Reel Expression

So the past few months I’ve been animating like a crazy woman. I wake up, watch a couple of eps of TV with breakfast and tea, work, eat dinner (at the desk), more work, watch a film or more TV eps and then go to sleep. Sometimes I’ll take a break to do things for the holiday coming up on Monday. Like converting films to my iPod Touch, getting all the files and programs ready, looking for my passport and US mobile, or whatever random thing I think about. But mostly, I’ve been glued to the Captian’s Chair (hubbies nickname for my huge plush leather desk chair).

You saw part of it during the opening and the rest will be released while I’m away. What I really wanted was enough items to put out stuff consistantly where all I had to do was make the ads. I don’t mind laptops, but animating on them is probably the worst thing possible.

By the time I leave, I will have (hopefully):
3 AOs - Casual Female, Casual Male, and Party Dress.
4 Pose Sets - Posh, Fashion Series 5, Shoes (you know.. show off the shoes in an interesting way) and Material Girls - for showing off the jewlery.
4-6 Couple’s Poses. 4 have been made, the problem is that I’m waiting to hear back from Trinny about standing in for Alle while I make them. If not, I think I can come up with something else to make for the rest of the weekend.

But do look out this weekend as I’ll be releasing something new before I leave :P

Cheers
Luth

Just a reminder…

You guys have 4 more days to add photos to the group pool to be submitted for the contest. (July 19th)

The winning photo will be displayed in the main store lobby for a month and the photographer will recieve a gift card good for any pose set.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/reel_expression/

Dig it Kats n Kittens: Loads of info on the layout of the new store opening tomorrow!

General Layout:
Here we have the map for the lobby I made a while ago, but have to remake it tomorrow once I get the middle plazza cleaned up. It’s become my furniture workshop the past couple of months. I’d build for awhile then get a nifty idea for some furniture, so I’d just make it there one the spot. And left it.

Not much has changed, but I think the new version will look a bit nicer. However, I have extended the alcove for the photohud to include the Huddles made by my mate Keiki Lemieux.

New Section:
In here you’ll find the packs for the 2 latest modeling pose sets (both male and female) and individual pose vendors for each. Actually, by request I have 2 vendors for the female poses so people won’t have to wait. 4 couple’s poses, 2 each for m/f and f/f - I’ll be releasing these in 2s and more often. Along with a spot for the upcoming AO sets for both male and female, look out for those in the next couple of weeks.

Discounted Poses:
In the back of the modeling poses section, you’ll find the discounted poses. Some of these still are my favourite sets, but they are quite old. A while ago I quietly discounted them but now they have their own room which is properly signed. In there you’ll find the “Midrange” and “Older” single pose vendors and also specific sets:
Arty
Movement
Vintage
Expression
Rawr
Pose Wall

Lights:
This section will saddly be empty for tomorrow. I’ve made some lights but the scripts are taking a bit longer then I’d hoped. The guy who’s making them moved into a new store last week and my scripts got delayed until hopefully sometime this week.

Furniture:
I actually have some this time around! However, of course something had to get pushed back. Since I’m opening tomorrow, I just don’t have enough time to finish the anims for the living room set. I will have some thing, just not as much as I’d hoped.

What I will have done will be sold as Mod/No Copy/Transfer OR Mod/Copy/No Transfer. For items that come in different colours, there will be a swatch under the sign for you to buy from.

Individual Pose Vendors:
Trust me, I’ve heard all the complaints about having 200+ poses in 1 vendor. In my old store I have an individual pose vendor for each set, but I’ve found this to cramp up the area and the lag is more then I’d like. So, I have done 2 different things.

Pictured here you see 1 wall of pose sets and in the middle is a vendor for each set on that wall. Depending on the length of the wall, there will be 4-6 pose sets in each vendor.

From looking at my sales, most people don’t even use the separate vendor for each set. So, I’ve broken up the general vendor in to halves. The one closest to the door is the 8 newest sets and the next vendor is the 9 sets after.

Prices:
I’ve thought about it a bit and prices are going to stay the same as they have been for the past month or so: L$100 per and L$800 for a set of 12. This is mostly because the time it takes to make a set doesn’t take as long due to my new dual monitor set-up. Less time and less uploads since I can see the differences at the same time :)

The only change will be to couple’s poses, which will change from L$150 to L$200. I had priced them at 2 poses minus a discount cause you can’t really use them separatly, but they actually take a lot longer to make then standard poses.

Object Pose Sets:
Wall/Ledge/Chair/Window. I’m not entirely sure when or why SL broke these, but I get a lot of IMs about it. Randomly when you first rez the damn things they think they have 13 poses instead of the correct 12. All it took was a reset of the script, which standing up will do, but an annoyance none the less. What I could never figure out is why the line to reset them on rezzing wouldn’t work. I can’t script myself out of a box and the person who made them doesn’t log in anymore so I’ve been tearing my hair out about it.

These have now been fixed with brand new scripts. If you have an old version and would like the better working one, please let me know.

New stuff for tomorrow:
- 2 Female Modeling Pose Sets
- Older sets (except the discounted ones) have been reuploaded with a morph so they ease into the pose nicely.
-1 Male Modeling Pose Set
- 4 Couple’s Poses - 2 M/F and 2 F/F
- I’m hoping for 4 different bits of furniture in a variety of colours.

I’ll post the pictures and further details tomorrow.
Cheers
Luth

Dig it kats n kittens: another rezday has passed me by.

On May 31st, 2004 I was starting to get bored of City of Heroes and trolling the women gamer forums. I don’t usually look at banner ads but I happened upon an ad about being creative in SL and offering a free trial. You know… back when you had to pay. I had nothing better to do that day, so I went ahead and checked it out.

Now, anyone who’s been around long enough has fond memories of when they first rezzed in. The first few people they met, the silliness that happens when you first try to figure out what the fuck is going on, ect ect. I’m not exactally certain what the hell I did for the first day, but the 2nd is clear as day. I got another gamer friend of mine to try it out and we hid on teamspeak flying around and goofing off. We had happened upon a club that played really shitty music and found the absolutly hilarious free dance bracelets which strung the default animations together into 6 different combos. It still makes anyone laugh when I show it to them :P

Anyways… I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard as I did that night. I remember sitting there in my old SF apartment drinking wine and having a debate on the fact that they had to have figured out how to string those default animations together to make it look like people are having sex. Now I had known my friend for a while (Lanse in SL) playing MMOs with me being the only chick in the guild. To say he was very overprotective of me is a huge understatement. The more we argued about it, the more I laughed and the more I could almost see him blushing. Eventually he wandered off and found a back room shop full of sex objects. I remember very well him telling me not to come in, but I had figured out the camera and rotated the cam around to see him standing there in the midst of all that stuff. Fun Fun.

But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about.. while Lanse and I had some fun times, he was still into CoH and didn’t hang out much in SL. That summer was the last one I spent in the States as I moved to London that Sept. It was also the summer when I spent most of my time with Trinity Serpentine and Kate Hanks (Pictured above with me in 2004 and a couple days ago).

Look at the first picture. Trin and I are wearing some of the first prim hair which actually were just addons. Kate isn’t wearing any because black was the only colour you could find and she has always been partial to blonde hair. Notice the shoes? There were no prim shoes (that I remember). We are also sitting the in default SL sits since there were no AOs yet.

So, I spent most of my first SL summer with these two. Endless hours sitting around talking and laughing. Being silly while Trinny DJed. And of course nekkid dancing! These two have been my favourite SL residents since I met them and I don’t know if I would have stuck around in the beginning without them. They supported me through the years of being a no-name animator. Always more then supportive of every creative thing I have ever done.

And imagine my overwhelming happiness when at SLCC, after giving my very nervous and hungover talk to see the giddy Trinny holding a sign up in the back to her “Lulu.” Frankly that alone made that weekend. And I am overjoyed that we’ll see eachother again the Sept for our FLCC - our holiday which happens to be at the same time and place as SLCC but a boycott of the way the convention is being done now.

In the years since, I may not have been around them as much as I would have liked but no matter how long it’s been, it feels like no time has passed when we do get together. After a few moments of catching up we always tend to fall into the usual ease of conversation. Because of time differences, busy schedules and much needed breaks from SL this weekend was the first time in years since we’d been together. It was one of the very rare times that we’ve all be online at the same time and we’ve usually hung out separatly. It was a very happy day indeed! Far better then any rezday part I could have been bothered to set up.

So… to end the unsual amount of gushing in the post:
Trinny and Kate - Love you!!! *hugs n stuff*
-Luth

Dig it Kats n Kittens! Photos of the new store! It’s built, it’s got most of the landscaping done (for once) now I just need to fill it up! The first one is a detail of my prim store name letters in my font! I have been so surpized at how well they turned out that I tend to stare at it and point it out to visitors. Yes I know I’m a dork.

Cheers!
Luth