New World Notes

SL Machinima Masterpieces: Lainy Voom's "Fall" (2009)

Fall from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

Still among the very most powerful machinima I've ever seen, Lainy Voom conveys deep emotion with perfectly composed shots and edits timed to a perfectly chosen soundtrack (by Claire Fitch), integrating clever use of WindLight (when it still very new to Second Life) and the scripting system for visual effects. As she told me back then:

Soda Gnome Explores Second Life as Only a Soda Gnome Can

Soda Gnome! How does he do it? Why does he do it? We don't yet know, but you should definitely see him in action, shooting random insane encounters in the virtual world. NSFW warning for above: Zombie sex, Darth Vader stripping, breasts as a weapon, other epic strangeness. A follow-up video plunges us into still more NSFW-ish (but good natured, goddammit) territory, featuring gratuitous nudity, woman-dancing-on-head, virtual showers, Star Trek and La La Land references:

This is Your Thursday Rocking Yosakoi Dance Interlude

I do not always blog SL dance videos, but when I do, they're seriously rocking takes on a traditional Yosakoi dance. My Japanese is a bit rusty but apparently this was shot (by Fair Saeed) in a themed sim called Yanfes with a Japanese language homepage here.

Anyone know the music source? Because I think it kicks koto-flavored ass.

"Library": Beautiful SL Machinima Tribute to Classic Literature

Pepa Cometa created this beautiful and achingly nostalgic Second Life machinima, one of the best I've seen in quite awhile. It's a tribute to great stories and characters that have endured the test of time, and the favorite books which loom large in our memory. (In other words, a paean to real books created in a virtual world.) Thanks to an installation by metaverse artist Cica Ghost, those books are literally large, towering all around Pepe's child-like avatar. Pepe also enlists a cast of SLers who've turned their avatars into classic characters who come alive around her: Don Quixote, d'Artagnan, the Little Prince, and Scheherazade.

Machinima Masterpieces: "Pipedream" Featuring SL's Petrovsky Flux

Shot in 2008 by Mescaline Tammas, a real life film editor, "Pipedream @ Hambone Flux" is a masterpiece for several reasons: Beautifully shot and cut, it was among the first to go viral outside the SL community, with Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow writing, "Man, this is the first SL machinima I've seen that crosses the line from 'extremely promising' to 'Holy crap!'" Just as key, it's a tribute to Second Life's self-assembling, self-destructing, steampunk city known as the Bogon Flux back then, a masterpiece in itself. And good news, it's still in Second Life: Now called the Petrovsky Flux, click here to visit.

A fourth reason? It was among the first SL machinimas to use a customized WindLight filter, an eerie, smokey, Max Max-y sort of atmosphere. (WindLight had only recently launched.) Created by Mescaline himself, it's called "London 2026" -- here's the code below:

Machinima Masterpieces: Molotov Alva & the Search for His Creator (2007)

Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator - Episode 1 from Submarine Channel on Vimeo.

Another SL machinima classic to watch this weekend from exactly 10 years ago: Part 1 of "Molotov Alva & the Search for His Creator", a feature documentary shot in Second Life by artist Douglas Gayeton, which was subsequently purchased by HBO and aired on its sister network Cinemax. Strange, beautiful, and moving, I can't find the full version streaming anywhere, but it is available for purchase as a DVD on Amazon.

Read about how it was made here. Capturing SL footage, for example, was done with a unique technique I'd love to see others replicate:

Machinima Masterpieces: Lainy Voom's "Tale from Midnight City" (2007)

Shot almost exactly a decade ago, "Tale from Midnight City" was among the very first machinimas to convince me that the genre -- created in Second Life, in particular -- could become a full-fledged art form. It's also a time capsule for the state of Second Life in 2007, and a testament to Lainy's artistry, working around the limitations back then to make some seriously impressive. Read my 2007 article about it here.

The Wacky, Helium-Pitched Second Life Adventures of Soda Gnome

OK this is pretty hilarious:

Who is Soda Gnome? Where did he come from? When did he try to defeat Supergirl in a sandbox building context only to be bested by Mr. Spock and his whales? These answers remain unclear, but this video just popped up on my feed, and I can say it's one of the funnier "Let's play Second Life" videos I've seen in a long time. And it's just one in a sprawling series of Soda Gnome videos! Start with Episode One:

Metaverse Art in SL: Penumbra, a 3D, Immersive Painting Avatars Can Walk In

Click here until the end of March to visit "Penumbra", by Meilo Minotaur and CapCat Ragu, which Caitlin Tobias describes succinctly:

[A] 3D installation on the ground level – complete with sounds and interactive elements (some objects hand you an avatar as a gift!). An artwork to walk in and around, full of wonderful details and textures. The story of Penumbra is somewhat explained in the note-card you can obtain at the landing point, and also in Kate’s blogpost in which she announces these exhibitions and gives more background information about the artists.

Kate Bergdorf is the owner of the gallery sim. Machinima master Tutsy Navarathna created a dreamy video of the installation, worth viewing in itself:

Real Life Opera Singer Performs Over Second Life Machinima

This is a uniquely beautiful SL machinima from Cassie Middles, not just for its swooping camerawork, its wonderful use of focus effects and its dynamic lighting/shadow, but also because of Cassie herself -- in real life she's a veteran opera singer, and she sings into her mic while moving around her avatar. ("Green Finch and Linnet Bird", in this case, from Sweeney Todd.)