Monday 30 July 2012

Colour Challenge 31 - Wales

I have been wanting to make a post about my dryad for so long, now finally I get the chance! This is one of my favourite and continually evolving avatars. Sometimes she has a woody, bark skin and autumn foliage so depending on the colour choices, she may turn up again... This is the summer version, and I found a really beautiful location for my photoshoot. I'm a huge Tolkien fan and I think the builders have captured the essence of Lothlorien (the elven city in the trees) perfectly. Here I represent the spirit of the largest Mallorn which holds aloft the royal court; without the cooperation of the dryads, the elves could not make such beautiful tree homes.


~ Dancing Dryad ~


Sylvan Queen

Moonrise

Window

Fountain

Lothlorien

~ Credits ~


LocationLothlorien Forest (just after sunset)
Sin Skins ~ Etheria ~ Epimelia
The Stringer Mausoleum ~ Swansong ~ Mane & Eyes of Earth (ltd. ed.)
Grendel's Children ~ Dryad ~ Branches and leafy drapes
Fallen Gods Inc. ~ Arboreal ~ Tree feet & leg additions (yes I have toadstools)
KOSH ~ Maplewood Smith necklace
Ivy pants/shirt ~ SL wasn't letting me see who created them but they are freebies & trans.

Tuesday 24 July 2012

Punk Rock and Monster Mounts

I should blog more besides the colour challenge, I just never seem to find the time with looking after a small boy all day. Recently I was made aware of a huge jewellery sale at Finesmith (some kind of rebranding exercise, not quite sure what was going on really) but I had a huge disappointment - I found about L$1K worth of stuff I really wanted (and that's at sale prices!!) but dithered because to me that's still a lot of money. The sale was meant to be running til the end of the month so I thought I had plenty of time. Turns out, the sale ended on the 14th (how is that anywhere near 'end of the month'?!) and SL managed to stop me getting all 3 group notices about it :S I was so upset I went checking other group notices to see what I might be missing out on, and promptly took advantage of two secret sales at Boudoir (L$100 each for retiring dresses!) then could not resist their Vivienne Westwood Tribute creation which is a fantastic Sex Pistols outfit with the Union Jack, huge skirt panels, shoulder holster bra and mesh corset (and ripped tights). That wasn't on sale, so among all these new purchases I managed to blow nearly the whole grand I'd been saving for Finesmith, but hey, RETAIL THERAPY!!! Also Finesmith? Your loss, learn to advertise properly :P I might still pick up the odd thing from there but at their regular prices there's no way I'll be getting everything I had my eye on.


Two lions and a punk rocker


I went to Little Britain to photograph my dress, and was immediately attracted to a side shop apparently filled with alien dinosaur skeletons... When everything rezzed properly I fell a little bit (well a lot) in love. Unfortunately I'm not L$1500 per mount in love (where in heck would I ride them? Though 'everywhere and I'm not getting off' springs to mind...) but in a world where everyone seems to have a virtual horse, this line really caters to people like me :3




Friends bear these critters in mind if you ever feel like getting me an awesome present ^.~


Outfit credits: 
Boudoir Sex Pistols outfit from Vivienne Westwood Tribute event (L$650)
Lovely Mi Westwood Contrast Eyeshadow (also from the event, only L$80, various colour combinations available but I went for black/white - the white eye is hidden by my hair)
DemotiK 'Demonology' bone tipped ankle boots (hunt prize)
<DK> Effie hair - Cherry Blue


Yay I did a non-colour challenge post! \o/

Monday 23 July 2012

Colour Challenge 30 - Aqua Island


"RAIN SPIRIT"


When I put this outfit together, the hair at first made me think of an angrier kind of creature, a storm witch perhaps. But my face is too sweet natured without an expression pose and the location I found was too beautiful and serene to evoke storms. This year, the UK has had one of the most dismal (if not wettest) summers on record, due to an unfortunate kink in the jet stream, and where I live it has rained just about every day for two months - longer than the biblical 40 days! A dancing rain spirit therefore seems a most appropriate avatar for this post. I hope by posting pretty pictures I will appease her and bring some much needed sunshine. On Sunday we had our annual family outing at a children's adventure theme park and the weather was absolutely gorgeous - this was after I'd put together the look but before the photoshoot, so I'll take it that she is pleased with my efforts. Today is mixed cloud and sun so I thought I'd better get posting!


Water Dancer
While shooting the pictures, I was thinking of one of my favourite pieces of music, Enya's 'Storms in Africa' but after finding this video on YouTube, I linked to another compilation where the poster has put Enya's 'Book of Days' (another of my favourites) as the soundtrack to Disney's 'Firebird' from Fantasia 2000. The tempo of the music really fits the action as though they were made for eachother and it is an amazing experience, much better (if you like Enya at any rate) than the original to my mind! The video is also very fitting to a rain (or nature) spirit.

Conjuring the Clouds
I must apologise that it looks as though I'm showing my nipples. I promise I'm not - I was very careful to adjust the raindrops of my necklace to cover the area, unfortunately, at this resolution, the raindrops just look like what they are hiding instead... I couldn't find a way to fix it without messing up the photos and anyway she's only dancing, it's not in the least a sexual pose, so I think we can all live with the result as adults ;)


Kissing the Raindrops


Cupping the Rain

"CREDITS"


Windlight: Alchemy Immortalis - Fog Lifting; Water [TOR] Liz Taylor
Location: Fruit Islands Tropical Rainforest


Poses: ANIMAH AO Flying Down & spinning (#1)
Striking Poses Jean Harlow (#2)
Striking Poses Kiss the Frog (#3-4)


JASstore JewelDrops Aquamarine Rain Particles
Gala skin & eyes - Halloween - Smoke
YIPs belly teardrops, necklace, waterdrop short ruban & pants
Alli&Ali Designs crazy magician hair (from CAHH2)
ni.ju tintable white claws
SLink Exotix Jolie Pied Flat Feet

Friday 20 July 2012

Colour Challenge 29 - Persian Rose

I thought I wouldn't be able to do this week as I'm frankly astonished I've managed to dig 5 different pinks out of my inventory already and this shade is so similar to Deep Pink that I knew I didn't have anything else that would work. Then Katlien found a dollarbie bazaar with mesh dresses and I thought I might as well check it out and found a pretty dress with the mid-section in exactly the right shade! The shoe match was easy, I pretty quickly found a skin with pink makeup, then I wanted to choose interesting hair to make a character avatar. While looking through old CAHH (Crazy Ass Hair Hunt) folders, I stumbled over this MADusa snake hair and the grey goes great with the skin, so voila! party Gorgon in her pretty dress. I just needed eyes, safety glasses and then a location/theme. I vaguely recalled some kind of mesh statue/sculpture store from a recent hunt, but had no idea -which- hunt, or the name of the store, or even what item I had found. (My inventory is like a black hole crossed with a lost property office. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if my inventory spawned L-space.) Anyway while trawling through various nested hunt folders, I stumbled across this awesome steampunk guitar, and since I've wanted to showcase my Cheeky Pea dance gazebo for some time, decided to combine the two for my own location shoot. 


So without more ado, please welcome our next performer tonight, the lovely and incredibly talented Maddie with her one-girl, many-snake act "Medusa", playing the best in Steamrock this side of New Babbage:-


$$ Medusa On-stage $$


The screams and cheering are deafening as she walks on-stage, loud enough for the vibrations to disturb her snakes, which writhe and hiss under the hot lights. She stops, tilting her head so that she almost seems to stare at the audience over her tinted glasses; a practised gesture, and illusory, for she can never allow her gaze to slip past their lead-crystal shield. She hefts her guitar and the noise dies away, until the whole audience seems to hold its breath and the gentle susurration of her hair is the only sound. Slowly she lays her hand on the strings and her self-powered electric guitar thrums to life. A pause, a collective indrawn breath, and she is off, playing to an adoring crowd. Her serpents twine and nod to the rhythm of her swaying dance step and the glitter balls throw snake-scale patterns across the floor. Her fans are hypnotised; but not remotely ossified, they wave and cavort and stamp to the music; and not a single person realises the truth, that her stage persona is not a costume.









$$ Credits $$

Soap Co. MADusa hair from CAHH2 (2011)
Frick Sugar Doll in Noir (promotional demo)
Nomine Contacts - Cracked Orbs
Glasses by Teravus Ousley (full-perm)
Brat Designs barbwire jewellery
U.One Paradise mini-dress (cheated purchase again but L$1!)
Blossom shoes - Passion Pink Mono Chained
Awesome Designs Hot Pink manicure (glove layer)
Land of Nodd Steampunk Tesla Guitar (hunt prize)
Cheeky Pea Crosswinds Gazebo Stage

This stage is awesome. I got it for L$188 or something at Collabor88 and the lights and glitterballs create a realistic, moving pattern of dots and stars on the stage floor. You do need to enable lighting/shadows for the effect to work, but you can always switch shadows off for more computational power. Since my computer upgrade I have been wandering around with full graphics and absolutely loving it. I have always hated facelights and even moreso with lighting and shadows, which creates so many interesting and realistic effects, but I do occasionally use one (as in this post) for a spotlight effect during night shoots.

Friday 13 July 2012

Colour Challenge 28 - Astronaut Blue

~ DANCE OF THE STORM CROW ~


I got this week's outfit sorted out before Sunday - a friend had just given me a beautiful set of jewellery with blue hummingbirds and then I stumbled over a pretty feather dress at Boudoir for only L$100; I reckoned with my new Nyxus mesh wings I could rustle up something decent. Yes I know I just broke my 'buying something for the challenge' rule but it was an unusual dress and not very expensive (shush already!) Once I'd put these together I decided I had to make a Tengu, which is a mythical Japanese half bird, half human monster. I decided not to use bird legs because it would be too similar to my Ice Harpy and anyway with the head and wings, that left the bottom half of the body to be human, so I tinted some feather shoes which came with the headdress (both were originally a creamy white).


Unfortunately, the location I had in mind for my shoot was a bust. I had only just discovered the adventure sim Retropolis and was really looking forward to exploring; the entry point is an old fashioned sailing ship on a storm-wracked sea and since Tengu are malevolent spirits often said to cause strong winds, I thought I could do some nice poses pretending to be the cause of this poor ship's distress. When I got there however, the land was up for sale - it would seem Retropolis is no more :( Beautiful, interesting public places are disappearing all over SL due to the current economic climate, and it's a crying shame. It also left me at a creative loss since I'd been developing my Tengu with just this scene in mind. That and the fact that RL exploded in my face this week is why this post is so late. 


Still, I think I managed to come up with something decent. I was searching half-heartedly for 'shipwreck' places when I came upon a rather delightful little WWII-era Japanese village with war planes (no I don't know why it's called Shipwreck) and because Tengu are Japanese and held to be harbingers of war, I decided it would do nicely. Please don't anyone be offended by the non-existent subtext; I'm not glorifying the war, just uniting history and mythology through art. There is a dark element to the pictures, since clearly the Tengu is sending the war planes on their way with her blessing. There is however a gentler, more modern side to the Tengu as environmental protectors and later on I was visiting Silent Sparrow for some clearance sale bargains and realised that her colour scheme is astronaut blue, plus, she has a giant birdhouse tower on the side of her store. So I couldn't resist a few shots there either, just for the pretty. Maybe this is where Tengu go home to roost after a hard day's war mongering ;)


#1 Storm Crow

#2 The Circling Flock

#3 War Dance

#4 Blessings of the Storm Spirit


#5 Witch Gaze

#6 Spirit of the Forest

#7 Home to Roost

#8 Who, me? I'd never ^.-


~ CREDITS ~



Location: #1-5 Shipwrecked, #6-8 Silent Sparrow @ TwoMoons Island
Windlight: #1 TOR scifi Lydian dinosaurs; #2 TOR night that spells moon2; #3-5 TOR scifi Rainbowtek - but note the island was encased in a huge artificial skydome which affected the true colours of the settings (I only realised later when panning out a long way).
Poses: #1-2 europa 'Nyxus' wings AO, stand
#3-4 Striking Poses 'Dancing with the Stars' Female couple pose
#7-8 Sit poses on birdhouse.


AnthroXtasy Avatars Phoenix ~ BIce F (birdhead) - old style avatars sold cheaply
YIPs birdy feather headpiece & shoes (tinted)

MAU's & MEJ's Brethil Asian hair ornament (jewel retextured with Earth)
Boudoir Homage Noir dress
Sin Skins Etheria ~ Crinaeae (my first re-use of an item in this challenge besides claws)
europa Nyxus wings ~ Aqua Tips
Kunglers Extra Nightingale ~ natura necklace & earrings, gift from Lola x






The auto-formatting on this is p***ing me off so I'll correct it later. Sorry for the random white highlight, I have no idea where it is coming from.

Thursday 5 July 2012

Colour Challenge 27 - Cadmium Red

Bonsoir! I am Magdalene, a circus performer with Le Carnaval Maudit - which in your language means, the Carnival of the Damned. Here for your especial entertainment are some pictures of me in my acrobatics act with Claude, our elephant. The crowd are sitting far enough away, and they have other things to focus their attention, so they do not notice the fangs ;) You will be thinking, she is not very pale for a vampire! That, my friends, is the wonder of performance art makeup - it is not only the greasepaint for clowns ;) Now sit back and enjoy the preview of -


~O~ Vampire Burlesque Theatre! ~O~


à califourchon
traquer
équilibrer

en pointe

ascenseur trompe

sur les défenses

présentation

c'est moi!
~O~ Les crédits ~O~



Location: Beautiful Freaks Burlesque Circus
~ live shows Fridays @7:30pm SLT (possibly including the elephant, I don't know)


Windlight: Sim custom settings + own light beam
(default midday for closeup)


Poses courtesy of Claude.

Outfit:
Lemania Indigo Josephine Baker dress
Rotten Toe Sideshow dollie knickers & vest
Pink Lollipop Mini Valentine Top Hat with feathers
Duh! Summer Clogs - Red (gift from Rudh x)

Schadenfreude ~Taxidermia~ A Doomed Flock jewellery
Opium 'La Burlesque' Feather & Sequin choker (now Alaskametro)


PoP ArT 'Maude' pale gold mask skin
Bonne Chance Valentine BIG Eye <3
La Boheme Ophelia hair from CAHH2 (tinted)
Pulse VF #2-Fangs from library vampire avatar Xyla
Schadenfreude makeup fangs (hidden) with red nails

[Looking at this much red on the screen all at once, I'm struck that it looks less like blood and more like ketchup... I bet the clowns have an interesting act. And don't ask me how I came up with this theme, but I found the outfit before I found the elephant!]