Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing showcase of all things stylish in SL
It's been a long, arduous journey to develop the ten Hottest Second Life Male Avatars List this year, but we've finally arrived at Part One. I've pored over the pics and profiles of nearly 100 guys in the past two months, and culled my list down dramatically to 10 of the most gorgeous and intriguing male avatars who've made their mark on Second Life this year. Let's not put it off any longer –– after the break, guys one through five of New World Notes' Hottest Male Avatars of 2009!
Based on what Steve Job says in his announcement, both will be compatible with iPad. What's more, it's now feasible to incorporate the 3D graphics elements of Second Life into those apps and others sure to come.
But that's only the beginning. Because at least two companies (that I'm aware of) have already developed touch screen user interfaces for Second Life. Here's one:
Read more about it here. Then imagine a similar display running Second Life on the iPad. The near future of the metaverse may not be in desktops or laptops or game consoles (not portable enough) or mobile phones (too portable). For today at least, it seems like the metaverse is moving toward a time when we hold it in both hands.
Jobs photo credit: Ryan Anson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
If you saw the 2008 hit movie Role Models, you may remember the scene in the coffee shop where Paul Rudd gets pwned playing a computer game against Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- or as he'll be forever known, McLovin. As it turns out, they aren't actually playing a game, because they're really just looking at machinima video footage created in Second Life. Watch this scene closely, just uploaded courtesy Damien Fate, who helped develop it (warning: contains ruddy language):
The machinima was created by ILL Clan Studios, who were tasked by Role Models' producers to create a cost-effective simulation of a game which fit the script:
"They needed shots that looked somewhat like a 3D side-scrolling fighting game (like Street Fighter or Tekken) but with medieval knights," Ill Clan's Frank Dellario (illbixby Cerveau in SL) tells me. "One character had to look like the actor Paul Rudd and the other like Christopher Mintz-Plasse, so we created custom-skinned avatars and did some back and forth with them till they were happy with the likeness of the actors, the costumes, the custom sword fight animations and the graphics that simulated the look of the game (health bar going down, particle effects, etc.)"
Ordinarily, this kind of production might be done from scratch with 3D animation software, or a customized version of an existing videogame (after the rights had been licensed from the game publisher), but that wasn't feasible in this case.
Cypress Rosewood, a popular SL musician, was recently hit by a real world outrage: his instruments and computers were stolen, including a vintage 1935 acoustic guitar given to him by his grandfather. A number of community members are rallying to help him out, and Delinda Dryssen has a collection of links to fundraisers here. Of course an easy (and entertaining) way of lending your support is buying his music from his website. (Image by Crap).
In case you haven't seen him live in-world before, here's a cool video of him performing his ethereal music in Inspire Space Park for Yuri's Night:
The link to this machinima by Japanese Second Life Resident Porcorosso Ackmann has sat in my inbox for a couple months, probably because after I saw it one night at 3am, I woke the next morning thinking it had been part of my own fever dreams. But no, there apparently was a dance party for someone named DJ Yaz Rocket...
... which somehow devolved into a battle royale between King Kong and the Battleship Yamato, an X-Wing, a corvette convertible, an ornithopter, a miniature solar system, a purple elephant with karate skills, a dragon, a battle ostrich, and maybe a dozen more combatants I can't quite qualify. I guess. All to the score of Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain", of course, and beautifully photographed.
One day Emerald Wynn peeked inside her Second Life account to discover that during her years in SL she had amassed over 100,000 virtual items in her inventory. "Seriously," she begged in this long Plurk thread, "I need help. Don't even know where to start." Helpful friends offer advice, but most of them involve tips for making manual deletion go somewhat faster. The thing is, even if she deleted a 1,000 items a day, it would still take over three months to get through it all.
Here's the first reviews of "Life 2.0", the full-length Second Life documentary which just premiered last weekend at Sundance, by credentialed movie geeks Peter Sciretta of Slashfilm, Laremy Legel of Film.com, and Brandon Tenney of First Showing. They all have positive things to say about elements of the movie, with the segment about content creator Asri Falcone and her war with content theft generating the most praise. They're less enthused (to the point of being unsettled) by the other two segments featuring an adulterous relationship unfolding in Second Life, and an ageplayer who in real life is a man about to be married. Most curious to me, they wanted more of an editorial voice and broad overview of Second Life, perhaps because they had little background with SL beforehand. In any case, not having seen the movie myself, it's difficult to review their reviews, but their take may influence the fate of "Life 2.0" far as acquisition offers and distribution deals.
Update 2, 12:15pm: The Onion AV Club's Nathan Rabin gives Life 2.0 a B, but ironically, that seems to partly stem from a negative bias against Second Life going in. (Changing post title to reflect broader gamut of reactions.) Excerpt after the break:
Somewhere near Shanghai, aston Leisen sends a farewell to Google from Second Life... and a greeting to New World Notes readers from China
Last Friday I briefly noted the beautiful new China simulator in Second Life, which its creator, Aston Leisen, has fashioned to resemble a 3D watercolor painting. Were you to visit this China of Second Life, you might have noticed Mr. Leisen's farewell message to Google placed within it, thanking the search engine company for "for making the invisible visible". His virtual shrine was a virtual version of the tributes young Chinese placed outside Google's Beijing headquarters, after Google announced it was withdrawing from their country. For as it happens, Aston Leisen is a new media professor living near Shanghai, who fears that Second Life may one day go the way of Google.
"Given the latest news of Google's leaving and the intensive hit on the Internet/free communication from government of China in last free months," he told me recently, "[I'm worried] how Second Life, as a wonderful open platform, will continue to survive. To be honest, I kinda like how SL stayed at the edge of the mainstream culture. [Because] SL might not be accessible from China when it gets popular."
Aston has taught two classes on Second Life at his college, which for obvious reasons, I won't name. (Concern over his safety is the same reason I asked him to send that greeting photo above, with his face obscured.) Censorship aside, Aston has some thoughts on teaching SL that I suspect educators who share the platform will relate to, and learn from. How do you engage students with Second Life? Based on his two classes, the best way is by doing:
This year's Sundance Film Festival opened late last week, and one of the very first movies to launch the event was "Life 2.0", the feature length documentary on Second Life by Jason Spingarn-Koff (known in SL as Jay Spire). Here's an excellent article on the making of the movie on Sundance's site. I've been exchanging brief text messages with Jason, who presumably is sending them while trudging through the Park City snow and jostling into James Franco and other stars with movies also screening there. The premiere, he told me, was "amazing", and sent along this recap of the screening he wrote for the Independent Filmmaker Project blog. Sample:
The crowd was lively -- more laughs than I expected -- and responded as I hoped to the dramatic ups and downs... As I take shuttles around snowy Park City, I'm running into a surprising number of people who have seen or heard of the film and want to chat about virtual worlds and the implications for society.
He also tipped me to three new clips on the movie's homepage, two featuring the deep if troubled romance of Amie Goode and Bluntly Berblinger, and one featuring the impressible content creator Ms. Asri Falcone, matching machinima footage taken from within SL to video and/or audio interviews of their real life owners. Stay tuned: If all goes well for Jason, a film/TV/Internet distribution deal may be in the offing.
Back in 2008 I noted "Spontaneously Me", a Flickr group that challenges Second Life Residents to reveal the real person behind the avatar with an impromptu self-portrait, and was glad to notice recently that people are still adding photos. Here's the latest slideshow (with a few SL images thrown in), depicting Residents in all their diversity, though perhaps self-selecting for those who tend to be babe-like in both realities:
