Jazen Jaxxon

Rolig Loon wrote: I think it depends partly on how much time you want to put in and partly on how "self-sufficient" you want to be. There are a lot of designers in SL, and competition is steep. If you are going to make more than a subsistence income, you either need to have more than average design talent or enough time and persistence to raise above the background noise (or both). Frankly, unless your heart is in it, this sounds a lot like a job --- another one of those things that you would come to hate about your "online life." You could support your SL needs better with a lot less work by importing cash from RL every once in a while, and you'd enjoy SL more too. If you really do want to head into content creation in SL, it might be smart to look into taking a couple of classes in graphic design at a local tech school or community college. You'd start out in SL with a firmer grasp of the design tools than a lot of self-taught content creators, and you'd get direct feedback from your instructors to help sharpen your latent design talent. You'd find out quickly whether this is something you really enjoy doing too, and it might even open up some job opportunities in RL. Well, I doubt I'll ever be Oprah-rich. I'd like to be sufficient enough to have a nice piece of land that I could put a nice home on and not have to worry about ripping my prefab furniture out of my prefab skybox so I can fit the photo studio I initially bought for my prefab friends to enjoy photography on in it. I'd like to be able to go out shopping and not have to either hit my credit card to buy an outfit or some toy I think is cool... I'd like to maybe have enough money to take a real dabble at trying to start a land development company and maybe try to build something up through there. I've been to college, and I'm definitely not interested in spending that kind of money to learn a skill to use solely in a virtual world... Sure, I'd like to create content, but I'll never have a real job in that area... if I can't learn it through independent study and research as an intelligent person, it will be far too frustrating for me to attempt. That is just me being honest with myself.

Peewee Musytari wrote: When you say that you have no artistic or architectual talent, what exactly do you mean by that? The reason I ask is because both the building tools in SL and the "painting" (for want of a better word) tools in programs like Photoshop, make it possible for anyone to put a building together and texture it and it just takes time and patience to get good at the mechanics of it....Things which you seem to have. The thing that is hard to learn is vision, imagination, design ideas, etc. I`m not saying you have no chance of success without that, but it sure would make it harder. The good thing about secondlife is that you may have great ideas in one particular category and that is all you need. For example, I love buildings & I can see in my head a building that I want to build, after that its just sticking prims together and texturing them. I would love to make other things and over the years I have probably tried them all & you would think if you can make a good texture for one thing, it follows that you should be able to do the same for others, but OMG I so suck at making clothes, I have zero patience for nano prims and making jewelry and I truly lost the will to live trying to make skins LOL So the question is what are you good at designing in your head? Do you have visions of builidings you would love to build or a love for clothes and fashion and the urge to create outfits or do you look at SL furniture and think I could design a cooler chair than that? Maybe you are interested in Motion Capture and the way avatars move and would enjoy getting into making animations? The bottom line is what excites you? You will not be successful if it feels like work or a chore, it has to be something you are interested in & have a vision for and that you will enjoy doing & then you just grab yourself every tutorial you can find in your chosen field and get stuck in to learning the mechanics of it. It HAS to be fun!!! Hmm... best way to define it. If you asked me to draw a stick figure of a male human it might come out with four legs? That lack of artistic talent. I've never been able to draw, paint, write music, sculpt, nothing.. At the same time, it ALL interests me. I would love to figure out how to make clothing and have people wearing my fashion line. I'd love to be a photographer and be able to help people get the look they really want for their pics - helping them get jobs or cultivate friendships and the like. I'd love to be able to design skins that look amazing, or buildings that people want to live in.... it's ALL interesting to me. About the only thing thats been mentioned so far that I haven't really ever given thought to was the design of animations. I have always figured "Since you can't draw, don't even think about that, even though it's cool the dance move they just did." I was always an athlete growing up (less now that I'm in my 30s and my body has broken down to where I'm in pain if I leave the front of the computer - and usually while in front of it to boot) and about my only "talents" lied in athletics. I could also act, and I've always been very good with people. That's about it. I just feel like I'm missing out on the best part of this experience not being able to do anything that doesn't involve a club. I hate clubs with an absolute passion now, to the point where I could care less if I ever walked in again. After I made this post, I helped a new girl get her avatar up to speed by helping her find a good skin and shape, hair and a nice outfit, and it made me smile more than anything in SL in a very long time. But, in the end - I was just helping - and other than someone being nice to her - her joy was derived from others creations - not mine.

Ishtara Rothschild wrote: Have you tried scripting? That doesn't require any artistic talent. Just logical, structured, critical thinking and problem solving abilities. Animation designers don't need artistic talent in the classic sense either. And if you just want to keep yourself busy, without a monetary incentive, there is always machinima. You could also try running a mall or a club. Or how about retail? Many content creators offer so-called affiliate vendors. You pay a relatively low price for the vendors and earn a commission of 10-30% for each sale. You won't get rich that way, but it might earn you some shopping money, and it's not as risky as a cost intensive club / mall project. I have not tried scripting, but to be honest I've done no programming of any kind (other than some "OK" web design) since high school, so I always figured this idea to be out. I have no idea how animations work really, so I guess that could be something to consider... I don't even know what machinima is, to be perfectly honest. Running a club was the worst decision I ever made on my first AVI. Crazy amounts of work and monetary investment for what I would term as zero reward. I've yet to meet a club owner in SL who tells me opening their club was a "good decision." I could afford a small mall in order to vendor for content creators, but one thing I've always noticed when *I* shop, is that if I want something, I go directly to the creator... I guess unless they are small and don't have their own storefront - but then - is there content really making money? Sorry to sound like a fatalist, I really enjoy my time here - but I'm about to just give up and RP or find a game or something because I don't feel like I fit into any skill besides DJing, which isn't really that fun anymore anyways.

Hello, friends. I left Second Life for a long time... I got sick of being a dancer and worse on my prior AVI, and just truly wound up hating my "online life" as I did things I would never think of doing in my real life.. I've always been interested in the great things people create, and want that to be me someday. However, I don't feel I have any artistic or architectural talent... and I am getting frustrated. I do have top-end graphics software and 3D imaging softwares, as I was a professional poker player and on the "top" forums for us, being able to photoshop funny stuff gets you a level of status in the community, and hey - I had money. Anyways, online poker has been abolished by the wonderful United States government, and I came back to SL because the way my life is, I need a hobby I can throw myself into for hours upon hours... my question is: With just a desire to truly learn, but no artistic ability at this point, do I have any chance of becoming self-sufficient EVER in SL as either a builder, photographer, fashion designer, tattoo artist or anything of the like? I'd really hate to go back to dancing and basically being a whore, but I don't want to buy Lindens forever... kind of takes the fun out of it if you just hit your wallet everytime you want something. I want to be SELF-SUFFICIENT, and I am willing to put in hours to get there. Is there hope for me?