The Four Elements

My Little Ponies(TM) aren't the only dolls you can create on the Doll Divine website. Actually I'm really psyched because I just found one called Dark Fairy that is TOTALLY up my style alley, so expect some more posts after this! The site has hundreds of 'games', all similar in that you dress up the 'dolls' to your personal and (pretty nearly) unique creative choice with the options available, but widely differing in theme, content, artistic style etc. 

Recently I had a go with the Four Elements scene maker, because I love ideas based around the magical elements. Even though they aren't scientific, they resonate within my imagination, conjuring images of wild, pagan gods, demons and spirits, dragons and faerie. I started (somewhat inevitably) by making a Fire spirit; she was somewhat aggressive, because the Fire choices tend to lean that way, but I determined to make a gentle and aggressive spirit for each Element, to embody various archetypal personalities and show how each element can have both beneficial and harmful aspects. 

Here are my results; you can also visit my gallery on the Doll Divine website to see other creations, from other games. There, the Four Elements dolls stand alone, but here I matched them up so I'd only be loading four images to blogspot. That's why the images have different internal borders, which if I'd planned things properly from the start I would have changed, but it was an evolutionary process. Sorry about the background colour to the descriptions. I copy/pasted them from the site, and there doesn't seem to be a 'remove background highlight' option, only changing the colour - which still won't blend into the blog.

~ FIRE ~

Spirit of Delight ~ Spirit of Vengeance

DELIGHT: The kind face of fire, this is the deity of fun, beauty and sensuality - the patron of all parties, festivals and playtime. She is the harbinger of excitement, generosity and good cheer; and sympathy for those who overdo things just a little too much.

VENGEANCE: The fiery spirit of vengeful wrath, this volcanic deity can be summoned to give one strength against one's enemies and to aid in retribution - whether just or unjust. Fire doesn't care - fire just burns!

~ EARTH ~

Spirit of Joy ~ Spirit of Avarice

JOY: This earth deity represents spring, new life, hope and well-being. She is often honoured as a kind of Lady Luck, benefiting new ventures, especially in matters of the heart. She is the patron deity of dancing.

AVARICE: This is the deity of precious gems and minerals beneath the earth. She is a jealous guardian of her wealth and traps miners in cave-ins; her wrath is the source of earthquakes. She incites avarice among those who plunder her treasures, causing war and spoiling the enjoyment of riches.

~ WATER ~

Spirit of Tranquillity ~ Spirit of Malice

TRANQUILLITY: This gentle water deity is called upon to help soothe the afflicted, calm turbulent weather, and bring peace to any kind of conflict. She brings rest and harmony, helping people to resolve their problems calmly and wisely.

MALICE: This is the malign spirit of stagnant water, of fell swamps and choking weed. Her tendrils of malice can insinuate themselves into the noblest of souls and she is always looking to corrupt, whispering sly, wicked thoughts in the shadows.

~ AIR ~

Spirit of Grace ~ Spirit of Fury

GRACE: This airy spirit is the embodiment of grace, beauty and gentleness, so light she can dance upon the clouds. She is the goddess of twilight stars, jasmine and spring breezes, butterfly wings and soft laughter; ephemeral and lovely.

FURY: This tempestuous spirit is behind all rash, hasty, passionate decisions and flashes of violent temper; but she also empowers the ferocity of protection, quick thinking in a crisis, and flamboyant skill. Neither fully benevolent nor benign, she is a double-edged sword, riskily invoked.

You can see by the position of the matched dolls that you start with a basic body template for each element that cannot be changed. You could use one element to make another, but it would be trickier as the options tend to be themed; for example you won't find any fiery motifs in the water element, and the hair colours tend towards the blue/green rather than the red/yellow spectrum. You can change a huge variety of other things though, from clothing, hairstyles and facial expression to accessories, highlighting and backgrounds, and add minute final touches by dragging and dropping tiny beads and flowers to create delicate jewellery. My Avarice doll has 50 hand-positioned jewels! That's why I wasn't about to go back and redo them just to match the border motifs. Overall, I think my favourite doll is Grace; though Vengeance would make an unmistakeable Fledge avatar in Second Life.

~ * ~

The Bakery Lane Posse

So... I've been playing with the pony creator some more. I made my own pony gang, based around tasty desserts, starting with the ponified version of Strawberry Shortcake. (Amazing how an idle moment can blossom into a full-grown project...) The group are a bit older than the Mane Six, more older teenagers/young adults - a bit like the Mystery Club in Scooby Doo, because they are amateur detectives off the clock. Points to anyone who spots the clue/pun in the name. Their official work is at the largest baked goods manufactory in Equestria, McVitie-Coltbury on Bakery Lane, Sugarville.

I also made this picture into an online jigsaw puzzle which anyone should be able to try (you don't need an account).

Members of the Bakery Lane Posse:-

Strawberry Shortcake - the leader and the inspiration for most of the group's activities, she is a sweet but quite serious and dedicated unicorn. You can see her in her customary posture, searching for clues in the grassland of Mulgore. (Probably they are on one of those annoying 'find X of this plant' quests.) Her bakery job is chief taste tester, a skill which prompts her to believe she is good at unravelling clues the way she can unravel flavours.

Lemonzest Cheesecake - a graceful, artistic soul, she is very demure and often seems wrapped up in herself, but she has a way of disarming ponies the group wishes to question and holds the role of Chief Interrogator and Suspect Handler. At the bakery, she designs the cake decorations, and devises new flavour combinations for Strawberry and Cointreau to try out.

Keylime Pie - Lemonzest's twin brother, laid back and outgoing where she is shy and retiring. He doesn't really have any good detective skills but is called on when the group needs physical back-up or heavy lifting. His job at the bakery is supervising the production lines, a demanding and time-sensitive task for which magical lifting comes in very handy.

Blueberry Muffin - a happy go lucky farm pony, with an emphasis on 'lucky' - although she often exasperates Strawberry with her messing around, her random inquisitiveness seems to turn up a lot of clues. She is the fruit sourcer for the bakery, going to all the farms in Equestria to choose the very best. She is a good friend of Applejack's, with whose farm the bakery has a standing account.

Cointreau Truffle - this plump little pony is actually the most intelligent member of the group and the one who solves the most puzzles, though she is happy to take a back-seat and follow the others' direction, being more of a follower than a leader. Her specialty at the bakery is recipe planning, making her in essence the head chef, though she is modest about her role.

Raspberry Pavlova - zebra pegasi are known for being rash, unpredictable and hot-headed, and Raspberry is all these things and sometimes a bit caustic and liable to tread on hooves. But she is brave and loyal and the go-to pony when daring-do is in the wind. A team of Raspberry backed up by Keylime is a force few can reckon with. Raspberry's role at the bakery is staff supervision, and Strawberry counts on her to keep the group together when morale or motivation lapse.

Banoffee Pie - this little guy lives for gadgets and is always inventing new tools, a bit like Q in the James Bond films. Banoffee's gizmos have a high tendency not to work, but the others humour him because he's fun to have around, and good at solving logic puzzles. Banoffee is the chief technical advisor at the bakery, where his inventions work a lot more often than the ones he creates for detective work!

All Ponied Up!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year after my looong hiatus (goodness I last posted back in June..!) - the reasons for which being, 1) we found, bought and moved into a new house, our VERY OWN and first ever place :D and 2) partly due to that but mostly for other reasons, I haven't been in Second Life.

Anyway, the Bean has become a huge My Little Pony fan and we found an online pony creator, so I made myself and thought I'd put it up here for posterity. Note the toothy smile and slit pupilled eye }:=8>

~ Alicorn Fledhyris Dragonfire ~

The program is http://www.dolldivine.com/mlp-fim-pony-creator.php if you want a go yourself - you can make a lot of ponies from the show too, but you have to download and import the cutie marks (Google images is your friend). You can't see mine very clearly but it's a stylised, flaming dragon head. Of course. (Creative Commons licence from http://tattoos-and-doodles.blogspot.co.uk.)

I might just be tempted to come back into SL to customise this avatar... I could use the Grendel's Nightmare for the base but it's a lot chunkier. If anyone knows of a moddable, graceful, full-quad horse/unicorn/pegasus avatar, especially one in mesh, please let me know!

Health and happiness to all my friends ^.^

For the Hoard! May - Week 2 (Cascade)

Continuing with the May catch-up and all the other items I bought in week 2. Again, this will be a short post (for me) as I think the pictures have more stand-alone aesthetic appeal than telling a story, and I managed to get all the detail in relatively few shots. This time you can see the grass and trees of the same sandbox I used in the previous post. Clever, huh? ;)

My acquisitions this week are the Forgotten Cascade and Ruined Bench from Angelic Designs, Universa hair and Darkness eyes (last image only) from The Stringer Mausoleum, Angelus sword from Illusions and Nugget jewellery from Vintage Jewels. The only non-mesh item in the set is the hair. 

I'm really pleased with how this shot came together. I chose the skin and some free eyes to highlight the hair and this elegant evening gown because of the jewellery, but I still felt something was missing and rummaged through my wing collection to find this unusual set which really complements both the hair and sword with its futuristic and blade-like design. I ran through my poses in a similar manner and came across this Divinely Naughty (Angel 13) pose from Juicy, which is almost identical to the position of the statue on the Forgotten Cascade behind me!

PurpleMoon "Meryl" gown in black (with contrasting gloves and bodice wrap);

Angelic Designs new mesh "Ruined Bench" with large number of animated poses and "Forgotten Cascade" fountain sculpture in background.

Illusions new mesh sword "Angelus" with colour change options on blade, hilt and gems;

TSM "Universa" hair made for Aeva Heartsick event but still possibly available in mainstore;

Will's Wings/Niangao Ltd. "TechAlpha" wings (very old acquisition).

Amacci skin "Liane" in goth (silver tattoo 2) and free hairbase in snow;

DAMNED "Tribal" make up with pouty lips (the black eyeliner and lip shadow);

Free eyes whose creator SL was refusing to divulge but matched the colour scheme;

Vintage Jewels "Nugget" jewellery set (group gift).

TSM "Darkness" mesh eyes, which come in two packs, the warms (red, orange and yellow) and the cools (blues and greens) which I didn't buy. These, like the hair, were special editions for the Aeva Heartsick event but were made available in mainstore afterwards, possibly only for a limited period.

And, not that you can see them for the long skirt, I am wearing +DV8+ "Lust for Life" stiletto heels. The store has sadly closed.

Don't forget, if you just noticed this post, to check back a few as I have finally been able to post a batch of updates. Thank you for reading! <3

For the Hoard! May - Week 2 (mermaid reef)

(Recall that I already posted Week 1 in its proper time period, for once!)

This post is by way of an aperitif because I bought several things this week, but this item stands out from the others and I didn't want it to get lost amid a bunch of completely different photos.

[Alyah] Underwater Mermaid Reef

Angelic Designs has the brilliant strategy of releasing new creations during the 60 Linden Sunday weekend sales, which means I can pick things up I could not otherwise afford. In truth I'd have to avoid the store if she didn't do this, because I love her stuff so much! This weekend I found an addition to my mermaid collection - a beautiful mesh reef with seating poses around a sunken boat, designed especially for avatars with tails instead of legs. 

Everything you can see in the photo is part of the reef, except for the 'dead' trees* in the background. It comes complete with tropical fish rezzer, sea plants and reef fauna and is only 27 prims and mod/copy. I had bought a similar but much higher prim sculpted reef in the past, before mesh came out, and had always been a bit stuck for prim space to use it; so I pounced with delight on this 'upgrade'. I only wish I'd had it last year when I made this mermaid avatar for Coral in the 52 Weeks Colour Challenge.

*If anyone is interested, I set the reef up in my habitual sandbox which has grass and trees, not the best background for a coral reef! I set down a sandy floor prim and reduced the draw distance to a minimum, which created retreating tidal flats (since the horizon of your draw distance is always water, even when no water exists) and stripped the nearest trees of their leaves, as though they were salt poisoned sentinels caught by an encroaching sea. The windlight setting is Gwen's Light, with its lovely pale lavender and sea tones.

For the Hoard! April - Weeks 3-4

Lady Fledhyris with the necklace in the living room!

Warning: running theme of spooky eyeballs @.@

I know, April was a long time ago - especially in the fast paced time-stream of Second Life! I've been incredibly busy in the real one, as we are buying a house - our first property so it's all very exciting and stressful! - and we've also had a run of beautiful weather which, in this country, you'd be mad not to take full advantage of as you never know if there'll be any more. So in the last three weeks I've barely been on the computer for fun, let alone blogging.

I doubled up two weeks of purchases because only the couch, plants and necklaces were from week 3 but everything went together nicely once I got the desk and picture frame. The Gothic Christmas skybox by Distorted Dreams, which I bought on sale last Christmas, was just the thing to show off the furniture; a snappy modern animal print dress does not exactly fit the Gothic theme, but think along the lines of modern young witch or vampire trying to fit into society - at least out of doors! With this in mind I chose a sunhat with a creepy twist, and the obsidian version of the winged necklace, which came in three colours - normally of course I would wear the gold. 

I think the top picture tells a kind of story, like a mystery tableau, or a scene from Clue. It was a dark and stormy night, and the old house creaked and groaned, covering the stealthy movements of the young witch as she made her way downstairs and into the drawing room. She went unerringly to the bureau under the big gilt picture frame on the back wall. Waiting for a crack of thunder, she slid open the drawers of the desk, but her caution was unnecessary; the well-turned wood glided smoothly in its tracks even after all this time. As she searched through the forgotten detritus of years, she felt the close scrutiny of watchful eyes. Glancing up, she smiled wryly; someone had placed a glass eyeball into the mouth of one of the carnivorous plants upon the desk. At last her fingers, rifling through the haphazard drifts of papers and odds and ends, grazed the thing she sought. An amulet of rare and secret power, it sent a surge of energy like electricity through her finger ends. She lifted it, entwining the leather thong about her fingers, and felt the essence of life blossom along the tracery of her nerves and veins, a cascade of emerald lightning heralding the spring. At a sudden sound, or perhaps her awareness heightened by the magic of the amulet, she turned, hand to her mouth in guilty surprise. The door to the room was open, a dark figure framed within against the light of the hallway beyond. She was discovered.

Cloud of Doom

I'm not completely happy with the way some of these pics turned out - I think I forgot to increase my graphics settings for some of them as they are very pixellated, which is why the above image is artfully blurred *g* I do like the pose though. I have a very Machiavellian look (sneaky and mysterious)! I spent forever trying to capture a shot with the lightning flash, which is random and intermittent and generally too fast for the SL camera to catch - which might be why I turned down the graphics, to speed up the viewer. The Doom Cloud Couch from !Weather or Not? has a good set of animated poses to choose from, and excellent realistic sound effects to go with the particle rain, and the lightning casts real light. I suppose some people might find it a gloomy piece of furniture but I love the rain and storms, so I find sitting on this couch very soothing - when I'm not trying to capture photographs!

In a dark, dark house in a dark, dark room in a dark, dark drawer...

This beautiful little mesh "Ambrosio" coffee table by Schadenfreude has drawers which slide in and out at a touch, so that you can actually put things in it (though of course you couldn't then close the drawers and expect the objects to move with them). I was very happy to snag this on a Fifty Linden Friday sale. The "Amore" baroque golden picture frame above is also mesh, a new item by Angelic Designs, whose store I plunder on a regular basis. The picture is of me, on the left, with a friend who had just bought one of the Grendel's Children dragons (an avatar I also possess). The frame is actually scripted to have a slideshow of images, if you want (or you can just take the script out to show one). It was a fortnight of thrifty purchases, as I bought almost all the items on sale - the couch and plants on Woeful Wednesday, the picture frame on $L60 Sunday, the flower pot necklace from a hunt and the dress from the Gypset Market. I had to be thrifty because by the end of the month I finally paid back my loan on the previous monty haul of Tekeli-li and bee fair jewellery!

Winged time

The amulet of life!

"Luisana" dress in black zebra by PurpleMoon - I love the hemline, something that just couldn't be done before mesh, and the reason I always favoured long skirts until now. The dress now comes in a wide range of patterns which you can purchase as a low deal fatpack on a HUD switcher rather than as individual items, once you have bought one dress at full price. I bought this dress on pre-release at a bargain price from the Gypset Market where PurpleMoon often showcases her new designs (Luisana is now only available at full price from the mainstore). That is not my spelling mistake, by the way. It's theirs.

Coincidentally, I purchased a black and white striped dress in real life this summer that has very similar lines to this, though the print is more linear than real zebra. That must be the first time SL has influenced my FL shopping impulse!

The winged eye necklace, "Winged Time" is a full price purchase from Needful Things, a new shop I discovered from looking at prizes on the April Flower Petal hunt. I matched the necklace with a pair of Egyptian styled wing ear piercings I got earlier this year from Cute Poison, though I'm not sure you can see them very clearly, and as you can see I'm wearing the White Widow "Fee" face tattoo I blogged with my bee queen, but in a different colour.

"Airhead" skin from GP (Curio) as worn in my previous Hoard post;
"Listen" hair by elikatira - fiery reds #10;
"Spider Eyes" in charcoal from Saturnine Dreams (marketplace listing only);
"Mizu-Hanabi" Gray prim nails by pulcino.

The 'amulet' again

The magical centrepiece of my little mystery story, this exquisite little flower pot necklace was in fact the hunt prize from Needful Things so I'm sorry, but it may no longer be available (unless it is released as a group gift). I loved their creations so much, I will definitely be coming back to make future purchases, it was one of those shops where I daren't look around because I want everything I see! I also paid the $L80 group membership fee, which was well worth it for the number of group gifts scattered around the store. I snagged a lot, too many to blog, but I can tell you now I have my eye on some [non-gift] antlers with mice and flower decked elven ears and a cute cat-chasing-mouse necklace, so Needful Things will likely feature in some more blog posts in the not too distant future.

I put in a second picture just to show it up close for the detail, because it's a beautiful little thing and a perfect example of how to entice people to your store by making high quality 'freebies' for hunts. I window shopped the Flower Petal Hunt and only went for two prizes; this one added a new store to my repertoire. Any creators who read my blog, take note!

The walls (or in this case the desk) have eyes...

These "Happy Plants" from Dell's Odd Shop come as a no-mod, no-copy single mesh item (weighing in at 10 LI), and the 'heads' twitch and peer about on a touch on/off script. I couldn't resist them after seeing them in the Woeful Wednesday sales listing, but there was little else I could stomach from the store. Dell's Odd Shop is a truly disturbing island of macabre genius, styled in the manner of Norman Bates gone down on his luck and renting out a trailer park instead of a motel. If you are a fan of slasher movie style horror then you really should check out this shop, for the atmosphere if nothing else; I would love to stage an adventure there for Sam and Dean Winchester. You could furnish an entire horror movie with grisly props but as I prefer my decor a touch more Gothic than Friday 13th, I grabbed the plants and beat a reluctantly admiring retreat. The long soil filled planter underneath the pots is not by this creator, incidentally, a friend made it and it just seemed a good idea to protect the wood of the desk underneath.

I seeee you!

Charlotte's sun hat from Schadenfreude, another (past) Fifty Linden Friday purchase. The hat occasioned much frustration in finding suitable hair. A major drawback to mesh hair is that you can't edit it to tuck away all the bits which stick out of your head gear. I wanted the hat, and I wanted mesh hair, so I persevered. This is why my inventory is so huge and my blog posts take so long :)

Zebra C Platforms

A zebra dress requires zebra shoes, and I really wanted to use this pair which I bought a long time ago from She's So Unusual Shoes, a delightful store which sold quirky and imaginative designs but could not compete with the new sculpt market and closed its doors long before mesh came on the fashion scene. Back in the day, I bought a lot of SSUS footwear, and at the time the builds were (in comparison with their peers) pretty good. Now, the basic prim builds could look sadly out of date or charmingly retrograde, depending on your perspective, but the main stumbling block to their suitability is no fault of the designer's or of the fashion zeitgeist: current graphics do not support invisiprims, and generic prim shoes use invisiprims to cover parts of the system foot. 

The 'modern' approach is to use an alpha mask, but these are incredibly fiddly to fix around the highly contoured detail of the feet, and most creators don't bother; they simply cut the foot off at the ankle or higher, because the shoes they were made for come complete with 'fake' feet which look infinitely better than the avatar default. I have not so far found a perfect foot mask that nips off the sole and heel without leaving ragged edges; I even tried to make my own, which is how I discovered how bloody difficult it is. I messed around for ages with these shoes because I really wanted to salvage them, and I'm pretty happy with the results, although I had to tweak a lot of the original prims to cover alpha gaps. Thank goodness the shoes were mod/copy, a handy feature that has been crowded out of many 'superior' sculpt and mesh builds. Of course the trade-off to being able to wear my retro platforms is that I'm stuck with the horrible default avatar toes; now I really wish someone would make sculpt or mesh toe-only add-ons for rescuing classic prim sandals!

Just as a note, in the top photo you can just see me wearing my butterfly bracelet, black/silver, by Ashley Dassin (full perms) - with of course my habitual solar and lunar armbands from L&E which are no longer available.

And thus conclude my Hoard listings for April! Phew! What a month, and 2 months behind in the blogging. Now I have May to catch up (don't forget I already posted the first week) but haven't bought much in June, because I have been so busy. I won't say 'watch this space' because updates won't be regular, but they will happen eventually!

When Hair Attacks 2!

Some may remember my hairspear post of last year. Hair can be a funny thing in SL. Now it's gone on the offensive again!

I was in the early stages of putting together an outfit and trying on mesh hairstyles, for which an alpha mask is usually provided. This is why you can see through the top of my head.

I was extremely disconcerted to take off my hair at one point and discover that a pulsating blob of hair had apparently taken up residence inside my skull, like some kind of nesting alien parasite. You can't see the pulsating on a still shot, but pulsating it was. It was quite horrific, and not much tends to get past my 'ick' threshold. 

So what was really causing the hairbrain, given that a) avatars do not customarily possess brains of any description and b) it wasn't an alien possession (as I thankfully worked out)?

Eyebrows.

Okay - you know those bald caps/eyebrow shapers you have to wear and, if you're anything like me, probably end up wearing the same one for months at a time and forgetting about it? Since, as with eyes and skin, if you drag on a different outfit it won't take off a bald cap unless there is a different one in the outfit to replace it. If you tweak the settings, you'll find that you can grow a luxuriant head of non-prim, system hair on one of these things. It's pretty nasty looking, but it used to be a lot more common than now, in the days before decent creators kindly provided free, full avatars in the library and all over the marketplace. Most hair creators put the hair settings of the bald cap on zero, because they're only interested in the shape and colour of the eyebrows and don't want system hair messing up the prim styles.

Whoever made this eyebrow shaper (and it was marketed as such, not as a bald cap) did not switch the settings to zero. I would guess they played with the sliders until the hair disappeared from the model's head, and left it at that. The result is that a big 'tuffet' of hair was left like some kind of growth inside the skull, where normally you wouldn't see it. Eww! Everyone check your bald caps, at once, for tribble infestation!

As for the pulsating, I can only conjecture but I've noticed recently that system clothes (such as skirt layers) have an animated effect, as though rippling gently in the breeze. I'm not sure if this is an effect of the latest [Firestorm] viewer update or just that I'm noticing a) because I've updated, which makes people tend to notice things more because they are on the look-out for changes, or b) because in fact I hardly ever wear system skirts and so would not be likely to notice exactly when such a change occurred. But I wore a couple for the Colour Challenge last year and I didn't notice it then. I'm also convinced system skirts are fitting better, moulding themselves to the body in the way that mesh does, but maybe I just tried on a really well made skirt.

Anyway, it seems as though the rippling extends to hair as well as clothing. I tweaked my bald cap to grow more hair and it looked as though an alien was trying to break out of my head, with most unsettling bulging and wobbling going on. It was really very disturbing and would incline me even less to wearing system hair, were I not already 100% disinclined. But I urge you to try it, for a laugh.

I told a [furry] friend about this incident and it is hir joking response I have taken for my picture caption.

Or perhaps I have uncovered a deadly secret: Linden Labs are trying to control us through our bald caps!