Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Pavel Stransky is doing something really interesting with AI art. He starts with an SL screenshot, then processes it through Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image Artificial Intelligence, fine tunes it with Photoshop and then adds detail and definition with another AI called GigaPixel. So from an SL screenshot he produces what looks like a Modigliani. Who knows? Perhaps it isModigliani’s “Seated Nude” as seen from the back.
Remember that Wednesday dance I blogged last week? Turns out there's more to that story, and it's a smart way of leveraging and bridging social media and metaverse platforms.
"The dance I did was the routine that was trending on TikTok," creator Phia Sims tells me. "I created the TikTok (short) version instead of the original dance from the actual series. This was my reference video."
Then she uploads and sells that dance to various metaverse platforms:
"I create for The Sims 4, IMVU, and Second Life. They’re all successful but if I had to choose I would say that both IMVU and Second Life are the most successful."
Which is good, because making a trending dance like this in such a short time takes a lot of work:
"I create this by first studying and analyzing the trending dance. After that, I put a lot of key poses on different keyframes on the Rig through Blender. It’s VERY time consuming but worth it in the end because the results are amazing. Sales have been amazing so far. I’m noticing new users buying from me and I’m very much thankful that everyone love the dance as much as I do."
Maybe what Phia is doing is only new to me, but it's incredibly savvy. While there's some SL community on TikTok, she sees more Second Life activity via her Instagram:
For our next New World Notes video we're doing a holiday theme and trying something fun while chatting about Metaverse news -- we're featuring fun Second Life gift ideas. If you're a merchant interested in having some of your items featured on the show.
Submission deadline is by December 18, SLT.
And yes, we may feature some Adult-rated items, but only if they're totally hilarious and we can blur out the naughty bits. But PG-13 is generally preferred.
Here's how to submit them:
Send it to the inventory of my excellent cohost and producer Isabelle Cheren
Also send her a notecard with the item(s) price, a short description, and a link to the Marketplace and in-world store. We'll include those links in the video description and also in a New World Notes blog post.
We'll feature our favorite items on next week's show, just in time for Christmas shopping!
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Keinenbika has mastered movement in Second Life. Look at her hair swinging in the breeze. She is excellent at framing and posing to take full advantage of the abundance of dynamic hairstyles available in SL. Her hair swirls like the flourish of ink from a paintbrush.
With the growing popularity of AI-driven 2D image generators, it's no surprise that we're starting to see many people speculating about how AI-driven 3D image generators may soon transform games and metaverse platforms. (For instance, well, AM Radio and me.)
However, veteran game industry artist Aura Trilio just hit me with a knowledgeable and refreshing blast of anti-hype, pointing out how difficult (if not impossible) it would be to have an AI which can feasibly create whole 3D worlds:
"AI isn't going to affect any field that doesn't have a giant database of free (stolen) training data for it to absorb," she explained. "There aren't enough 3d models in existence for basically any model to eat and spit out anything usable. Even most bespoke, handmade 3d model generation algorithms spit out models that are completely unusable in games because the logic behind character creation and topology is extremely precise and needs to be carefully thought out. So: it's not going to change it."
But wait: The acclaimed game No Man's Sky generated a whole galaxy of content through automated procedural generation. Doesn't that suggest its feasibility for other games/worlds?
Here's an ideal job offer for a UX designer/product manager who is up for the challenge of accomplishing a task that hasn't been solved in near 20 years*: Improving Second Life's first-time user experience so it drives retention.
Tasks include:
Overseeing, planning and execution of projects: production schedules, resourcing, and quality assurance against quantifiable goals. Immerse yourself in Second Life to attain a deep understanding of the feature set and use cases and learn the culture by getting to know the user community.
Promotion of the value of core experience of Second Life to other parts of Linden Lab, and help ensure Product leverages the ideas and resources of the larger organization.
The wording above makes me nervous, because it implies they're not looking for someone who already has a deep understanding of Second Life. Linden Lab once had dozens of people recruited from the SL user community, but that's since dwindled to a handful.
Anyway, I believe the ideal hire has both experience in Second Life and other virtual worlds:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Friiday Nightfire’s “Miss You” stopped my browsing in its tracks. I have seen a very similar picture of a cat and a koi and immediately began searching for it. I could not find the picture I was looking for until I realized it was packed away in a box in my best friend’s basement. It’s one of two Chinese églomisé paintings I bought at an auction many years ago. It’s a classic subject, the cat and the koi, though this picture feels more Japanese than Chinese thanks to its minimalism.
I love how this picture is framed in white almost like a Polaroid. It reminds me of pictures in a photo album from back when we curated our photos, saving them into albums to protect them and organize them. [To Teleport, click here: Adagio Gardens] The picture should be enjoyed with the music of Chet Baker & Stan Getz - 1983. [To listen, click here: Just friends]
For more snaps with a similar sensibility, click here:
In keeping with Second Life's famous tradition of instantly riffing on the latest pop culture hotness, Phia Sims created an SL dance inspired by the one Jenna Ortega as Wednesday does in Netflix's Wednesday -- watch above, compare and contrast with the original below. (Cajsa was ahead of the curve on this one.)
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Laylah Lecker’s most recent post is Let the Christmas Shopping Begin on her blog Fashion Collecker (nice pun) has a fun little quote, “Shopping is my boyfriend.” I love the black and white color block shift and the hat, it reminds me of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, even though Audrey’s dress was all black. The hat is slightly different but the spirit is similar. [See Audrey’s picture here.]
Above: Standard Iron Man with Watermelon-Flavored Iron Man and Duck Head Iron Man (via Torley)
I had forgotten about this until Linden Lab veteran-turned-guru VC Hunter Walk reminded me when we chatted for my upcoming book: There's free copies of an official Iron Man outfit in Second Life, part of the promotion for the very first movie in the Marvel Comic Universe in 2008, even before Disney owned Marvel.
And notably, the outfit is fully customizable by Second Life users, as a way of encouraging fan-made content and creativity. This was quite a progressive leap for Marvel at the time, but a good one that understands how metaverse platforms work.
"The challenge for lots of corporations and established companies," as Hunter put it to me, "is whether they end up defaulting to the controllable level of where the user can modify the outfits but can't really create [with them]".
Compare and contrast, for instance, with official Fortnite skins from the MCU and other major IP, which far as I know, are not modifiable. Which is probably one reason why we don't see many videos of MCU characters in Fortnite doing anything besides participating in standard battle royale matches. (And my guess is the long tail for actual purchases of these Marvel skins are not as good as they could have been, too.)
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Zoe Jimenez is primarily a Second Life creator and photographer with an obsession with graphic novels and magazine covers. Her Second Life photos are full of covers and character cards, most not safe for Google. However, with the advent of Midjourney, she took a departure from the virtual world and went into a creative frenzy, refining her skill with the AI until she created “Proof of Concept”, her Midjourney-illustrated graphic novel. You will note at the bottom of the page, she explicitly lists Midjourney as a co-creator, the kind of transparency that AI creation demands. This is page three of her story and it’s hilarious. I love when he says she is too much and she replies, “I will be.”
The Lensa app has gone viral in recent weeks, with much excitement over its new AI-driven “magic avatars” feature.
Small problem: It's not exactly magic nor purely artificial intelligence. Instead, to create these avatars, the app is apparently scraping up artists' images without their consent. The image appropriation is so blatant in many cases, the Lensa-generated images even include the original artist's signature. (See example above.)
"I think they didn’t think artists would stand up for themselves because we don’t [have] industry labels the way the music industry does," Lauren tells me. She says that, because Stable Diffusion, the AI company which provides Lensa's neural network, is very careful about how the platform samples and trains from recorded music.
"The fact that they do so with their music model shows they are well aware of copyright (I mean it’s a basic concept, anyone who isn’t a little kid is aware of copyright), and that it’s not something that was too complicated to implement."
Lauryn's findings were noted yesterday by NBC News, but so far, Lensa's corporate owner has only offered an incomplete reply:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I have been watching Wednesday, the new Netflix series, slowly because I am savoring it. I am only on the third episode, the one with the fantastic dance scene and Wednesday all dressed up for the ball in a confection similar to this picture by Camilla Mel Smel Auroline.. I like that she gives us a look that is more true to the character. One of the things Wednesday in the show would not wear is a very short dress with exposed garters. She has no interest in being the subject of the male gaze in Western patriarchy.
Game industry artist Martin Nebelong recently started experimenting with ChatGPT, and discovered he was able to quickly create an entire "choose your adventure"-style adventure game through the AI text generator. Taking that a step further, he then took the ChatGPT text and fed it into Midjourney, the AI image generator, which then created illustrations to accompany the game. (Watch above.)
"I was very surprised by how quickly the chat bot was in on the idea," Martin tells me. "To begin with, it wanted to write the whole story including all branches in one reply. But when I asked it to serve them to me as a story bit with a few branching options, to wait for my selection and only then to move on in the story, it got that an started over with the correct format. When it wanted to wrap up the story faster than I wanted, I just asked it to do a more detailed story and it did so.
"I guess the most impressive part to me was when I asked it to describe the characters in high detail for the prompts I wanted to use in Midjourney. It gave very detailed descriptions of all the characters including their clothing, their look, personality, names etc." (See an example below.)
But he was also impressed at how ChatGPT added descriptive flourishes he wasn't expecting:
I'm surprised this wasn't the case before, but hopefully it gives the viewer codebase much more visibility to GitHub's huge and highly creative developer community. Who knows, maybe someone will finally make a stable mobile TPV client. (Pour one out for Lumiya.)
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
“Have surfboard, will travel” could be Kian Ericsson’s motto for a recent photo project he is working on. He’s touring the many sims of Second Life and taking a pic of himself and his board, even when they are incongruous. This pic looks plausible until you notice the snow on the ground. Brrrr. It was taken at EchoRidge. [To teleport, click here]
Sanny Yoshikawa が、New World Notesのなかから、毎月おすすめのバーチャルワールドニュースを日本語で紹介します Sanny Yoshikawa covers the monthly virtual world highlights from New World Notes for virtual Japan.
First published in 2008, "The Husband That Eshi Made" is an essential New World Notes story of how the virtual world can connect us with people in the material realm, even long after they're gone:
[M]emories of her late husband] wracked her in the grocery store, on the second anniversary of Glenn’s passing. Since then, Eshi had become a metaverse artist of some acclaim, creating a concert hall made of light, and an evening gown made of fire, among other wonders. Which is probably why her next stop after the store was her computer.
“I felt so powerless and alone,” as she recalls, “that I told myself, ‘You know, it might be a sick thing to do, a pathetic thing to do, whatever-- but if I cannot have this guy in real life, I will MAKE him in Second Life.'”
His widow re-created him as best she could-- rather, Eshi Otawara remade herself, transforming her avatar to look like her husband. And when she was done remaking him, she took Glenn on a tour through Second Life.
She took him skydiving in Straylight. She took him to Ruta Maya for a butterfly ride. “I get to do things with his pixel body that he'd be doing if he were alive,” as she puts it. She even gave him a flat belly, something she’d known he’d wanted for some time. “I am sure he was cracking up in whatever form he exists now,” she says.
I ask Eshi what it’s like to become the avatar version of Glenn.
“Like he is hugging me,” she says. “I miss his face most. I used to stare at him all the time.”
"I put my RL pics first, and then it generated a Midjourney version of me," Whiskey explains. "Then I added SL pics, and did the same thing, and then I blended them all in several steps. I found that Midjourney doesn't do well with glasses, so I tried an older pic without glasses." (See above.)
In the process, she learned something about Whiskey in SL and Whiskey IRL:
"I used to try hard to make my avatar look like RL me. But over the past couple of years, I’ve stopped caring so much and have just played with new faces for Whiskey. I think it would be interesting to try this again with an older Whiskey face. But what I learned this round is that I still have a certain look, even though Whiskey is less like Jenn." (I.E. Whiskey's offline owner.)
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
LK is a Flickr microblogger. This picture is Waiting for Bridgerton which is a great title since fans do not know when Season Three will begin. I love the dress and the dogs which are so perfect for the scene and marvel that she manages to take a regency dress and make it seem kawaii while she does it. The exciting thing about LK is she shows how to do more than just credits in a Flickr microblog.
Dress: [Nobel Creations] Antoinette Dress This stunning dress is made 4 Maitreya and Legacy and comes in Cream, Floral and Gray, all with a pink or gold choice. Here's shown Floreal in the pink and gold option.
Meela Vanderbuilt is one of Second Life's top YouTubers and she recently expanded her fun, chatty, seriously glamorous brand of videos into the world of GTA Online roleplay. (Watch above.) Here's her expert take on the similarities and differences between roleplay in GTA versus SL:
"The general concept is the same. GTA is more focused on voice role play and the majority of Second Life role play is text based. Over the years, SL role play has evolved from strict guidelines and paragraph-emoting roleplay to various types existing, including just playing out different lifestyles and not focusing much on the delivery, just the overall story.
"The later is closest to Grand Theft Auto roleplay. In GTA, people create a character, have a general background story and then navigate through cities as that character. Story progression will depend on their interactions with other characters and the features of the role play server.
"Servers are comparable to Second Life sims. They’re independently owned and will have different features or stories even though they share the same general framework of GTA’s Los Santos. A lot are centered around crime because of the nature of GTA, so gangs, police, general civilians may be a large part. Some cities may focus on the university, some on commerce and business ownership, etc."
As with Second Life, you can customize your avatar quite a bit in GTA Online, but options vary from server to server -- and unfortunately, are still somewhat limited for women and non-white avatars:
This is actually more of a milestone for VRChat than the Sony body trackers I mentioned earlier this week, and that was also huge -- VRChat just launched a group function in open beta:
Groups is a huge system that we think is going to change VRChat forever. Most of the features we’ve mentioned today will be released in the first, groundwork stage of Groups. Others will be released – along with polishing dictated by your feedback – in the weeks following the launch of Groups. We want to push these updates out relatively quickly, as we’d like to get Groups up and running as fast as possible.
While this group feature has long been in development by the startup, it's notable that a Second Life veteran is helping with its progress: Andrew Sempere, recently hired as VRChat's Senior Systems Designer, who was a key member of IBM's Second Life team back in the day.
While VRC and SL's group systems are very different (watch the video above), they share some commonalities with the thought of Nobel-winning economist Elinor Ostrom and her theory of collective action:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Since Mr. Badass’hay bale sent me off on a hay bale tangent yesterday, I jumped back to his stream today to give it the attention it deserves. I love his stream, a mix of gorgeous landscapes and candid pics of him having fun. “Morning Haze’ is at Endless Birdlings Flat [To teleport, click here] and shows that even though we think of industrial sites as blights on the landscape, they have their own sort of stark beauty.
For more of Mr. Badass’ gorgeous landscapes, click here:
