Get your steampunk on

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Nix Sands describes himself as a neo-Victorian, a humble tailor, tinkerer and occasional adventurer, but that representation seems quite muted when one comes across this outrageously good freebie at his shop, Xcentricity: Victorian Steampunk Clothing for Rakish Gents & Reckless Ladies.




Photos courtesy of Nix Sands

You can pick up your own gloriously free copy of the Monstro hat by teleporting to Xcentricity directly from here.

Then Cutea Benelli, co-creator of Bogon Flux, one of the most imaginative builds in Second Life®, as well as Epsilon's Fabulous Eyestem Thingy, and hundreds of the most delightful cyberpunk fashions and avatars, has insured that future steampunk fashionistas needn't compromise personal sophistication and elegance when it comes to adorning their avatar's feet.



The Vapour Vanity luxury steampunk heels are available in a zillion colors and metals but all feature a "mini-chimney" emitting tiny clouds of steam.

Teleport directly to Cutea's main store, Grim Bros. from here.

Pay the Second Life (builder, DJ, performer, scripter, artist)... or not?

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

There are all kinds of virtual creators and performers in Second Life®: the freebie/Open Source advocates, the folks who produce industrial quantities of things and then sell them low, the artists who make one-of-a-kind pieces and sell them - if you ask nicely - for hundreds of dollars, and still others who toil away like the Dickens to raise $Lindens for non-profit efforts. I personally know several dozen creators who pay their rents and mortgages, and the dog's vaccinations from money they've earned working in Second Life. It's a mixed bag out there, and the discussions as to whether people should make money from their virtual work rages on.

I recall how you could almost see creator Arcadia Asylum go blue in the face when the topic of selling virtual goods came up. She has since left the grid, but many of her fellow Hobos still strongly agree with her. Her profile read, "If you payed (sic) for anything made by me, even for L$1, you were SCAMMED!!!" Every single object she made was full perm, and most are available still thanks to people behind the Arcadia Asylum museum (teleport directly from here).

The economic outlook for most these days is uncomfortably tight, and given that residents of Second Life spend so much time creating or performing in-world, it seems natural that they would look to supplement their incomes there, right?

As people go, writer Harlan Ellison is a rowdy, controversial, quick-witted but nevertheless highly admired character. I met him once at a conference, and I can tell you that the standing-room-only attendees were spellbound. He managed to insult most of us in some way during the presentation, but had trouble leaving the room afterwards because so many wanted to shake his hand.

One builder who shared this video with me wondered out loud what Ellison would have to say about content creators in Second Life and how they deal with the constant requests for land/art/scripts, etc. Perhaps... "So you want to use my sims and prims for your money making venture?" Why does everyone think they are doing you a favor? Is there a culture of entitlement going on here?


This is a segment from the documentary on Harlan Ellison called Dreams with Sharp Teeth

Free nOObs for all! Art Laxness releases new versions including mix-and-match heads

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Musician, fine artist and 3d-modeler Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) is releasing five full-perm sculpted prim Noobs into the wild today, as well as a pack of interchangeable and amusing modifiable heads: Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Maid Marian, and a couple of your more basic noobs (read: blank expressions). Also included: Noob textures so that you may export and modify them to your own specifications. These are mostly derivatives of a project for the British Council that Art worked on as lead artist for metaverse developer, The Magicians.

According to Kim Anubis (aka Kimberly Rufer-Bach), who heads up The Magicians, Art made a test model of a default “newbie” avatar’s head – the first Noob model, before making the Bard’s head. “Then he made a giant head with four faces and topped it off with The Magicians’ top hat! Next, he created the first complete Noob in Appearance Mode pose before he went on to create the Away Noob which you’re familiar. Since then, he’s created other Noobs and Noob parts, many of which are in the Noob Pack.”



Several months ago, the AFK Noob was copybotted and then offered full perm on Xstreet. I asked Art how he felt about this and he provided a surprising response:

“The copybotting incident has made me think about how copyright works and I have come to some fairly extreme conclusions. Over here in the UK, there are trailers before DVDs which ask "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" which then, of course, leads onto not stealing films. But that’s not really how it is, is it? The actual question is: If you saw a nice car in the street and you could take a copy of it without taking anything away from the owner, would you? If everyone in the world could have a nice car for nothing should we restrict that? What if I viewed the noob model I made as I view music? Everyone in the world has "illegal" music. Obama gave an iPod full of music to the Queen: ILLEGAL. Walle gave a tune to Eve: ILLEGAL."

Art continued: "Let’s take this to a different extreme: How many people will die needlessly because of patents on medical drugs keeping the prices of those drugs high? The answer is an awful lot. The counter argument is that if the drugs companies can't make money out of what they do, then they won’t do it, but that sounds to me like a problem with society rather than an argument (in favor of) an obsolete business model. It strikes me that if everyone could build on each other’s advancements, rather than hoarding things to themselves, then humanity would get further faster. Artists and companies need to be rewarded for their output so they can keep producing, but a new business model is needed, as the current one is f**ed and is holding the world back. I'll throw the Clockwork Quartet out there as an example (his steampunk band). We're giving away all of our music for free. We intend to make our money off merchandise and gigs.”

You can pick up your own Noob pack at Abracadabra (teleport directly from here), and at British Council Isle in Teen Second Life (teleport directly from here).

Graham Stanley, manager of the British Council's Learn English Second Life for Teens project added, “Amongst other things, we are using the Noobs to give out clues on our language learning quests for learners of English. They have to ask the right question to get the right answer.”


See also: The most complex sculpture in any world, real or virtual?

The Alien Factory

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Once in a blue moon (heh!) I just grind my heels in the ground and quit blogging for a bit. When I do, I get downright stubborn about it and nothing can compel me to post a thing on this blog for days or even weeks. It's my way of staying sane, I guess.

I was in this mode just about a month ago when, on a whim, I whipped up a little machinima to share the fun of a new avatar-generating gizmo that Madcow Cosmos had come up with, with a little help from his friends Tezcatlipoca Bisiani (scripts) and Lorin Tone (sounds). I happened upon my vid just now as I was browsing through friends' works and thought "what the heck," so I'm posting it here for posterity. Y'all have probably seen it already and that's okay. You can just watch it again! Oh, and you can get your own alien avatar for free here, at Alien Isles of course.



And if alien avatars aren't your thing, you can head on over to the Museum of Robots where Madcow and his pals have created a variation on the same theme: Yep, you guessed it, a Robot Factory and also free. Teleport directly from here.

I've also been meaning to tell you that Madcow's got a new blog, too. So there you have it. You've been war..told.

Eln Alter wishes everyone a Happy Halloween with one cool freebie avatar

It's here and you aren't ready for this, the most Not Possible in Real Life day of the year! Eln Alter has come to the rescue with a fabulous sculpted avatar that will be free for a limited time:



Eln Alter: I'm giving away a Witch for Halloween. If you are caught unawares, you can enjoy a good one by teleporting here.

A winged treat for your tootsies - free, too

"Her shoes have wings," is an expression often used to describe a great dancer.

Previously only available to people with too much money and not enough sense, fantastic haute couture shoes are priced like works of art, especially if they are designed to be worn just one day of the year. In Second Life®, high style is blessedly more affordable, and never more so than today.

Via Impossible IRLer Juko Tempel, we've learned that Nix Sands and his Xcentricity shop are giving away these Candy Corn FairyFae Pumps - perfect for Halloween - as freebies. My favorite price! If you fancy this style, the D'Fly pump collection is available for sale in eleven different colors, so that you can wear them the rest of the year.


Adorned with black dragonflies and an optional pixie dust effect

Hermes - a Greek god himself and messenger of the gods as well - was presumably the first to sport winged shoes. It was his responsibility to guide the souls of the dead down to the underworld. How fitting then, that these lovely slippers be worn on Halloween, when the dead are in transit.



Head on over to Xcentricity by teleporting directly from here, and pick up your own pair. All of his shoes are giftable/trans okay, too.

Hotel accomodations to dance about

Given the choice between a five star chain hotel and a smaller, stylish home-away-from-home, I'll go for the latter every time. Conceived and built by Gattina Dumpling, Hotel Dare is the grid's only chic boutique hotel that I am aware of, and with several unique rooms designed by artists, there's something for everyone and every mood.

The room designed by Amsterdam-based illustrator (click this link, click this link!) and artist four Yip, is pure, undiluted and chocolaty fun.

Take a shower and you will find yourself dancing, have a friend hop on a pillow opposite you and you'll mirror each other's antics, jump on the bed, have a pillow fight, dance - like Cinderella - with your ballgown, and munch on some chocolate flowers (white or milk), too. And you get to take many of these goodies home with you! Now tell me, how many hotels let you do that? Four tells me that lots of people assisted Gattina with the creation of Hotel Dare, including Meat Carver, Mijn Boa, Teddy Whitefield and more.




Teleport directly from here.

Madcap Madcow Cosmos *finally* opens a store + freebies, too

See also:
* Divine Madcow Cosmos' divinations
* Madcow's Cosmos' "Heterotroph" at the Garden
* It's a Madcow (Cosmos) Madhouse!
* Catastrophe! Spacejunk falls from the sky!
* Dear Colgate-Palmolive
* Madcow Cosmos gets orbital
* No red noses here
* Madcow Cosmos silly-wonderful Prey Unit - a photographic challenge

Prolific. Genius. Prim hog. Brilliant. Funny. I have described Madcow Cosmos in these ways and more, but never, ever have I been able to call him a merchant. I can do this today, as Madcow has finally established an outlet where we can pick up copies of his insanely cool avatars and stuff: The Primordial Soup and Sandwich, teleport directly from here.

I spent some time last night in a sandbox with Madcow, previewing his newest line of avatars and Oh.My.Goodness. While all are - as I have come to expect - hilarious, some of them are truly the stuff of my childhood nightmares, and would make worthy under-the-bed monsters. It all got me to thinking about Halloween... NPIRL's #1 holiday and the one day when we observe that rite: PARTY time (note to self: better start thinking about venues 'n stuff).


Madcow greeted me personally at his new store. It was a bit... intimidating :)

Freebies: There are two ways to secure freebie avatars: touch the "specials of the day" on the counter, or take a look in the dumpster.

Hyde In Plane Sight: Free Skins Make You One With The Art

Anytime Douglas Story is in the mood to pen a few words (and post a few pics) for this blog, he is welcome. I don't know where he found the time to do all this dancing and dressing 'n stuff, what with his and Autopilotpatty Poppy's hilarious new art show opening at kyra Gaea's anandra Contemporary Arts gallery on Saturday, "Evil Nemesis: Two Artists, One Style," but I'm glad he did. The quality of Brigitte's work merits our attention.


by Douglas Story

When I was looking for a potential partner for a machinima project, Bettina introduced me to the maker of the stunning and well-cut “Chameleon,” Brigitte Kungler. You might have seen it covered in New World Notes:



Brigitte told me about the build she had made for Second Life®'s 5th Birthday (SLB5), and I was immediately intrigued. The concept is that you can go to the build, where you can don the skins that were used in the machinima, then teleport to some of the sets that match the skins. You can use the poses she supplies, or use your own dances and animations to pose yourself as your fancy suits.

Now, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m shy. Awkwardly, almost painfully shy. Naturally the idea of blending in like this appealed to me greatly, so off I went.



One can walk inside the black cube here to watch the video, then get the skins by touching the appropriate sign. Then you get nakey (in a PG sim! Brigitte, you wicked woman!) and teleport to the wildly textured sets. Fun!



I did some matching of skin and set, as Brigitte intended.



And some mixing.



Dewd, this reminds me of this one time when I saw The Dead at Winterland, and there was this chick there who gave us all some little tabs, and… (editor’s note: long rambling story omitted)



I got the great hat at Rezzable's freebie fair the other day - it's by Littletoe Bartlett. On a side note, I think we should hold Littletoe down and tickle the soles of her feet until she tells us why she chose that name. Are her toes indeed little? Or does she herself feel that she’s like a small pedal digit in some way? I want answers!



I'm not terribly concerned with preserving my machismo (what there is of it) but the pink lips on this skin by Four Yip were a bit much even for me. That’s why you ain’t seeing a close-up. Also, all the poses Brigitte has laid out are intended for women…



…or Chippendale’s dancers perhaps.



One of the teleport destinations takes you high above the SL5B fairgrounds where you can loll about on the main sign looking fetching in a matching gold skin.



My friend kyra Gaea looks distinctly under whelmed with my dancing style. I guess she doesn’t like culture…

Here’s the slurl of the build if you want to try this out yourself.

But hurry! The SL5B celebration ends Monday, and it’ll all go away. If you do take any pictures, Brigitte asks that you post them to the Flickr group she created for that purpose.



My previous efforts at becoming a chameleon were not nearly as successful. My visit to Brigitte’s build was far more productive, and I recommend the experience.

Garden freebies to die for... and yes, you have to go to heaven or hell for 'em

UPDATE - June 24, 2008: The Garden of NPIRL Delights has closed. Thanks to everyone who created it and to those who visited it, and special thanks to RightasRain Rimbaud and his team at Rezzable Productions for sponsoring it.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights will end on June 23rd, and several of the very gifted content creators have decided that their work should not disappear. Just look at what they are giving away! Hurry hurry!


DB Bailey's Purgatorio (Take everything home!) - slurl
Photograph by Ka Rasmuson


Eladrienne Laval & Kheph777 Enoch's Tower of Industrial Judgement (Steampunk Bosch Wings) - slurl
Photograph by Alpha Auer


Tezcatlipoca Bisiani's Laberinto de Mictlan (You get the prize - the puzzle box and the postcard!) - slurl


Bryn Oh's Steamgarden (Several items from her build! If you put the structure on your land, send her an IM and she will come and place the beetle and the carousel on it) - slurl


four Yip's Elevator Angels (everything! - touch the panels at the entrance to choose) - slurl
Photograph by Azwaldo Villota


Alpha Auer's The NPIRL Garden of Delights Public Baths- (Her monochromatic and health-inducing jellyfish!) slurl


Madcow Cosmos' Heterotroph (avatars) - slurl


Yoa Ogee's Happy Humans! (avatars) - slurl


Yeti Bing's Perfect Universal Companionship (avatar) - slurl
This video by Crap Mariner


Gore Suntzu's "Tame a Thorn" sculpture : (This beauty could be yours!) - slurl

Go to your happy place, courtesy of Yoa Ogee

Yoa Ogee always takes me to my happy place. And that is precisely the reaction he is after. You see, Yoa founded and heads up the organization World's Greatest Smile.

Yoa Ogee: Peace is what I have been most interested in all my life. The World's Greatest Smile is an international peace project dedicated to friendly communication, and is supported by 14 Nobel Laureates, as well as many other people from 131 countries. The goal is to motivate people to communicate in a more friendly and effective way and to give them the resources to do so. We develop games for children, too, to teach them teamwork in a playful way.

So committed is he to this goal, that 100% of the proceeds from the sales of all his fantastic avatars goes directly into the coffers of this organization.

For the Garden of NPIRL Delights, Yoa created an installation he calls Happy Humans!


Yoa's birds have strong feet

Yoa Ogee: It is a big birdhouse... and all the birds in and around the house have only one thing in mind: “Oh, the human rights are so great, it must be wonderful to be a human... it is our mission to tell everybody more about that! Sooooo happy humans...!“


These birds perch in most unusual places


Aviation school

Yoa Ogee: The birds must be prepared for this mission, so they have a newbie/newbird area in the house. There the young birds can learn more about the human rights. And, of course, an aviation school, a few nests with baby birds and more...


Be happy!

Don't forget to pick up the three freebie avatars at this installation, too (teleport directly from here).

four Yip's improbable tableaux + you

Impossible IRL'er katy Polikarpov dropped me a splendid note earlier this week about a new artist's exhibit that had impressed her. She made it sound so interesting, that I rushed to take a look.

I have to agree with katy. four Yip's art is fresh and different, and unlike anything I've seen in Second Life before. All of her works juxtapose the avatar with ordinary objects in an unusual context - usually one of invisibility - that gives new meaning to familiar things.

four hails from Amsterdam, and makes illustrations and commercial work for ad agencies for a living. While she uses Photoshop frequently, she also does a lot of drawing.



One of the prevailing features in all of her works is that she invites the viewer to become part of the art and then plays with that, too. There is a reward in store for you - the participant - as well. You get to keep every single piece that is displayed there.


In addition to swooning over the actual concept behind this Wallflower piece, I must admit the shoes are fab, too!

four Yip: I like the "share" part. That's why I give most things away. I like to hear from others what they think or if they enjoy it so I get new ideas. If you give away, it reaches a large group, I think.


Being a wallflower is rather fun, I discovered

four has only been building for three months now, and is challenged by creating 3D objects, but her daring is in her concepts, and she seems well on her way to becoming an important player in the art market.

Are you very surreal in real life?

four Yip: Hmm, not sure. Just dreaming a lot. Maybe that's why, and I like the idea of your avi interacting with something you make. Making the impossible is the biggest fun. I like the whole idea of trying to find ideas that are possible in here.

Most of four Yip's exhibits invite you to take a seat on a poseball and suddenly a part of you disappears, or you are integrated into the art piece. As four pointed out, it works best if you are not wearing prim clothing. So, rather than play with what's visible, four creates inverse situations where much of the art (and you) is invisible.

four Yip: I think the whole invisbilty thing is too nice. When I found that invisibility script, I had to think of the Magritte paintings.



In an impromptu photo shoot, four modeled this display for me and shared, "It is one of my favorites, and makes me dream. You can sit on it, and you will have birds in your stomach."



To visit this exhibit, teleport directly from here and then, importantly, follow the coordinates of the landmark. The TP is forced to a central area of the island. Many thanks, too, to yet another Impossible IRL'er, waelya Tenk , who is hosting four Yip's exhibit on her land.

Thierry Mugler's sim hits a cool groove, but the clothes, the skins! o.O

The opening splash page of Thierry Mugler's United States website asks: "Will you dare the metamorphosis?" (sic) That's correct. I checked it three times. That's how it is worded.

It's that same this-could-be-cool but out-of-sync feeling I get from his debut in virtual worlds, now manifested by his own sim in Second Life, which is slated to open to the public in March of this year (teleport directly from here).



Fact is, I revel in the playfulness of his Real Life fashions - for the most part - and wish I could be typing at this very moment, fully outfitted in one of those little silver numbers he's so well known for.

Wikipedia describes him as: "Thierry Mugler, born 1948 in Strasbourg, France is a fashion designer, photographer, and creator of a fashion design company of the same name."

His sim, featuring "Dr. Muglerstein," was created by the company Balistik Builders, and is in Mugler's signature colors of silver and soft blues and shades of violet, taking full advantage of Second Life's Windlight and the glow feature. It's offbeat and spacey, and the terrain texture - a silvery sand that's been stained here and there in purple and blue - is worth a visit alone.

But shouldn't the real draw... the reason the sim exists, be his designs for skins and clothes offered there?

Last night, a friend who asked not to be identified because she'd rather not be remembered looking like this, modeled a couple of Dr. Muglerstein's skins and outfits for me. What's your opinion?



This skin was presented at a press party yesterday...



Um... what was Mr. Mugler thinking?

Afterwards, my friend and I did a little wandering and discovered a hidden crypt underwater at the lake.



Inside, some freebies. Being a SecondLife Hobo, I rarely turn down a chance to check out a freebie - my poor disheveled inventory - so I decided to try on the "electric hair." Here's the before shot...



...and after! We lol'ed and lol'ed.



Actually, I thought the electric hair was sorta fun in a for-a-little-while kind of way. And that's pretty much how I feel about Thierry Mugler's hip new presence in Second Life. Let's hope he takes heed and listens to what is surely going to be an outcry from Second Life's demanding fashion community. He would do well to sign up some good clothing and skin makers who undoubtedly would do a far better job of translating his Real Life designs into pixelated threads.

Many thanks to Aenea Nori, blogger extraordinarie, for sharing her find with us.

Arcadia Asylum's inventory... it's gone: asset server issues are calamities

October 1 addendum: Thanks to the prompt efforts of Kona Linden who responded to NPIRL'er Ponk Bing's request, we have been able to verify that Arcadia's inventory is in place and appears to be fine. For more information, see the 16th comment to this post. Thanks Kona and Ponk!

Arcadia Asylum is the self proclaimed queen of trash in Second Life - and no, we're not talking about smut... she's strictly PG. Arcadia, whose first SL rez day is imminent, is peerless in giving a place that "urban decay" look. You see, it was Arc who built the now defunct Slum City, and Rags to Riches as well as the Pawn Shop at the Hobo Village Infohub.


I haven't finished introducing you to this feisty steam-punk urchin unless I also mention that she is resolute in her belief that all creations in Second Life should be open source and free. Her profile reads, "If you payed (sic) for anything made by me, even for L$1, you were SCAMMED!!!" Arc's made a pile of freebies, and they are - every single one of them - full perm.

Anyway, I got word on Saturday that the contents of her inventory had been wiped. If you know Arcadia and her builds, then you will probably agree with me when I say that this is a tragedy. (P.S. - In Arcadia's very, very special case, most everything she created is "out there," so her builds are still there. So are many of her textures, which she freely gave away when Slum City still existed. However, rebuilding your tools from scratch can't be anything more than a downer and a drag.)

Arcadia's vehicles can be found all over the grid.

Arc's reaction to the situation was to say that she was going to move on to other virtual worlds and go make her freebies there. We haven't heard from her since.


Hobo Village Infohub is a mess. An intentional mess. After the demise of the gambling industry in SL, Arcadia tossed slot machines in the bonfire there.

This got me mulling over the implications of lost assets. There are a handful of people in Second Life whose inventories contain one-of-a-kind treasures, not just of their making, but that of many other creators. What if their inventories were vamoosed?

I logged in last night and posted a question to the knowledgeable crew in the First Look group: if LL wanted to, could they back up a specific person's assets? "Probably not," was the reply.

Darn. I had hoped to propose that Second Life set up a program whereby, on an annual basis, a few people's inventories were given the designation of "Second Life Treasures," and then promptly backed up in order to preserve these repositories as living patrimony.

I realize that this would not be an easy program to implement. Beyond the technical difficulties, the selection criteria for whose inventories are the most valuable would most assuredly be a controversial and political Waterloo, but I still maintain that it would be worth the trouble.

Meanwhile, we are still Arcadia-less. For days now and every few hours I receive an IM from one great builder or another that begins "Arcadia's inventory is lost," or "has anyone heard from Arcadia?" The Friends of Arcadia clan, which is evidently enormous, is fretting. Is demoralized. Misses her... a lot.

Here, Arabella Steadman is wearing Arcadia's backpack... so complete with goodies, it might as well have a kitchen sink hanging from it.

Arc, if by any chance you are reading this... please come back. I hereby promise to give you anything from my humble inventory that is transferable. I think it is safe to say that so would scores of others.