Magic and love!

I'm posing at Totally Top Shelf today. Their theme is Magic March. I do feel as if I time travelled into a medieval village, to the market where the magical beings shop. Here you can find glowing eyes, crystal balls, and lots of outfits, including the dress I'm wearing.

It's decorated with moons and stars and a silver studded belt, and comes in several colors. I paired it with these fantastic moon boots from the current Steam Hunt, and sparkling celestial jewelry. Details follow in the credits.

I've blogged before about the free Oracul animation pack. This morning, I went to Kuso, and found it had been updated. As if all this wasn't exciting enough, in the Oracul package was something called Kuso Phone V. I put it on to see what it was, and it's a typing AO. It's wonderful. Here's a photo of what it does:

It gives you a cute pink phone with a heart on the back. The phone only appears when you type in local chat. There are two animation included with it. One is the typing or dialing animation in the above photo. The second animation is a talking on the phone animation (below). Both animations have a talking animation that runs at the same time. Particle hearts come out while you use the phone! I just love it.

 I know you'll want to run over and grab one now, so I'll stop talking and give you the credits. :D

Credits:

Phone typer is from Kuso/Oracul (Go in the side that says AX. Click on the blue arrow on the pillar by the door)
Onyx Morgana Dress from Oubliette is now at Totally Top Shelf

Steamy Moon Boots are from Rainy Fae Creations and are prize #070 in Steam XII

Galatea Collection jewelry is from J&W Jewelers

Pichi.Hair is from Nani and is now at Whimsical in a gacha

As usual, I'm wearing the Maitreya mesh body

Vista pro hands

Catwa mesh head, Catya

Catwa mesh eyes with applier from Avi-Glam

Skin from Lara Hurley

Candy Lipstick from Insol

Caledon Tartan nail appliers are here

Windlight: Naminaeko Fairies Sleeping

More Art!

My adventures as part of the Art Study Group continued last Monday. We saw two exhibits about computers. The first one is called 'Laptop', and is a giant laptop that you can tour on a segway. Here are some photos:

 

This exhibit was fun, and quite involved as you travel around the mother board, go around the hard drive, etc. 

The second show was called, 'Big Data Goes to Bonestedt'. It was a bit darker, more about disconnecting from real life. Fragments of people and voices surround you. Some of the voices reminded me of NASA moon walk recordings, which added to the feeling of isolation. 

You could ride on some of the spheres, and leave behind a trail of your distorted profile picture. Occasionally, your profile might cross someone else's, but most of the time you just go around in a figurative circle. The large figures were tossing a heart made of light from hand to hand. There's a lot of bright and shiny stuff around to play with, but the people are fragmented. In the bottom photo, you can see class members and get a sense of scale.

Credits:

Laptop

 Big Data

 You can see the details of my outfit on my flickr page

Windlight: Naminaeko series

Harp Nouveau

I've been wanting to do something with the gorgeous scroll head harp from DRD for a long time. It's just hard to get the harp and the harpist in the same frame. Then Virtual Diva had a sale, and I got their Ole pose pack, among other things. The poses seemed to work well with the harp, and with an art nouveau theme.

Another inspiration for this photo shoot is the kimono jacket I'm wearing. I was trying out a new bento AO, and the woman next to me was wearing this jacket. It perfectly suits my bohemian taste. I love to add shawls, scarves, anything with fringe. This jacket has color change fringe. It seemed like the perfect thing to throw on over one's ball gown on a chilly morning.

This wonderful flower crown was in a gacha at Shiny Shabby. It reminded me of a Mucha painting, so I got it in several colors. The long hair reminded me of Mucha too. Here's an example in case you're not familiar with this artist:

He also did the famous Job cigarette paper ad in 1898.

Here's another hairstyle for that Mucha look:

This hair is from Nani, and it's quite long. I also took off the kimono jacket so you could see the gown and jewelry. The gown is mesh, and the train is flexi. It also has appliers for the bit of sheer netting on the chest and back. The necklace and earrings have a hud to change the metal color.

Credits:

Floral crown by Lode. Now at Shiny Shabby

The first hair is Ocean Hair from Letituier. Now at The Secret Affair

Gown is Nouveau from Siss Boom

Kimono jacket is from Addams

Necklace/earring set is Dreamcatcher from Bowtique

Bangles are from Sahova, but may not be available anymore

The second hair is Nehelenia from Nani. 

Harp is from The Victorian Musicroom collection from DRD

Poses from Virtual Diva

As usual, I'm wearing the Maitreya mesh body

Vista pro hands

Catwa mesh head, Catya

Skin by Insol

Lichtbringer

I'm in an art study group that meets Monday nights at 6:00 PM, SLT. Last week we went to an installation called Lichtbringer at LEA2. The LEA sims are awarded to artists who submit a proposal and pass a review. They then have a sim and 6 months to create their environment. You land here and will see some textured spheres to teleport with. There's also a free cinematic camera to pick up. When you wear it, your view is long and narrow like in a movie theater. Explore a bit where you land, and you'll find other gifts. They recommend setting your graphics to ultra, and it's really worth it, if your computer can handle it, even for a few minutes.

There are 8 environments to experience. Some are quite psychedelic. You can see in the photo above how the light is projecting on my avatar. I'm in the pictures to give you a sense of scale, and also I'm trying out some Pre-Raphaelite poses. The next photo is at SpaceRocks. It's an environment with giant physical rocks tumbling about. You can sit on some of them and dance around in the chaos.

Here's another shot:

This next photo was taken at Holodeck, where you can do tai chi, among other things.

Here's another view. Notice how the light has changed. Everything is constantly changing. And there's a lot more to see.

Credits:

Lichtbringer information

Lichtbringer landmark

Dress: Noemi from Luas

Hair: Sweetheart hair from Kotte

Necklace and crown from Les Sucreries de Fairy at Cosmopolitan

Waterhouse poses from Alchemy Immortals

Catwa's Catya head

Maitreya body

Vista pro hands
Art Study Group meets here. All are welcome.

Mesh heads are Clones!

I hear that a lot, 'Mesh heads look like clones'. Granted, each one has its own look and some are more versatile than others. Still, even before bento, there were so many heads out there and so many skins and makeups for them that they didn't really look that much alike. Now, with bento, you can change the shape of your head almost the same as you can a system skin.

Here's the Catya mesh head from Catwa in it's default skin and shape:

Here it is after I changed the shape:

I made the mouth and eyes a little bigger, shaped the nose, tweaked it here and there. Here's that shape wearing 9 skins:

Everything is the same except for the skins. If I can look this many ways on one shape, so can everyone else who has the head. Change the shape, hair, clothes, makeup, and skin tones. How many looks are possible? How many looks are possible with a system head? It doesn't matter to me at all if you wear a mesh head or a system head. There's room for everything in our wonderful world of SL. All I ask is that you think before you tell me I'm a clone because I choose to wear a mesh head.

Landscape With Owl

It's cold and snowy for me both in Real Life and in Caledon Moors. Snow is still fun this early in the season, and this lovely setting made by Luna Bliss captures the mood well. Like most avatars, I'm collecting Advent gifts. This outfit is from !Go! I'm wearing Valentine pants from Day 2 and Dagna Frill Sweater from Day 12. Most of !Go!'s Advent offerings have been mix and match. The textures are lovely. Look at the sheen on the lace in photo below:

To complete the look, I added Xmas Owl Scarf, a gift from MoonAmore+Cureless. My beret was a gacha prize from offbeat called 'I Believe'. It has an eye in a triangle patch, which I love. :) My Jewelry is from PurpleMoon's Advent Calendar, Day 10. My hair is Mara from little bones. It's available at the current Winter Solstice Event. It comes with hairpins to hold the waves and an animation hud for taking them off or arranging the hair. My boots are from G Field.

These wonderful John Lennon glasses are an Advent gift from Yasum, Day 12. You get several versions with different metal and lens options. My nails are from Nailed It, and came from the KittyCats Advent. My eyebrow applier is Ice Queen from #adored. It came from the Winter Solstice event.

Credits:

Usual Catwa head with Maitreya Body and Vista Pro hands

Wind light: *Starley* Settings 2 and Torley Foggy Fogvari

Hacking Bento

OK, I confess, I'm not a hacker, but I feel like one after saving $4000L on a Bento HUD. I'm talking about the HUD one can buy separately for the Catya head. I understand that a huge amount of work went into the head, and I believe artists should be compensated. My problem is that I only use about 10 animations out of the 500+ that the head can do, so I really didn't want to spend $5000L for it. I was really excited when I heard that the animations in the HUD would be available separately. Unfortunately, you can't put those animations into the HUD that comes with the head. All you can do is click on them to play them. That's ok, but Catwa's HUD that plays the animations is what sets it apart from other Bento enabled heads.

So I tried something, and it actually worked. \o/  I bought the animations I wanted, and put them into an empty AO that I got at Oracul. (The one that came with the Oracul bento hands that I blogged about earlier) I put them into the stand section in the notecard. (I'm assuming you know how to add animations to an AO. It's just like that.) Then I loaded the modified notecard and wore it with my regular AO. One AO makes my body move and the other moves my face.

It won't play eye and lip animations at the same time like the Catwa HUD does, so it's not as nice, but if you don't have $5000L or only want to make a few expressions, this is a way to do it. And, wearing only my Maitreya body, Catya head, Vista pro hands, Maitrya HUD, Catwa main HUD, and two AO's, it's 33 scripts. That's with no hair or clothes.

So there you have it. If you want it. :D