Avatarc

Phew! In my last post I basically arrived a few months too early for the island in question, whereas this time I have arrived a few months too late. I'm just back from my first visit - the first of many, I suspect - to the Avatarc sim. The name, as far as I can make out, is a melding of "avatar" and "architecture" and is closely bound with a website of the same name.

According to the website: "AVATARC is a team made of highly qualified professionals who have the expertise to develop projects inside the virtual world with architects, programmers, videoproducers, and communications and marketing experts. In the real world, Avatarc exists in Milan, Rome, and Siena; in the SecondLife virtual world it is located on Avatarc Island! A laboratory, born with the objective of applying creative research methods to the language of the virtual worlds, Avatarc utilizes interaction and communication design studies to three-dimensional planning. Avatarc constantly seeks to apply new technologies; because of its experimental character, the team develops original communication solutions that can transfer cutting-edge experiences in communication, production and cultural markets."

Ummm... if I am hacking through the hyperbole correctly, this seems to be saying "Avatarc is an [8-person] innovative Italian virtual world design and build company." Damn... I now need to add return trips to the website to my "to do" list, as well as return trips to the island.

You will gather that I rather like the island. My problem now is where to begin. Perhaps with the tour. In one corner of the island you will find a trio of tall spike-like platforms, faintly reminiscent of golf tees. The platforms provide all you need to get started - including a map of the sim, an outline of the main exhibitions, and the "cloud shuttle". This does exactly what it says: it's a cloud that acts as a shuttle between locations on the sim. If you opt to stay on it, you will get the full tour, which takes several minutes (a long time in SL !).

The sim is dominated by 3 great floating spheres, currently labelled: Visual Art Section; Meeting Ball and Competition 07 Movie Theater. Each sphere provides a sizeable auditorium and display space. Along 3 sides of the sim you will see a number of coloured hemispheres, each containing a slideshow. These (I think) provide the main permanent exhibitions on the island: Friends for Water; Surreal Architecture and The Making of An Island. The fourth side of the island seems to be taken up with resident builds and a beach, for that all-important socialising. Elsewhere you will find all manner of items, including a rather fine giant chess set.

The last feature of the island is the Visionaria 2007 film festival. You will find this at ground level, and comprises a number of booths (some now shut) each screening a different short movie. The festival was held back in October, hence my comment about arriving too late. As far as I can tell, movie-goers would move from booth to booth and at the end make their votes. Further discussion would then take place in the Competition 07 Movie Theater sphere.

Here's my portfolio of snaps:

And here's a movie from the company:

Avatarc_video_01
by avatarc

Just the Blue Pills Please

In my last post I suggested I should take a look at the bluepill GROUP sim. Well, no sooner blogged than done - give or take 24 hours or so.

I arrived at the photography exhibition “MY BRUSSELS" in virtual St Gery, which I understand to be the old meat market of Brussels (or Bruxelles if you prefer) and that is now a rather swish art gallery-cum-coffee bar/place to be seen. I can't vouch for the real thing but in Second Life, at least, there are a number of rather wonderful photographs on display, over several floors. The building is set within a giant Bruxellian Bubble:



If you check out Google images, you may be surprised to find just how faithful this is to the original - and I just couldn't resist the photograph in top right. The St Gery construction is excellent - and well worth the trip.

Beyond the bubble are a various snippets of bluepill Group builds, including a jet from their Brussels Airlines build and a range of what appear to be 'works in progress.'




It's an odd place this... since on the one hand it features some virtuosity for public consumption in the St Gery construction, while on the other it has a lot of "bitty" bits and pieces that look like sandbox trials and tests. I would suggest that they should consider investing in another(private) sim for their internal development and test, and focus their open site on completed works and presentations.

My only regret is that I'm not actually paid for these pearls of wisdom... but maybe my reward (or punishment) is in the afterlife. Ah... if only I believed in such a thing.

anyMOTION

I've been meaning to post this entry for a few weeks now, but have not really been sure how to go about it. The sim in question belongs to German company, anyMOTION. Specialising in 3D graphics and multimedia, it was a logical extension for them to move into Second Life, where they have been active as a build company since around the start of the year (I think). Their major work to date has been the complex of islands built for Mercedes-Benz, and used to launch their C-Class saloon earlier this year. They have also built electronic music club Trash Palace, which is sited on their public sim.

I spent a long time at the sim, chatting with Mark Lambertz (avatar: Mkyschnitzel Campbell) of anyMOTION about their work, and in particular about the (then) forthcoming SLCC'07 Germany event that was to be held in Dusseldorf, of which they were both a sponsor and organiser. However, even as I was typing up a post the following day, I received a mail from Mark advising me that the event had been cancelled. He was understandably disappointed (OK, too mild a word!) about it, having invested a great deal of time and effort, and presumably a not-inconsiderable sum in setting it up. In fact, as you will see below, the anyMOTION sim has (had?) a tower constructed specifically to tie in with the event. In preparing this post I checked out the SLCC'07 website, which informed me (thank you Babelfish) that the event was cancelled due to lack of sales - which is probably what most of you were expecting to read. Better luck in 2008!

As for the sim, it consists of a number of small islands, each with its own theme. The biggest of these is the C-Class farm, where mercs and yaks happily graze on a broad expanse of rich grass.
There's also a client meeting area and the aforementioned tower. High above, at around 240 metres, is the Trash Palace, which seemed to be well attended while I was there. This uses some great, scuzzy textures to lend a nice, rusty, rundown look to the establishment, which also serves as an art gallery. Higher still are a couple of giant mushrooms - one based on standard prims and the other, more recent one, using mega-sized sculpted prims. These are intended as chillout zones.


Here's the tower, which includes some nice shadow-effects:

A neighbouring sim is set aside for private company use - meetings, builds etc.

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Just to lighten my mood a tad, here's a piccy of one of my own little constructions in SL.
Well it amused me making it:

The specs are animated... but I haven't got around to using FRAPS to record them yet.

UPDATE: A friend has pointed out that the above image could be misinterpreted as showing something rather ruder than I had seen! Can I therefore urge you to click on it, to see the bigger picture?

Septeni Rainbow Factory

If you are an active Second Life resident who has not heard of the Greenies (from Rezzable), then I can only conclude that you must have been living under a stone for the last month - and I would strongly suggest you check out the set of postings from my good chum (and rampant blogger), VeeJay Burns, at the eminently Denglish Mindblizzard blog.

Thus far I've not posted anything about Greenies, mainly because so many others have already done so, and I do not believe my idle ramblings on the subject would make much of a contribution to the existing lore. So why mention it? Well... the thinking behind the jaw-dropping Greenies sim is that it acts as a shopfront to advertise the skill and virtuosity of the builders. And Septeni Rainbow Factory I believe exists for the same purpose - albeit on a vastly smaller scale!

During my most recent peregrinations around the islands of Second Life I happened upon Bizisland. As it satisfied my most basic criterion - ie: I could actually gain entry - I popped in to look around. Regular readers may start to yawn when I say that this is another Japanese sim - targeted at business clients. Aside from noting that Nomura financial services group has an information building here, I do not intend to dwell on the details of the island.

Rather, I would like to share with you one of the island's businesses, the aforementioned Septeni Rainbow Factory. But first, some pictures, snapped at different times of day:



Inside, there are 3 floors. The ground floor has the "workings" of the rainbow factory, while the top floor has a meeting room. But it is the second floor that is the most interesting to me. As well as a bar area there is a small showroom, some of which is shown below:

A number of plinths support scale models of SL buildings that I assume are available for purchase off-the-shelf or by commission. Clicking the adjacent signs brings up the website of e-research.biz. Perhaps a Japanese reader would correct me, but the company seems to specialise in web marketing and web2.0, and would appear to be yet another such company to see Second Life as a fruitful channel for their business.

The rich "baked" textures used on this build, and the careful detailing of such features as the elevator (below right) convince me that the rainbow factory is intended as a showpiece. It may lack the breathtaking ambition of Greenies, but I think it nevertheless serves its purpose well. It certainly stands out on the bizisland sim!

Just for completeness I have included the map of the build (below left):

Scoping Out Scope Cleaver

I've mentioned Scope Cleaver a number of times in the pages of this blog. A master-builder, possibly best-known for his amazingly detailed office furniture and his high-tech bespoke buildings, Scope has now joined forces with another of SL's top designers, Maximilian Milosz, to bring the SL buying public a one-stop-shop for quality furniture and prefabs. They also have plans to develop a community of rentals, and provide a range of SL consulting services.

The twinned sims of SCDA and Maximum Minimum officially opened their doors yesterday. I was my usual, fashionably(?) late self, having been delayed in getting inworld thanks to the excess of basques and suspenders alluded to in my previous post. I met with Scope, who kindly took me on a tour of his sim - though I need to go back, as I ran out of time to look at Maximum Minimum.

Scope has split the construction on his sim into 3 components - office furniture; residential furniture and his offices. The residential stuff is a relatively new area for him, and there's not a great deal there at the moment, but this will grow in due course. The office furniture is more established, with a more extensive selection. I seem to see it everywhere, but Scope told me that, although it sells well, he does not have a wide enough selection to make that much from it.




What impresses me about Scope's work is the exquisite and meticulous detailing. There is also a indefinable "something" that makes his work easily(?) recognisable. He was a bit surprised to hear this observation (again) as he doesn't see it himself. We spoke about his approach to construction: I don't know if this is rare, but he likes the building tools supplied by Linden Lab, as they both challenge creativity and enforce rigour, and are thus ultimately more satisfying to use than fancy 3D tools. I guess it's like an artisan or craftsman in RL, who would rather use basic tools well, than sophisticated tools badly.

We also touched on sculpted prims, and it comes as no surprise that Scope is not a fan, at least not when it comes to using them in his own work. He was happy to oblige with with a quote: "The answer you are looking for is: They look good as mushrooms...[but] I think the main problem I have about them is precision."

It will be interesting to see what sort of community emerges out of this union of 2 leading designers. I only wish I had a fraction of the talent these guys have... b*stards! :-)

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Here's some info from their Press Release:

What's new:
Scope will open his sim to the public for the first time and unveil his magnificent new store. A sleek new line of furniture will also be made available for the first time. Maximilian will be releasing a whole new range of various furniture, home accessories and the first release in a line of new products.

The future plans:
As a result of outstanding support, positive feedback and accelerating demand from their loyal customers, Maximilian and Scope will reveal more details regarding their joint effort in the time to come: A Modern Virtual Lifestyle Community. Six additional sims have been reserved that will be able to expand up to at least 44 regions. Maximilian and Scope want to meet, engage and stimulate the people in Second Life who are ready to live and lead this world in design. Collectors and enthusiasts will also have the opportunity to acquire limited editions and exclusive content.

Why:
As full-time designers in Second Life, Maximilian and Scope's motivation lays in the need to create something truly exceptional. Unlike many others, both Maximilian and Scope are _purely_ children of the virtual community, for the virtual community. They utilize their experience, skill and design integrity to create stunning, meticulously-crafted buildings, and the distinctive quality is evident to connoisseurs and casual design fans alike.

In what way will this benefit the community?
Both SCDA and MM will remain separate entities. While they will be competing within the same market offering similar products and services, there is more than enough room for both, and a lot of room for synergy that will benefit their audience. Learning from each other, improving product and service quality. The joined Modern Virtual Lifestyle Community will benefit its residents by concentrating like-minded, sophisticated, design consioucious people.

Acid Crebiz is The Biz

Way back (in SL terms, at least) at the end of February I mentioned a guy/company that I'd spotted that went by the marvellously surreal name of Acid Crebiz. I have tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to gain access to their/his/her island and tonight I gave it another punt, more in hope than expectation. Well it seems that persistence eventually pays off. OK, much of the island is still "no access" but there's enough there to give me great optimism for the future of Second Life in Korea.

"What? Where's Korea come into this?!" Sorry, if you didn't follow the link above, Acid Crebiz is Korea's first Second Life development company. I assume the island and its new neighbouring sim "Korean Town 1" are intended to showcase their/his/her work. At the moment you might think there's too little to see, with most of the land closed off. But I have to say I think it's fab. OK... I'm a huge fan of detailed, 3D textures - and this island is full of them. I think the look and feel is fantastic - and a great advert for Acid Crebiz. Indeed, for those who care to give it a punt, I would be interested in yout views after comparing this with the Webstar island, blogged earlier tonight. They are quite different - but then so are we, the ramblers of Second Life.

But my main reason for posting this entry is so I can show you the island, and let you draw your own conclusions:




(though my piccies are a bit crap compared to the real thing)