All in Your Mesh Head

Something I effing hate in SL is exclusivity. As a very, very small and unknown creator I’ve had a devil of a time trying to get dev kits. I’ve found if a designer doesn’t make their dev kit publicly available I’m pretty much out of luck. I’d love to make skins and goodies for all the amazing mesh body parts out there but because of brand exclusivity I’m often left out in the cold. And it sucks. Both for consumers and for creators. Maybe I’m naive but doesn’t it seem like the more stuff being created out there for your mesh whatever the more likely it will be to stay popular and sell? At some point I feel like consumers are going to tire of all looking the same. Eh, but what do I know. Luckily there are some wonderful brands out there who either have made their items Omega compatible or make their dev kits easily available. And my kudos to those brands because you folks rock.

That said, I thought I’d highlight one of those user/designer friendly brands and show off a head from Catwa. This is a newer head called Annie that is specially priced right now for Halloween. I did two different looks with the same head using skins I’ve already made and I think they look pretty rad right out of the box. I’m super excited to play around some more with this head and hopefully release some goodies in the future!

Catwa Annie Mesh Head 1
Mesh Head by Catwa (Catwa Clip)
Eyes by Buzzeri (eleri.catlyn)
Hair by Magika (Sabina Gully)
Necklace by Lassitude & Ennui (Jackal Ennui)
Mesh Body by SLink (Siddean Munro)
Pose by Marukin (valencia.southard)

Catwa Annie Mesh Head 2
Mesh Head by Catwa (Catwa Clip)
Hair by Ploom (Helyanwe Vindaloo)
Necklace by Illusions (Siyu Suen)
Mesh Body by SLink (Siddean Munro)
Skin & Eyes by Fricka Morgath
Pose by Kirin (carolina.sautereau)

Freak

I’m “weird” and “a freak”.  As if I needed to be reminded why I don’t leave my skybox, I ventured out today and I wish I hadn’t.  I got picked on by a couple of uh.. “ladies” who apparently thought I was camming in on their “gOoDz” which is really quite verboten it would seem.  So they called me a freak and told me I was weird.  And I told them I’d rather look weird than look like a cheap hooker and then TP’d the hell out.  I hate people.  I also really effing hate that “feature” that lets people see where you are camming because clearly it’s not very precise because I never even saw the skanks before they approached me, let alone cammed in on them on purpose. *shudder*

Anyways, here’s my look of the day… gray, like my mood has been the past few days… I even made a super pale version of my goth skin tone to really nail down that noir look.

Silver
Horns by Wasabi Pills
Hair by fri.day
Roses by Illusions
Eyes by AET
Dress by Armidi
Hoofies by Lazy Places

Progress?

My store is pretty much done now.. it’s been done for a few days but I just am not ready to reopen yet.  I don’t know exactly what it is, I’m just not feeling it.  Maybe tomorrow.  I’ve pretty much found anything else to do besides fuss with this stupid store.  I just fail so hard at building, textures, etc that it was not a rewarding process.  I feel like the store doesn’t have much of my personality infused into it at all.  It just turned out so freakin’ generic that I’m a little bleh about the whole thing.  I’ve got some heavy stuff going on irl and effing around with frustrating crap like SL just isn’t what I want to do in my free time.. I’d rather zone out and play WoW or anything else.  Oh well, that’s good enough for now I guess.  I think it would take a move to a real sim (someone else’s real sim) instead of mainland where I could have my store on the ground before I could make a go of a new build.  Seriously, what is up with mainland looking like such crap?  Why is it always littered with a zillion pieces of crap as far as the eye can see?

It’s not much of a surprise that I spent more time riding around on the WonderCycle than actually messing with my store.  I also built my husband’s avatar into a wall when he got up to go get pizza. >.>

WonderCycle

So blaaahh.

Snapshot_011

New Druid Cat forms in WoW.  Completely unrelated, but look!  I’m so pretty.

Druid Cat Form 1

Still Around

*Caution, emo post ahoy*

I’m still around….  I just haven’t really been in the mood for SL.  Lately I’ve been plagued by a huge amount of self doubt about what I’m trying to do in SL and it’s really keeping me from logging in on a more regular basis.  It seems like I keep making heaps of new stuff that I love initially but then doubt creeps in and I end up filing it away forever more.  I have a serious fear of failure and honestly, most everything I’ve done lately seems to be made of fail so it’s become easier to just forget about whatever I’ve made instead of going to the trouble of trying to sell it and watching it tank.  For months now I’ve been wanting to replace all my old shit with new and better stuff but as much as I loathe even having that stuff there anymore I can’t bring myself to remove it because those cheap things are the only things I seem to sell, much to my dismay.  It’s sad and depressing and it is making me really emo and whiny.  I’m also very tired as I have stayed up way too late the past few nights and it’s making me cranky.

So I made a hot pink dress and bought new hair and shoes to make myself feel better.  It worked a little bit.  Until some random person, out of the blue, dropped a skin demo on me without so much as a hello while I was out shopping.  At first I thought, wow, wtf… but at the same time I was rather amazed at their unabashed self promotion and I kinda wish I had the cajones to approach total strangers and pimp my wares like that.  I never would though… ’cause it was kinda tacky and I never demo with strangers.

new dress

Hair by Gritty Kitty
Horns and Eyes by House of Ruin
Shoes by Miel
Skin and Dress by me

BBBC Day 4

If there was someone you could trade places with for one day in Second Life, who would it be and why? Bonus points if you find this person and snap a picture with them!

I’d like to trade places with someone whose letter always comes up on a Lucky Chair. Seriously.

happy mood effing chairs_001
Big thanks to Achariya and Ellantha for teaming up to help turn the chairs!  <3

Prim Skirts and TL; DR

Last weekend I spent almost the entire weekend angry and frustrated at not being able to build a prim skirt.  I yelled, a lot. It’s amazing how even after more than a year in SL, I’m still a complete noob.  I tried hand aligning prims… zomgwtfbbq.  That lasted all of two and half seconds.  Then I tried the loop rez script… which was alright, but it took far too much trial and error and I still wasn’t getting the shape I wanted.  Not to mention the mind boggling task of retexturing skirts into different colors would probably make me pull all of my prim hair out.  So I googled.. and came across some posts about Vint’s Primskirt Builder and wow, it’s the best thing ever.  It’s so user friendly and someone like myself was able to make a skirt in just a few seconds and multiple skirts in a few minutes! <3 I have a tendency to break all that is technology, so the fact that this worked and I didn’t screw it up immediately is huge.

primskirt success

I still am unsure where I’m going to go with this clothing stuff… I’ve been wanting to do clothes forever and really got jazzed about making this Gothic Lolita Dolly themed outfit.  But I find the stuff I pour my heart and soul into and bloody my eyes making tend to be the things that are the worst received (corset piercings, WP line, Trickster line) and I find I rarely make sales on.  Maybe it’s because they are a too taste specific and very few people share my tastes apparently.  Maybe it’s the further away from “Tan Barbie, Princess of Malibu” I get the less people want it.  Maybe it’s because they took such a monumental effort on my part that I take it very, very personal when they fail.  Maybe it’s because a lot of people are cheap and only like my stuff if it’s free.  I don’t know, but there’s been a weird correlation to those particular projects failing for me and it still bums me out immensely.  I’m definitely being a little over ambitious on this project… the whole thing has a billion layers, skin and eyes and it would be a lot of work.  So yeah, I don’t know how much time and effort I want to put into this knowing the potential for failsauce is so high.  *le sigh*

Yeah, I’m being a little emo today, sorry.  But I’m still super psyched about the skirts! ^^;

Last Ditch or Fever Induced Babble

Every so often I like to impose my “this is my personal blog” rule and write some emo dribble and then impose it upon the handful of readers I have.  Sorry!

***Warning, this particular flight of fancy is full of pity parties, fever induced babble, bad metaphors, general whinybuttedness, made up words, all heavily laced with OTC medication.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.***

Since I’ve been super sick I’ve had a lot of free time to sit around and ponder… ponder while in a cold medicine addled haze… but ponder nonetheless.  One of the things I pondered was where I’m going with my SL shop and what exactly I want out of it.  Well, of course, the answer to what I want is fame and money.  Naturally right?  But seriously, I really would like to have my shop pay for itself so to speak, tier and upload fees… which it has not been doing.  Part of the problem lays in pricing, which I stupidly dropped recently because I caved to asshats demanding lower prices.  Dumb, to be sure.  Part of the problem lays in my non-existent advertising.  Were it not for the kindness and awesomesaucedness of bloggers occasionally highlighting my shit, I’d never have even made a linden.  And a huge part of the problem lays in my own hangups about what I do.  Mod skins.  MOD.  I can’t get over that weird feeling that I should not be allowed to advertise what I do.  That it’s somehow so much less than creating something from scratch.. which it kind of is, but still.  I keep trying to tell myself that with the exception of the bodies, my skins (especially my newest ones) are very different from the original template.  I think they look different than other people’s mods.  And I price them ridiculously low because of guilt?  Something like that.  Yes it’s stupid, I know.  So I fail.  Nothing really new or different when thinking on it this time versus the last time I had an emo meltdown over my shop.  I still fail at advertising and my skin prices are still way too dang low to ever turn an actual profit, let alone pay tier.    So where does all that mumble leave me?  I have a couple of options as I see it.  

Option #1, leave it as is.  No more new releases, no more freebies, but the shop stays up as long as I can muster to pay for it.  This option blows because it’s currently what I’m doing and it sucks.

Option #2, shut down and leave town.  Close the shop, sell the land, salt the earth.  Dramatic!  Well I’ve considered this option a few times and it has it’s merits because I’d no longer have to deal with jerks complaining and I’d no longer have the emo meltdowns about my stuff which would be a nice change of pace.  But I honestly enjoy having my little shop, despite the occasional bad outweighing the good.. which creates the problem with this option.

Option #3, last ditch effort.  The riskiest of all.  What I’ve considered doing with this option is blowing the works.  Setting aside my personal hangups.  Expanding the shop because I’m almost out of prims, going whole hog.  Putting my nose to the grindstone to come up with a huge release.  Using a lot of metaphors.  And trying my damndest to advertise the hell out of it.  This option, quite frankly, scares the crap out of me because it will either succeed or blow up in my face.  It’s also a lot of work and I’ll admit it, I’m effing lazy.  But more importantly, I’m quite scared that it will fail and I’m not sure I want to deal with the backlash of it all.  

I’d like to give a special thanks to Nyquil for the part it played in this particular moment.

I might go browse for some land just out of curiosity.  But I think I’ll wait until I’m OTC medication free before making any major decisions.  In fact, I should probably go take a nap.

And here’s a random picture, cause that’s what I do.
Zero Number Boots
Boots by Zero Number

Random Rants and Such

So I thought I’d sit down and give clothing another spin in Photoshop today. No matter how often I try it, I still hate it. I should upgrade to CS4 because I’ve been hearing that you can paint directly onto the 3D avatar mesh. If it indeed does that, holy crap, that would be awesome.. matching up seams from head to torso and torso to lower would be so much easier. At least in theory.. I’m sure it’s far more complicated than I think. Maybe I’ll download the trial first. At any rate, here’s the shirt I came up with today.  It’s terribly basic but at least the seams matched up.

Top

I have to admit, my interest in SL has been waning as of late so I’m trying to come up with things to draw me back in.. like torturing myself to make clothes. My little shop is just becoming fail city.. I really don’t sell enough stuff to have to deal with the sheer volume of asshole that keeps coming my way. I think if I even turned a profit I’d be a lot more willing to work with people but holy crap, I can’t even give stuff away these days and yet people still complain! Argh. So that’s really wearing thin on my patience and it’s pretty much ruining my good time whenever I log in. That’s the main reason behind my infrequent SL appearances. Given the option of what to play in my free time, I’d rather fire up WoW and shoot someone in the face than have to kiss some jerk’s ass so they don’t go off on me.

And I’ve got glow ghost issues… again. *sigh*

On the upside, I found a really good sushi place nearby!

/Sigh

I’ve had a rough past few weeks.  Between some sad RL issues and some WoW drama I’m just mentally wiped out.  There’s so much I’ve been meaning to get done in SL but I’ve just been consumed lately.  I finally had a few minutes to log in and actually change my avatar’s clothes!  And since I’m in a fairly angry kind of mood, I think my look kinda reflected that.   Hopefully once the drama sorts itself out I’ll be back to blogging and what not.  Until then, I’m still around.. just kinda tired and bitchy so beware. :D

LoTD 2/1 

Hair – [Scene Queen by Deviant Kitties] (tinted)
Eyes & skin by me
Lashes – [Bedroom Lashes by Cake]
Piercings –  [Face Piercing by ElectroKitty]
Choker – [Laced Love by Paradisis]
Outfit – [De/konstrukt by MekaNoiZe Labs]
Belt – [Saddlebags by AVZ]
Nails – [Nails and Melee Claws by Gianetti]
Bracers – [Symbiote Cuffs by SiniStyle]
Leggings – [Colorable Stripe Legwarmers by Curious Kitties]
Boots – [Wrapped Boots by AVZ]

Ode to a dead Paladin

I’m mourning the loss of my Retribution Paladin to the the mighty Blizzard nerf bat. /cry I haven’t really loved the Paladin class much at all in the past but I resolved to get her to 70 and it was an uphill battle the whole way. I was Ret for a good bit of the time I was leveling before speccing Protection which made me a decent tank in a pinch. I actually like Pally tanks quite a bit as a healer because I can bubble them. But because my other toons received far more love from me my Pally has never had the best gear so I typically would tank with my Druid. Anyways, long story short, I was just pwning face with my Paladin after I specced Ret again and it was so fun to actually do some serious DPS, even if I was only in a smattering of blues mixed with a few welfare epics. So I am in a deep melancholy over these nerfs. I knew they were coming, but omfg, the nerf to Divine Storm, give me a break!! This is going to make leveling to 80 an absolute pain. I am a sad panda today.

So as a farewell to my dead Paladin.. I made my version of a Paladin in SL. Just in an effort to keep this QQ post somewhat SL related.. and it gave me an excuse to wear this badass outfit from BareRose and awesome horns from Illusions. Yeah, I know, I don’t look like any Paladin in WoW but this is what I wish my Paladin looked like. :P I hope the outfit from BareRose comes out in more colors, it just might be my favorite outfit from there. Oh, I also want to mention the sword, it’s from Tekeli-li which, imho, makes the absolute best weaponry in SL. They are unscripted but I’m not doing epic battle so that’s fine by me. And the prices are absolutely insanely low, especially for the incredible detail, color change options and beauty that you receive. I should also mention that their customer service is top notch. I recently purchased a halbard from OnRez and Tekelili sent me a message letting me know the items were for sale in the shop and promptly refunded me the difference! That is just too cool and so above and beyond the call of duty. :D

Pally 1

Paladin 2

Paladin 3

Hair – [Ember by Deviant Kitties]
Horns – [Cernwn Horns by Illusions]
Full Outfit – [Golden Thorn by BareRose]
Sword – [Bloodlight Twohander by Tekeli-li]
Hooves – [Female Faun AV by Titania’s Court]
Poses – [Katana Poses by Imperial Elegance]