Thursday, April 2, 2015

Safari goes extramural

         This week Littlefield Grid celebrates two years of existence, and Walter Balazic and friends are celebrating with a gigantic fair on Littlefield Anniversary sim. In honor of the event they have put up a VAR region, and all kinds of residents have contributed stalls stands and exhibits showing the talent and wide range of interests of Littlefield folk.
Walter welcomes hypergridders
Walter Balazic: it's a fairly large VAR, so there's a lot to see. I've been looking at it for 2 weeks now, so it looks small to me now! The users here love to build.  Mudpuddle put an interesting Yellow Submarine display up. The Germans put a village up, I put a little display up, I really never build, but it's the one behind you. People do things that are geared toward what they know, mine is all prim and minor scripting, cause that's all I know. Some people are really good at mesh and focus on mesh things.

Mud's Yellow Submarine
Thirza Ember: There's too much to look at in just one quick visit, it's quite an achievement.
Neo.Cortex: unbelievable it has been two years already
Camryn Darkstone
A host of locals including Mudpuddle, Camryn Darkstone, Hisano, and Amy Storm came by to say hello, which was kind, and while not all of us were able to reach the sim because of grid restrictions in some cases, in others, the VAR region proves a bit tricky to reach, we took the opportunity to cam out and then go wandering around the enormous exhibition.
Camryn Darkstone: I've opened up my exhibit just for your group, for a sneak preview. It is on the island behind the big orange Firestorm phoenix. Be sure to click the little circles on the floor when you see them.
          We followed her over there. I got stuck in the walls, I think Wizzy did too for a moment, then we were able to get a good look at the creations inside the building.
Wizard Gynoid: it's scary
Neo.Cortex: will we be able to get back out?
Camryn Darkstone: you bet
Hands-on approach to art inside Camryn's exhibit
          The emphasis of the Anniversary fair is fun and wittiness, there is something for all, from fortunetelling to social media, to mesh services, it's a way to learn about the many skilled creators the grid hosts.
Don't miss the official party on Littlefield Anniversary sim Saturday April 4. URI at the end of this post. If you can't make it over there this weekend, that's OK, the sim will be up throughtout the month of April. Just remember, not all grids have access to Littlefield, and they do not allow items to be exported from the grid.

              Our next stop was The Savage Grid. Owner and philanthropist Ken Savage was there to meet us, along with the lovely Mattie McBride
           Ken's virtual real estate runs into well over two hundred sims, between The Savage Grid, and the regions he has attached to OSGrid. The exact number is difficult to say, he lost count a while back. What is lovely about it is that these sims are in the hands of builders and creatives, who make the most of this wonderful rent-free opportunity. 
Wearing her undercover UMMA tag, Patricia Anne
 takes stock of the Avatar store
         Our visit to the grid started out on the Night Life City sim, the arrival point on the grid, which features an avatar store with Ina Centaur's free items from 2011. I have never seen a man wearing one of these shape/skin combos, and am curious to know if they have ever actually been put on outside Ina's long-dead SL Globe Theater. Any takers? I love though that there's a free store right where you land on the grid. That's a positive start to any visit.

It's an atmospheric little build with attached dance hall, and for a group like ours, it's always a good idea to go to a conventional sim before attempting to jump to - yes you guessed it, another VAR region. Not too vast though, - big enough to fly around on without making your average avatar bust a gasket. This one is called, slightly confusingly, OSGrid International. It's all about aviation.
Mattie McBride: there are 5 planes for anyone to fly
Ken.Savage: The airplanes and Helicopters here,  almost all can be flown. The planes are about as good as any I used to fly in SL, plus it was hard there without var regions
Mattie McBride: there is a 6x6 varregion with 20 sims for sailing 36 for flying and 16 for driving. It's all about fun!
Nara.Nook: oh fun
Fuschia Nightfire: oooh i want a plane
Lucy.Afarensis: me too
Ken.Savage: I am also using very small timers (.08) so the plane scripts are more smooth.
Mattie McBride: The smallest plane is a rezzer, if you touch you will get a plane to fly, when you stand, it poofs.  Jeff Hall is doing rezzers for all the planes and vehicles; another week or so be finished. Jeff also scripted the planes to fly, the small ones. Cuteulala gave me the 737 and the larger king, and they are a blast.

        As you can probably imagine, there were moments when some of us were bouncing off the edge of the varregion, making waves that had those of us still on the ground rooted to the spot with momentary lag. But nothing to write home about.
Ken Savage: Its usually best to fly when no more than 4 or 5 AVs are here. I only have 2.5 upload speed to all 200+ sims on the 2 servers, so its amazing to me it can handle it. All the sims here and my sims on OSG are running on 2 servers sitting right by my desk.
Thirza Ember: how did you meet Ken, Mattie?

Mattie McBride: I had lost my 60 sims and was a wanderer I saw a treehouse of mine that was missing some parts and so I sent him an IM saying I'd be happy to fix it - the rest is history. he volunteered to host 9 sims of commonwealth so I could rebuild.
This is at the heart of open sim, generosity tied in to the technology. And pink cars, too obviously.

          And Fuschia was host for our final destination on this Safari, or more correctly, Fuschia's typist, Nina Camplin.
          We went over to the Safari Clubhouse on Outlands sim, Metropolis Grid, to learn what she has been up to recently. In a skybox about 1000 meters above the house is a little piece of London. What is it doing here? Wait, here's a video about that.
Fuschia Nightfire: I was first approached about doing this mural in May 2014 by an employee of a London based PR company, after she had seen one of my previous murals in Swanage, Dorset that showed a broken wall, revealing the inside of the building. She was inspired to use this theme for an upcoming project they were doing for Valspar Paints as part of their launch campaign in the UK.  Her idea was to find an old building with a plain wall on one side of it and to use the broken wall idea to show a modern and colourful interior. The next few months were spent sourcing an appropriate wall. Finally in September 2014 they found this wall on the side of the Hat & Feathers pub in Clerkenwell Road, London, an extremely high profile display space with lots of passing traffic.  I was then asked to start putting together a design using mood boards supplied by the Interior Designer Will Taylor, who is the ‘colour ambassador’ for Valspar Paints.

Fuschia Nightfire: On the left is a photo of the wall, BEFORE mural, in the middle are the Mood Boards I was supplied to work with, one for each room, 6 rooms in total, in 4 floors. They wanted an extremely detailed mock up to be able to approve before the actual mural was started, so I figured that a sketch would not be enough, so I decided to build a 3D mock up here, then take snapshots and send them to the client.
             The Safari group walked a little way up the street and voila! the 3d version of the building, It is pretty cool to stand here in a virtual world and watch the time lapse video of the painting happening. It took Fuschia and her assistant, a London street artist, about three weeks to complete.
Fuschia Nightfire: Having the 3D mock up in this virtual world meant that I could access it whilst I was working on the mural to make final detail tweaks to it, with the client looking on.
         Of course looking wasn't enough for us. Neo Cortex started it, going to look at the bathtub (allegedly) on the upper floor, while Aime, Scottius and Lucy made a bee line for the bar, at ground level.
Nara.Nook: It's so cool that we can sit here in the virtual world in a mural that is in the real world.
Fuschia.Nightfire: I got a bit of press coverage, the the Standard and the Daily Mail among others. So if anyone goes to London you can still see the mural.
Nara.Nook: Is there some coating applied to protect from elements?
Fuschia.Nightfire: I use masonry paint, so it is pretty durable against the elements
          Fuschia has two more of her murals, with their 3D counterparts, on show on Outlands sim, and plans to show more in coming weeks. Fly up to take a look, and get inspired!
This week's URIs
Littlefield 2nd Anniversary    lfgrid.com:8002:Littlefield Anniversary
The Savage Grid                     polynesia.dnsalias.com:8002 - look for OSGird International on Map
Fuschia's Murals                     hypergrid.org:8002:Outlands - fly up to 1000 m from house


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