SLX

So despite my general distrust of the organization I have re listed my product on the SLX.  All of my products in all of my vendors are now mod/copy no transfer in the hopes that this will drive up sales.  It was actually a pretty good week with about 2k in sales.  I think as long as I manage to create somewhat unique builds then people will keep coming to the shop.

Re-Opened and in full swing!

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Orkney/69/58/22

Maverick Designs is up and running again at full tilt.  I have already had a lot more traffic with buildings and furniture than I had with texture work.  There are several low cost promo items (the 0 to 10L range) and I have a wicked set of free t-shirts in the store for men and women.  Each shirt comes on 3 layers for effectively being tucked or un tucked.

Free Maverick Designs T-Shirt for men

Free Maverick Designs T-Shirt for women

People ask what sort of buildings and furniture I create.  Honestly it runs a pretty wide course.  I really enjoy medieval fantasy settings and things that are dark and gruesome, but I also love Victorian and Steampunk.  I have plans at the moment to produce a line of urban buildings and then move in to some sci fi settings.

why?

Why that?

What makes people choose the avatars and the outfits that they do and what makes them think that outfit looks good?  Is there a psych connection here?  Does the super muscled over tall bling sporting avatar with a gun tucked in his waistband hide some poor demented socially inept wannabe gang banger?  I won’t even comment on the various cross-gender avatar/player combos.  Not only is it an appeal for the transgendered community to be able to fit into a community in their chosen role with minimal questioning, but many guys have said, “If I am going to spend hour at a time looking at an avatar I would rather it was a hot chick.” 

 

I am also not talking about people like my friend Ella.  She has got some wild outfits.  I mean stuff that doesn’t go with anything, except it does go with wherever she is, if that makes any sense in this single cup of coffee post.  She has taste and creativity so even her really wild outfits look pretty damn good.  What about the poor goober who is just weird to be weird and a little tasteless.  Does that poor bastard have no taste, no concept of a self image or do they just not care? 

 

On that note, is it worse to deal with a noob, help them beyond noob status and help produce an interesting SL resident or is it worse to deal with someone who enters the game with no concern for the social forms which have sprung up and does jackass things just because they can?  The example being, those people who just never grasp that SL has a vast social network as regular and reliable as any chat or instant messaging app.  I know that when I go to certain spot each evening I will likely find the same group of people chatting and listening to music. *mental note- Get a playlist to Jay*

 

This initial subject came up in conversation between me and a new acquaintance.  We joked about the compensation issues that must arise in SL and I had one of those cold water down the spine moments where I said, “Am I one of those people?”  Granted my regular form and state of dress has settled down into a notable pattern and seeing as how I have pretty good taste I always look ok, albeit sometimes I look like a Freddie Mercury fan club member, but hey how can I show off my tats if I don’t wear a tank top?  Right?  Most of the time people comment that I look like an adult version of Harry Potter, less the scar.  The blue black hair and the round rim glasses make all the difference.

 

All in all I would love to see a psychological evaluation based on avatar choices.  Might be entertaining to see what a shrink makes of the fact that although a person may dress normally in SL most of the time, they also choose to wear glasses and carry satchel.  Then where do the non-human avatars fit in?  The raven, the anthro fox and the dragon?  I think about it a good deal, especially when I see the truly tasteless walk by.

Some people’s children, I swear.

So this chode on the SLX forums (and yes if you come across this post and you follow the SLX forums you are likely to recognize of whom I am speaking) is one of those people who want everything handed to them on a platter.  Last week he wanted a silver cross necklace but didn’t want to pay what people were asking.  I know as he approached Ella about building it and when she finally saw what he wanted and told him the price he came back with some drivel about having to camp for 2 weeks to get the amount needed to buy the necklace from her.  What a fucking maroon!  What a mook!

So today he posted something about wanting a script to copy protect clothing that he is making in order to open a store.  Wait . . . you are opening a clothing store yet don’t know that you can’t put a script in a clothing layer?  WTF.  In the same post he states he doesn’t want responses to his post in the forum but in world.  He doesn’t sell on SLX because they take 3% of each sale.  Well fucking duh!  They provide a service that requires a certain amount of upkeep!  People like that just totally rub me the wrong way.  Everything out of their mouth is “gimme gimme gimme”.

Ok, rant done.

On another note I am trying to find a scripter to help me build a custom vendor for my shop.  The one I have works alright but bugs out every now and then and the creator is why not accessible.  I am also concerned that the groovy display properties of this vendor make it easy for people to swipe my work.  I know it will happen anyway but why make it any easier.

I did finally learn the issue with my creating poses in poser6 and exporting for SL, P6 wasn’t compatible.  So issue fixed.  I did try a pose with avimator but missed something on the import as all the avatar did when the pose was run was to jump into the pose and then jump right out.  So I guess my learning curve would be better if I spent more than 10 min at a time on this pose process.

I have been focused on the Sci Fi stuff lately and as a result that texture set is now massive. I need to get back to the House of Dragons concept since the base work is done, it of course needs windows and doors, like most of the stuff I do.  I also have a big job to finish from one of my regular clients.  Oh wait and that RL work thing . . . sheesh!  Don’t they know I have a virtual addiction to feed?

braaaaiiiiiins!

All aboard the zombie express!

Man do I feel wiped the hell out. I was in bed before midnight, had a wicked head ache.  Slept like a stone, odd dreams, and woke up feeling half dead.  Won’t say which half.  Will not be in SL much this weekend as my mum is going to be in town to visit before she moves up to WA.  This is groovy but sucks as I want to be the moving up to WA.

I did get the new sci fi panels up on the vendor last night. The down side is that I did not have time to do the doors and windows of the set yesterday.  Although the grates and meshes sold in the same set will do in a pinch.

I am going to try out the SLPrims plugin for 3DS and see how it easy it is or is not to run with that program.  Would be nice to simply be able to import OBJ or 3DS files into SL.

Also, for you clothing and jewelry makers, I dropped a mess of different tiled/colored leather textures on one of the vendors.

Hopefully tonight is going to see me revamping the vendors for a more user freidnly interface.  We shall see.  Supposedly you can unlink them and mod them easily, re link them and they work just fine.  I have my doubts as the creator of the vendor has not answered IM, notecard or PM on SLX.

mediocrity

Much building goodness was had by all this weekend.  Ella created this wicked cool little chain mail necklace deal (she is learning to make jewelry) and I managed to make one cottage which looks awesome but the roof line is killing me.  I took that back into my inventory till I could figure out a way to finish it off.  The only purpose the cottage served really was to test the texture set I was building for Ella in the first place.

 

Built a second cottage according to plans drawn up from a great little series of kids books.  The Usborne Cut and Create series is wicked fun and I have saved about a dozen or so over the years.  They are not architecturally correct or anything but they give a good spatial relation and let you keep your scale in check.  Granted I need to figure out door scripting and window privacy things and I want to include a radio tuner with the house as well as some basic lighting.  The main point of course being to build texture sets for the damn thing.

 

Business is good.  I finished a contract job last night and was paid last night.  Offered another contract job I need to respond to tonight.  If I started working nights I could probably realize greater profits as right now I tend to do contract work only on the weekends.

 

Still looking for a good horror project to get involved with.  My favorite fantasy RP sim did some rebuilding and the town is major boring now.  Every building looks exactly like every other building.  All the same textures were used on the buildings.  I may have to build a small fantasy RP town worth of buildings to illustrate how things could look with a little more variety.

Nothing terribly interesting

I seem to have picked up a squatter camper employee.  I don’t know how he does it but he runs through the entire allotted 40min, leaves the sim, pops back in and take up his position again.  I don’t think he at the key board but I don’t know if there are bots that do that stuff so it’s a little weird.  The dude could be in a different time zone too, who knows.  In any event, I decided to not run the camping spot while I am at work.  Ella spends the bulk of the day in the shop anyway.

 

I did manage to make my shop more searchable on the places search as well.  For some reason it hadn’t updated the land description so essentially it wasn’t popping up in the place search.  I am hoping for a lot more hits today.

 

Built this crazy little set of textures essentially at Ella’s request and I built a little shack with ‘em.  I really do like my own texture work.  Dunno if that is conceited but it is true.  I think I need to start varying the stuff o have got, building on the themes and creating more interesting variations.

 

In RL news, what happens when you meet a really interesting couple one of whom is so vastly intense that you can’t have a 15 min conversation without a little drama? The answer?  Nothing.  Unfortunate but true.

From yesterday

So I log into gmail this morning to get my visitors report for my store and said I had 3 people stop by. Neat so I pop over to second life dot com and check my transactions to see if anyone bought anything. Holy hell, I’m 3k closer to being in the black. Someone bought three entire sets and a few of the singles.

So that being an awesome way to start the day, I am going to be working on sets of windows and doors. Mostly pseudo modern to go with the factory style brick and stone construction textures I have the most of on the vendor. Someone asked for a garage door as well. I will not eschew the fantasy and medieval stuff, never fear. Also, look for some sci fi additions.

Along those same lines, Ella and I just happened to meet a groovy person setting up a new shopping area that is chock full of artsy goodness. 15 min into conversation and she offers to let us place a vendor and a LM giver in a little shop in her mini mall. Fucking cool as I have been meaning to start doing this. So now I have my first satellite store. I totally don’t have the LM at hand since I am at the day job right now but I will update that ASAP so all of you groovy cats can go check out the little artsy area.