Wednesday, November 20, 2013

A Long Way - 2 Months


Two months in with much accomplished, I am beginning to feel like "me". This may be my winter outfit as it took me more than a week to make -- if you count my very cool shearling boots that didn't make it into this shot.

Sweater and vest are ONE garment (no layering here at the moment). I added the earrings to my hair after finding that it was nearly impossible to even FIND a much enlarged earring, let alone move it (them) to the appropriate spots. So this works on a personal level.

Just for comparison, here I am on day one.



So very very VERY happy to have new hair.

It has definitely been fun and I have decidedly learned much -- more than I expected.

There is more to come.

I know not what.

But I am ready.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Two Months In - Almost

Another week and I will be two months old!

The time has certainly flown by. I have been building eight to ten hours a day pretty much every day. And, obviously it is time for a break.

I have accomplished a ton of personal firsts here and learned much. There is plenty MORE to learn of course and I will tackle that in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile I wanted to leave myself a list of accomplishments so that I can look back and see what happened in the first days of my citizenship.

* Seven builds - in order, The Mesa, California Dreaming, ChiC buildings, The Village,  The Beach, A City, Chez Chic

* My first mesh tree
* My first mesh hair
* My first mesh clothes
* My first mesh shoes
* My first animated idle

Blender and I are better friends than we were a couple of months ago. Not having to deal with physics is a wonderful thing. I still don't know how to rig but that is on my list for the future. Animations are much easier with Blender than the other program I used, so I enjoy making poses and movement.

I have things on my personal todo list. Some boots I want to try (finding a middle ground between looks and server friendliness is always tricky) and some fancier hair. It would be very easy for someone coming over from another grid to start hitting that subsurf modifier; the mesh is SO dense some places. So it is a test of creativity to see what you can do that looks pretty good and still have a relatively low poly count (actually tris are the measurement standard here).  

I also want to build in the snow and have a place for that - WITH accidental particle snow. So I won't be bored and it will be fun to watch the world evolve. My goal was to get more content out there and I accomplished that.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Fashion Frenzy

Hard to believe but the stars finally aligned and I made a wearable. It certainly isn't up to the standards of the folks I blog for on "the other grid" *wink*, but relatively? Yep, it works for me.

Easy color change and I made a belt to go with.

On the way to Jumpsuitville (there was a time when the typist lived in these rather than leggings and tees) I made some sleek and shiny leggings which will pair nicely with tops.

LOTS of things on my "todo" list.


A couple more new hairs appeared in my inventory this week and I redid Helga a bit. Marcy is my favorite so far but I imagine she will be usurped by another style sometime soon.

I also made a long idle and it is SO nice not to be standing around like a zombie.

A friends pose and a camera prop with pose rounded out the animation work this week.

There have been many improvements at Cloud Party including the ability to upload double sided mesh (now in a planned way :D).




Saturday, November 2, 2013

On The Way To Fashionistaville


Well it isn't "Truth" or "Vanity" (and if you don't know the references that is OK) but it is BETTER than the default hair by leaps and bounds and not bad for a first try.

It is also SD (Standard Definition) hair which means even those with marginal connections can see it well. I made this in the VERY early morning hours after a terrifically painful day with nothing accomplished -- going down a wrong road trying to attach a hat. Well the hat (nothing to look at) eventually got attached thanks to Lilli and I moved on to hair which was my personally biggest WANT since I arrived.

I also changed my face a little. It will no doubt change again as I try to find myself.

I also got a collar made. Fairly simple but works quite well and I made two definitions of it - one for High Definition folks and one for "coach" :D.

That is twice as much work (well almost) so  an easier plan for many things would be to try and stick to the maximum triangles allowed for SD items. Then, like the hair, there is only one mesh to get into world.

That's the news this weekend. Off to add to my jewelry set. CLOTHES are definitely a problem here. Aside from the ones included (some fairly nice and the guys sets seem better perhaps because they were made by a guy? I know not. ) there isn't much to choose from and while I can MAKE clothes, I have no idea how to rig them and my long journey with some trials and many errors lead me to believe that I don't care - LOL. Unfortunately my black leotard only shows up for HD, alas. So this is my photography outfit but I have to put system clothes back on if I am out and about.

I think my jaw is too square, so back to the sliders.