! Basically, what you do is change the time it takes for your camera view to switch back from a zoomed position or point back to its default position above an avatar's head.

To change the time, first you need to activate and open the Advanced menu on the viewer, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D and then go down to Debug Settings; this opens the Debug dialog box.

In the command bar, you'll need to type zoomtime; this should then present you with a time option. By default, the setting will read 0.400 - that's the time it takes to go from a zoomed point back to default, less than half a second. For the video I shot, I knew the soundtrack ran to just under three minutes, so to give my video a bit of breathing room before the music started and just after it finished, I set my zoom time to 180.000 seconds. However, take note: before you change the zoom time, you should have already zoomed in on something (using, for Windows users at least, Alt + Left Mouse button), as if you then try and zoom after you've changed the zoom time, your new setting will already apply.

So, you've zoomed in on something and changed your zoom time? Now, to activate the zoom, I tend to use the Esc button. First, you'll need to click away from the Debug dialog box (as long as your zoom point is fixed using Alt+Left mouse button, it shouldn't be a problem); just left click on something nearby. Turn off all windows by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, and then hit the Esc button twice - the first hit will close your Local Chat bar, and the second will activate your zoom. If everything goes to plan, you should then have a slow zoom (depending on what time you changed the zoom to) neatly back to above your head. In the video I shot, I wanted the camera to come to a natural stop but obviously didn't want to include myself in the shot, so I triggered an animation that would hide my avatar underground, without changing my avatar position.

It was nice to hear several people had learned something new from my explaining this, and they vowed to then go and use the effect in their own projects. I use it almost all the time in mine; I think the results it creates make a really nice touch.

If you're interested in learning more about Machinima from the people who make it, join the group and come along to Machinima Mondays. The meetings are held - unsurprisingly - on a Monday at two different times to cover as many time-zones as possible. It's either a small (virtual) world, or I know a lot of talented people, because almost every week I meet another tiny at one of the meetings!

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Short And Sweet

I made a new machinima!

I needed to make something just to get me back into the creative flow of things; it's been a year since I did some machinima work, and although am not short of ideas, often find my ideas becoming so big and running away from me, that they become unmanageable, and I discard them. So I needed to change tact.

I got permission to use Flea Bussy and Toady Nakamura's amazing Avaria sims for filming, but didn't want to do anything too demanding. I just wanted to do something quick and easy, so found a good spot, ramped up the Draw Distance and Zoom Time and came up with this. The music is by a guy professionally known as The Echelon Effect, who I'm a really big fan of. He's been turning out some wonderful lush post-rock electronica soundscapes for a while, and I've been wanting to use his music for a video project for ages. This piece was just the right length to make this film work.

NB: The video screen looks small here, because it's widescreen. Best viewed full screen or on YouTube.



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Dog Biscuits

I’ve spent the past few days helping a friend (who I actually struck up a friendship with through Twitter!) set up her new shop/business in-world.

Jenicca Gothly sells dog treats at her stores on Clos Normand and Port Babbage – but with a bit of a twist. These aren’t treats for virtual dogs, but actual REAL dog treat biscuits that she makes from her home and sells online.

The treats – of which there are currently three varieties – all contain natural ingredients. Jen makes them from home and sells them through an Etsy site, but being an avid SL-resident, she figured she could try and market them through whatever means were at her disposal. She’s rented two shop units so far, both on Victorian-era themed sims, so needed a shop interior that matched. She’ll be the first to admit that she’s not the best builder (but then neither am I), and by setting up everything she needed – signs, mailboxes, décor, etc – had run pretty close to her prim limit. I helped by tweaking a few bits here and there for her, building a new counter, finding some low-prim vintage-style furniture and just straightening a few wonky pictures.

How does it work then? Well, you just buy up one of the boxes in-world, send Jen your address details etc, and that’s it. Shipping and handling is included in the in-world price. The boxes (in—world) cost about L$2000, so you need to have invested some money into SL to get them, but I thought it was a really clever and secure way of handling payment!

I really like what Jen’s achieved so far, and I hope her business venture is a success! Woof!

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New Year

It seems like 2010 was the least productive year for me in SL so far; I felt like I didn’t really make much or do much, other than use it to socialise and catch up with friends from each corner of the globe. I adore SL in that respect. For me, it is the best social networking community – it’s real-time – the MOST real-time social-network I believe is out there - it allows voice chat and it allows you to share creativity. Linden Lab needs to realise this, rather than waste time trying to unnecessarily develop more online social content. What they have here is unique and precedes a lot of other social networks, and it should be marketed as such, not trying to copy what’s followed.

I really want to do more in-world this year. Last year, RL took over, and probably understandably – I got married, for one! That took a lot of time, planning and saving and I was very fortunate to be able to cash-in and use some of my SL-sales to be able to pay for our wedding cake toppers! We (me and Nat a.k.a Kitti Dumpling in-world) rounded out our Second Life-connection by having two of our tiny friends - Mutley Latte and Josephine Planer - at our wedding too!

So, I hope to have turned out at least two pieces of Machinima by the time the year’s out, have organised at least one event for Raglan and made at least six outfits. They’re my Second Life New Year’s Resolutions!

I'm Still Here!

Apologies to you, loyal reader, for not updating this blog in six weeks! All of a sudden I had a real life wedding to attend - MINE! It kinda took up a lot of my time.

What virtual world stuff have I done since then? Well, not a great deal, unfortunately. I added my opinion to a comment a Linden made here, which I thought was pretty bad; but then in my experience, web developers have almost always been anti-social misfits with no real idea of how to properly address another human being.

Avatars United closed down. Silly move. Sure, it wasn't being used to its fullest potential, but I'm sure it could've been. To me, it had LOTS of potential, and I have a whole stack of ideas of how it could be developed; but I'm sure someone being paid a lot more money had better ideas and saw that the only recourse was to obliterate it entirely. What a waste.

I've also missed most of Raglan Shire's Shocktober Festival too (the Halloween-themed month) due to RL commitments; but most of all, I've missed hanging out with friends. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with some properly soon.

Medieval Looms

It's the FOURTH Medieval festival this month on Raglan Shire!

I'm proud to say that I remember the very first one on the Shire. It was held over a weekend, I believe, and took up the area that is now known as the Silicube. Over the years it's grown to now take over the whole field - where the square is, surrounded by Artisan tents and the like - and a grand castle. I made outfits for the first one. Thankfully, due to the fact that the style I made hasn't changed since it went out of fashion over 300 years ago, they still look good these days!

This year, I've tried to contribute my commemorating the tinies favourite festival (for many, at least) by making a huge tapestry. I've been taking pictures of medieval tinies individually and then arranging them on long panels. I've then applied a canvas-style effect over the images, chopped them into sections and uploaded them, to stick them back together into one long tapestry. I've managed to photograph 133 tinies - one of whom appears twice (in different outfits) at my request, because I didn't think many people would be interested! I might still add more yet. I've put it up for display in the castle, and have had lots of requests from people to buy copies of it. I may sell the textures rather than the prims, and then folks can make sections if they want.

I'll donate the proceeds to the animal funds that we're currently raising to go towards our continued adoption of a tapir in the States and a giraffe at London Zoo in the UK. Zayn is also hoping to raise enough to be able to donate to two secondary charities that work with animals on a more general basis.

I might have some interesting news regarding my 'Le Squabbit' machinima movie too soon. I don't want to say too much at the moment, in case nothing happens. But...watch this space!