Reel Expression

Fade In
INT London flat. A late 20’s woman sits in her pjs and types at her keyboard. Stops to roll a cigarette and lights it.

Where to start? In writing, that first opening line is always the most difficult. You want to catch the reader to make them want to read on. Just like an opening scene in a film. So I guess that’s done with.

In RL:
I’ve been many things. I have three college degrees and many different profession ranging from photography, physics, massage therapy, to film editing. I’m an American living in London. Some call me unpatriotic for being an expat, but I don’t have to live in the country to be one of the 43% who votes.

In SL:
At the time of this writing, my SL avatar is 2 year 5 months old. My name, Luth, is the same one that I use in every online presence I have since I started playing Shadowbane in ‘03. I may be creative in somethings, but names have never been one of them. When starting that game for the first time, I was playing an elf. So, a google search for an elvish translator brought up Luthein as what my real name would be. When speaking over ts, everyone ends up with nicknames, mine became Luth and it just stuck.

About Reel Movement:
Lucky for me, I came into the world of SL just weeks prior to the 1.4 update that added the ability of creating animations. Right after that, a few residents who were already creating other things started making animations and poses.

I remember going to a shop and buying some, but hating just about everything about it. Later that day, I was sitting around with Munchflower and I started complaining about them. The twisted arms, the stiffness, and the unnatural stance. As an offhand comment, probably while drinking too much wine in my San Francisco apartment, I said that I could do better. She agreed and dared me to try.

My last college degree is a BFA in motion pictures and tv with an emphasis in Editing. I dare you to say that 10 times fast :P But the first two years of that I was majoring in computer animation. The problem wasn’t my 3d animating, it was my 2d. I can’t draw. My stick figures can’t even represent anything that makes sense. You put a charcoal or a pencil in my hand and something nasty just happens. The way life seems to happen, I had to take a few beginner film classes as I was leaning towards visual effects. It was a bastard program caught between the computer department and the film department. After my first editing class, I never looked back.

So, I had some experience in 3d animation, but in far better programs then Poser. I thought it’d be a piece of cake. Heh little did I know. In Munchie’s dare, she sent me a link to Lithium Picnic to recreate some of the pictures for her and I started from that.

Selling them hadn’t been my first thought. My first ones weren’t so hot. They had the beginnings of what my newest set are like in terms of style and things, but the quality wasn’t near to what it is now. I sent them all to Munchie, which I still do everytime I put out a new set, but it wasn’t until I won an animation contest that I believed people would actually buy them.

I opened up a few shops and started growing inventory slowly along with a few sales here and there. It was always just enough to cover the rent at whatever malls I was in. The name itself started out as Reel Designs. Because of the nature of poses used for photography and my lack of creativity when coming up with names, I just used the name Reel as in reel of film. While I do not pretend that mine are the most realistic animations out there, my goal always was to have naturalistic poses. So, it’s partly a play on words.

In fall of ‘04 I made the big leap across the pond and met my now RL husband the first week I was here. It takes over a month to get broadband set up here, so it was a forced break from SL. When I came back, I was roaming around different shops to see what others were up to. To my horror, I came upon that very shop that held the animations contest had a new pose that was an exact copy of the pose I had won with.

Some would say that I should consider that flattery, but I could not. I was a new content creator, while they were famous. They were making money off of my idea. Yes, most of my poses at that time had photo references, as do many today. But that was one that did not. I couldnt believe the nerve of them to hold a contest for new animators and then steal their ideas.

As a freelance editor the times I work will vary. During the months of October - March film and tv work slows to a halt. Last year, I took that time to really get into making movent. At the time I thought that making dances would sort of put me on the map. Up to that point, I had always been a designer’s designer. I’ve been swing dancing for about ten years now, so I started with that. Let me tell you, that was 4 months of complete hell. Every single day animating and reanimating. Uploading, checking, changing, reuploading. I couldn’t get the damn thing smooth as other’s had done.

But at some point you just need to say, enough is enough. I got to the point where I was happy enough with it, and excitedly put it out for sale. Nothing. Nada. A few people here and there purchased it and loved it. But mostly, I recieved IMs with complaints that I could have done better. These people obviously hadn’t used poser ever. I’ve done seamless animations in houdini and maya. But poser? How did those bloody people do it?

They didn’t. Comes to find out, the majority of dances are motion capture downloaded from sites like renderocity. fuck fuck fuck fuck. Many people who know this have varing opinions on these sorts of actions. Some say that fixing them up to upload into SL is enough, others say that more editing of the origional file is needed, while I and very few others think that if it was not yours to begin with impling that it is is wrong.

At this point, I had already changed the name to Reel Movement. I was starting to get known by a number of the more famous designers. I feared another name change would take me back to obsecurity when I really needed the profits to offset the RL job downtimes.

The name change itself was based on another offset I had planned to do. The cuddle hammock was to be the start of a new colaboration. I shared a beautiful island with an amazing new furniture designer, Szabo Horn, and we were going to start making subtle motion animated furniture. But, some people work in different ways and that idea fell through the cracks. I was in a complete creative block. He wanted animations, and I just couldn’t force myself to do it. After the isle was sold, I decided that working on my own time and in my own way would always be the best. I will make more like that, I just don’t know when.

The nature of creating for second life has many ups and downs. I have quietly taken my fair share of breaks due to things like this, drama, and the absurdity of it’s residents. I attemept to live in my own little bubble called my studio and have tried diligently to stay away from all things horrid.

My lovely husband has just finished cooking dinner and my ramblings will end here.

Cheers
Luth

Fade Out