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Scylla Rhiadra

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Posts posted by Scylla Rhiadra

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    8 hours ago, AnyaJurelle said:

    You did a great job - look like a million $ :)

    Thank you so much!! Coming from you (and from Saravendi, above, too), that really means something: you have such gorgeous avatars!

    I had resisted going the Bento head route, for a variety of reasons, but this thread, and the others here, have finally convinced me that if I want to do really nice photos in SL (and I'm a while away from that yet, but trying!), it makes no sense not to have a high-quality mesh avi at the centre of them. (I mean, duh, right?) The process has been frustrating, but surprisingly fun too.

    And now I can probably justify buying more and nicer clothes, right? RIght? ?

    • Like 6

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted · Edited by Scylla Rhiadra

    31 minutes ago, Hollie Leavitt said:

     

    ?...

    1518672691_Transformation3.thumb.png.a2d66b566e9f61781f6f6990e2b442db.png

    Hah! This has very much been my experience! I left SL, mostly, in 2011, came back with an alt for about a year in 2013-2014, which at least introduced me to rigged mesh clothing, and then . . . well, I came back with my main about a month ago, I guess, with a system avatar wearing a skin and clothing that is now at least 8 years old.

    Yikes. I felt like I'd ridden into town on a horse and buggy, wearing petticoats and a bustle.

    Have you found the mesh learning curve difficult? I'm still struggling a bit, but it's becoming clearer. The people posting here have been amazingly generous with help and advice!

    ETA: Your 2007 avi, notwithstanding the system clothing, is adorable!!

    • Like 8
    • Thanks 1

    Share Your Embarrassing SL Moments - The Confessions Thread

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Morgana Hilra said:

    I always blog, and when I sort my inventory, i tend to strip, so I can just quickly switch outfits. And... well... it's my home, lol I can run about naked! ?

    Totally understood!

    I myself find it much easier and more convenient to wash up after tidying the house if I'm only wearing garters, panties, and a bra while doing it.

    Who wants to wash clothes if you don't have to, right?

    • Haha 4

    Lines that annoy you most

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

    I knew a resident whose avatar was a robot. If you pushed a button, he became helpless. Some form of rlv, I s’pose. Anyway, once he said “NOT THAT BUTTON” but I did, and it created an ever-growing particle slime that crashed us.

    OMG, I wish there were a button like that in RL.

    Soooooo useful.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1

    Lines that annoy you most

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

    It won't change any thing. It's worth a shot though if it would prompt him to at least change his tactics.

    I suspect your first statement is probably more accurate than your second.

    My guess is that someone like this doesn't HAVE any other "tactics." This is probably the only way that he knows to deal with women. (And some of that might be cultural too.)

    • Like 2

    Lines that annoy you most

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

    Perhaps limited English, feelings were hurt?

    His English is fine . . . certainly adequate for this.

    I think rather than hurt feelings, this was about speeding up the production line. Why waste precious time on someone who evidently is not going to provide what you want (which is not interesting conversation)? Time to move on to the next.

    • Like 1

    Lines that annoy you most

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    11 minutes ago, BelindaN said:

    Ok I've dug out the transcript and edited out a few bits of irrelevant talk.

    Hmmm. Pretty consistent with the nature of my conversation with him. I told him upfront that I wasn't interested in sex (neither, he said, was he), or in dating, but I'd be happy to be his friend. He was of course deeply disappointed . . . after all, I am (he told me twice!!!!) "perfect girl."

    He didn't block or defriend me -- in fact, he's still on my friends list. Maybe he's becoming more impatient and less tolerant? It must be exhausting working his way through all of those women!

    • Haha 3

    I Am Not Your Manic Pixel Dream Girl

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Scylla Rhiadra

    12 minutes ago, Donna Underall said:

    I'm not sure what different voices mean.  If I am hanging with girl friends, or a guy friend, or a guy I like, or a guy I do not like at all, I talk differently to all these people.  But always me in my voice, guess it's just easy to read my feelings.

    Yes!! I so agree.

    We can have different voices, we do have different voices, that we use all the time, in different emotional or situational contexts.

    And they are all really and truly us!

    And that's one of things that makes us, all of us, so really interesting! None of us are flat; we are all multitudes of fascinating colours!

    • Like 1

    How does your avatar look today ?

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

     

    SL photography is unique. In RL the camera is important. In SL the viewer takes the place of the camera. Firestorm is probably like the Nikon or Pentax, having every imaginable control. Black Dragon might be the Hasselblad, specialized. Try photos with the different viewers and learn what they have to offer. FS has the Photo Tools panels, making WL and camera settings changes quick and easy. BD has some settings in no other viewer.

    All cameras have basic settings and so do the snapshot panels in the viewer. For our purposes, the image size is comparable to film size, 35mm versus 61mm (2.4") type stuff.  Bigger film and higher rez are better. Often taking a 3000x1700px image and reducing it to 1024x768 makes a big improvement. Working with large images I find easier and get better results. Strawberry has a tutorial on using large images and the benefits.

    Skell has given you a lot on lighting. Good stuff. I use a skybox for many of my images and videos. I can make my background any color I want. Greenscreen is important for videos. But the actual color one uses depends on the subject. Green is not a magic color. Cutting an avatar out of the background is way easier using a solid color background. I seldom use 'background images'. I do insert my avatar into images (example - example). I'm not that good... but I have fun.

    Figuring out lighting and Windlight settings is a skill. William Weaver has tutorials on how to use both.

    Once one has their images the Photoshop (image editing) skills come into play. Watching Natsumi Xenga paint her images can give you ideas of how to accomplish things. I seldom put that much energy into an image.

    Nemanja Sekulic provides great tutorials on how to use PS to accomplish many things that add drama to an image. PiXimperfect provides tutorials for the novice explaining the terms he is using in a style I often find pedantic. 

     

     

    This is stuffed full of useful information, Nalates! Thank you!!!

    The idea that you could use your viewer as a specialized camera/lens was an absolute revelation to me (although even in RL I'm most often a "point-and-click" girl). So too has the focus upon the importance of lighting introduced by Skell, and illustrated by so many of the pics here! There's so much to learn, but as I've always enjoyed learning, that's just fine!

    • Like 4

    Avatars and Race

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Scylla Rhiadra

    4 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

    I think it is wrong if you create an avatar of a any race, even your own race, and use it to embody stereotypes or behave in an obnoxious manner that encourages derision towards that race. I've only seen this once in SL and the avatar disappeared within seconds of filing the AR. I'm sure there are other ways to misuse an avatar not of your race but I think for the vast majority of cases it is okay to be whatever you want. 

    I think Bree has it right here.

    This is an issue upon which I'm really pretty ambivalent. In RL, it's become an enormously contentious topic, prompted in part by the Rachel Dolezal affair, and (within more restricted circles) by an article published about a year ago in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia that hypothesized that transracial identities were logically defensible using the same arguments that we now use to defend transgender identities. (The article created a very ugly series of confrontations and accusations that left no one looking very good).

    For reasons that I honestly can't define very well, yet alone defend, transracial identity feels to me . . . wrong. Perhaps it's because of the history of black face and cultural or racial appropriation in our culture? I wish I knew.

    But increasingly I've come to think that it should be ok to represent other races and cultures in SL. Unlike RL, where we see ethnicity as really central to our core identity, in ways that almost at times transcend gender, for instance, "becoming" another race may seem more problematic. But Second Life is built on the idea that we can explore and experiment with our identities: the expectations here are therefore different. If we see someone who "looks" black, for instance, in RL, we naturally assume that they are black. In SL, no such assumption exists, and most of us tend to deride those who insist upon a direct correspondence of RL to SL identities. We aren't trying to "fool" anyone here: this platform is about being somehow "different."

    So I agree with Bree that, where there is no conscious attempt to parody or appropriate or misrepresent, it should be alright to be who you want to be.

    The caveat that I'd add is that we must always be extremely sensitive to what we are doing if we attempt this. Representing another race/ethnicity isn't just another form of role play: it necessarily, and whether you intend it or not, involves  contributing to how others are perceived and defined. And so those who represent different ethnicities have an enormously important responsibility: first of all, to get it as "right" as they can, and secondly to use it as an opportunity to learn what it means to be "other."

    And I guess this applies to gender representation here too: if you are using a "borrowed" identity to impose your own notions of how that identity is defined, you're just doing it wrong.

    • Like 5
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