Tamara Artis

A friend of mine recently asked same thing and its hard to give reviews or opinions about these classes because each potential student has unique knowledge and history in photography, real life or second life. Without knowing your history and knowledge I don't really know in what way to answer you. I can tell you that they form groups of students who have same knowledge so that it doesn't happen that a complete noob feels bad because other students know much more, or that one person is bored because the rest of the class is learning the basics. Exactly 3 years ago I was chosen to be in their first group of students and we all were established photographers/artists back then, we had our own client base, portfolios and a certain knowledge. Our classes were more like chatting and sharing experiences, I applied out of curiosity and am happy I did it. If I had more time to play SL I would go through all one more time. There are two teachers and both of them have real life experience and huge knowledge about photography, they also have guest teachers in each semester. Whatever you ask they will answer you and you will learn tons of tricks to help you master in-world photography (again, I am not sure are you new to SL photography or maybe you already know tons of things). You will also learn all the basics that make great (or bad) photography. The course is not easy because each class can last long time (they say 2 hours but often it happens that we forget about the time or speak about something really interesting and stay much longer), you are supposed to sit in front of your pc and follow - pay attention. That was hard for me sometimes because I have slight attention disorder and I prefer to "break" one long period of time into several shorter ones. You also have to organize your real life so that you can reserve enough time for the classes, in total I think the whole course lasts more than 2 months. Of course you can always go take a break in the middle of the class or skip one of them but, since you paid, you won't do that and miss something important That's the whole beauty and advantage because, if you are learning by yourself, you will save money of course, but it will take you much more time to find everything, weed out unnecessary info's and try all the things you are supposed to try. The price they ask for the whole semester is not much because they offer you real teaching, information and interaction, they create the opportunity for you to meet like minded people, to connect with artists like you, to find some new business partners, clients, whatever you can think of. It is not only sitting in front of your pc and listening the teacher speaks about the facts you can find online or in any photography related book.

How hard would it be to implement some sort of reward system? If I could do something here I would reward the residents who are willing to help and for each report that was justified I would transfer a certain amount of lindens into their account, even 1L$ would mean much and if someone made a false report then a certain amount would be taken from their account.

Oh wow thats awesome! I remember the photos with the guy in blue jeans, I've seen that somewhere. Would you mind posting links to your page, I want to see more of this!

There are several things you have to keep an eye on in order to get HQ snapshot... I will try to name few that I consider important - others might think different Graphics preferences need to be as high as your pc can handle (not all sliders have to be on max because if, for example, you are shooting inside some skybox and using projector lights then you don't need sky and ground on high, also draw distance can be low) Ambient occlusion turned on, avatar shadows complex, LOD and Avatars at max; Anti-aliasing is specific because it has impact on older and weaker graphics, I leave mine at 2; Texture bumpiness at "Finer" or "very fine" - see how your pc acts; If you are taking portrait photo and need to zoom in on an avatar, ALWAYS use Ctrl+0 (that is for zoom-in, for zoom-out use Ctrl+8, for resetting the camera use Ctrl+9); When taking the snapshot, choose "Save to disc" then make sure you have the "constrain proportions checked", go and change the size of the snapshot, click on "Current window" and change that to "Custom" now you will increase the numbers of the snapshot, here is where people find out at what sizes their pc crashes so you will start with lower numbers and go up... take several snapshots at different sizes, save them on your pc and check each... zoom in on that snapshot - for me there is a simple rule - if I can see the eyelashes clearly then the shot is big enough; Snapshots are saved as .png, never .jpeg. Important is to have quality avatar - chose a good skin, if possible realistic one, make sure the clothing looks nice. Hairs are specific because of the alphas so if you are shooting near the water or have see-through clothing its best to avoid long hairs or set your angle so that the alpha textures don't interfere; Windlight is also really important and I would recommend for start chosing something natural and neutral - try some and see what you like. Main rule is that the sun needs to be set so that is doesn't make your colors to look washed out, you have to be able to see the details on bright areas, same is with the dark areas - don't make it so dark that you can't recognize the details. Last but not least important is the pose you are using because, even if you make everything perfect, unrealistic pose will ruin everything! There are many more things that you can try and I am sure others will add something too For start try to follow those few I named and post your photo here - don't forget to resize it before posting!

Hey Hunter, nice to meet you! Thanks for sharing a bit about yourself, feel free to put links to some of your online galleries or maybe just put one or two in here And I am curious how do you make the mirror effects? I made few with water but I also made some by rotating the camera around on the opposite side of the avi and taking the shot like that:

Why don't you organize horror-themed shopping events? SL doesn't have many of those... You can offer booths that would serve as satellite stores but shop owners would need to put out new release and all their customers would have to come to your sim in order to buy the item. You can even set the theme of the event and ask designers to create specific items, I was in one awesome event that had a new theme every month, last time the theme was shame and I made really cool item that would never ever come to my mind if it wasn't asked for.

Why not show us your work and maybe someone knows someone... There's always a need for good artists who are willing to edit beyond applying few random filters on their snapshots.

Insert link to the shop in signature here so people can take a look

"Real art" is often a product of someone's interpretation... what one person calls art the other might not see it as one. I expect to recognize a certain level of effot thats put into the creation, or knowledge, experience... I use Wacom intuos small tablet, for my needs its perfect.

The green screen doesn't have to be green, it can be any color you chose. Pay attention to the color of your clothing, if you have white dress and put the avi in front of the white background, it will be hard to cut it out. If you put white dress in front of the green background it will be really easy to cut out but there is a danger for some of the green color to go over on the dress. If your avatar has blonde hair and you put her in front of the green screen, some of that green color will always be on the hair... I prefer neutral colors and advise you to make few test shots with different colors and see what looks best for you. Few more tips: when you want to zoom-in, use Ctrl+0 on your keyboard, Ctrl+9 for reset the camera view (this makes the avatar look natural); always save snapshots as png and set a custom size, keep "constrains proportions" checked, set the size of the snapshot as big as you can. Work on big photos and when you are finished, resize it and save for web and devices; use normal font, one that is easy to read. Avoid comic sans and any cartoonish looking or anything with too much curves; its best to show clothing on an avatar but people put whatever they like; When you setup vendors on SL marketplace, you can put many snapshots there, put as many as you want, from different angles. Never edit too much of your vendor images, only the technical parts, leave the artistic for profile and other shots.

Thanks for the explanation! That is totally cool and I'm glad its going to happen again I want to say hi to everyone, I'm Pookey and I like to be silly.

I have nooo idea whats this all about but I would like to participate lol and donuts!

@Talligurl ooo wow... I like it, thanks for sharing!, looks like something I could hang on the wall in my SL home... The lines here are perfectly alligned with the edge of the painting and with the woman and everything is really, really balanced... now I would like to try and make something like that lol

Have you tried searching the MP for "SS"? There is a shop that sells houses and other structures and starts all their listings with SS.

We all feel like or felt this... I'm never sure is what I do okay or not okay and it can always be better... I guess if there are people who like what we do then its okay or people who buy it lol Thanks for introducing yourself but I don't know why you didn't show any example? I would love to see some of those paintings! Cameron put some links and I would love to see more, I think we are allowed to do this here now. If not links then at least a photo or two would be nice to share

Yeah and the best part is that we don't have to wake up at 4am to travel down to the beach and catch the early morning sun, we can just change the windlight @Lucia TopHat if you have any specific questions I would be more than happy to help and reply here.

lol I will have to check that

I feel like reading the transcript of the Oscar winning speech

Hello nice to meet you Chase! I remember his work, was one of those "picky perfectionists" that you could just stare at and admire Do you have Flickr or something else to share, where we could see your photos? Do you participate in any community? I kinda miss that, that feeling of belonging to some kind of a group where we can meet like-minded people and share everything. I miss that here too lol

From my experience it is best to hire someone to do this for you

Those of you who know me and my previous posts probably remember that I used to complain how the Art, Music and Photography section of these Forums is filled with self promoting posts that are nothing but advertisements. To be more specific, I am not sure how moderators allow people to advertise their magazines and make a new post for every new issue but it is what it is, let them be... I am interested in everyone else who might still hang out around here and maybe would like to read something else, besides these ads Sooo, can you introduce yourself, what do you do in SL? Which form of art is your art, what you like best, what you dislike, do you have any special in-world places or artists that inspire you, are there any in-world places where we can see your work? Would you be interested in connecting with other Residents and participating in events? There is a thread here that showed we do have at least few members who are willing to speak about their work and I would be happy to read more!

I use this one and can say everything best about the service and specially the owner who meets you in-world for the purchase, answers every possible question you might have and, after the purchase has been made, is available either on email or in-world, every question I had was answered quickly and in detail. For real, its rare that I see this kind of customer service. I hadn't speak with him for a while now because the system works great lol And now I would like to reply to the topic in general... We can never be sure when relying on digital services. It is the risk we take, maybe we can see which vendor systems are less attacked and have less issues but I think, in general, there can't be just one that is superawesome and others are much worse, they are all somewhere at the same level.

Its depressing, kinda... What I think is that there will always be this "cheap" kind of people, ones who try to get something for nothing and 9 out of 10 times these people will actually get nothing for the little price they pay. Its like trying to buy a shirt for 5 dollars, yes we can find them, nice design, pretty colors... wash it one time and you can throw it in a trashcan lol. Thats 5 dollars of wasted money. People who spend 25 dollars on a shirt can wear it for many years, and it will always be pretty. (I took random numbers, please, anyone who reads this, do not try to correct me and say shirts in your country don't have these prices). Same is for every product out there... we have cheap stuff that lasts only for a little while and pricey stuff that lasts for years... this little manufacturer makes quality furniture, hand-made and, maybe with a little bit of advertising in the right direction, they don't need to worry. In SL its kinda same... I sell poses, many of them I created looking at some real life photos I liked. I see similar poses released after mines, that look same as mine. I can't prove they copied my work but I don't really have to. I spent days tweaking them to look right and I am 100% sure that people who buy my products will get quality, something that looks natural and great from many angles, something that you can use over and over and over again

Nice topic, I wish there are more like this Personally I also use Photoshop and SAI. As for brushes... it depends of what I need, in PS I have added tons of them but use only few... My basic hair brush has three dots and I can do everything with that. For tiny hairs I use one px brush - basic one. And for SAI I have followed some tips on Deviantart that explain how to adjust your brushes to get what you need, I also use it for hairs and some painting, what I like about it is that it mixes the colors right there on your canvas, it kinda looks like real life painting! I'm not sure what techniques are you interested in? Mine is picky technique lol

OMG this smells like those big companies that don't want to hire people from their own country but instead go online and hire freelancers who are willing to work for less! Shame on the OP for knowing how to get the work done and save some money