Meet SLer Ceri Quixote, Whose Avatar Stands at 200 Feet

I heard whisperings that Ms. Ceri Quixote had a tall SL avatar, but I didn't quite get how tall she was, until she stopped by my office in Waterhead. Or maybe stepped on my office is the better thing to say. For look, Ms. Quixote is frigging tall:

"About 62 meters or 200 feet," she tells me, from way the hell up. (In the photo above, that dot on the horizon is me.) And yes, this is her actual avatar, not some kind of non-interactive mega-prim statue -- an avatar that can walk around and interact more or less like any other SL avatar: "At this scale there are a couple of technical issues, but pretty much yes," she says. So I'll just go ahead and call it now: Ceri Quixote is the tallest avatar in SL or any other online world, ever.

How'd she come to be that big? Well, let her explain:

"I saw another giant avatar at Petite Kingdom and was really impressed, so I decided to try my own hand at creating a giant. Once I had the basics down, I wanted to see how far I could push the scale."

As you likely guessed, her avatar uses Second Life's latest mesh functionality: "The giant avatar is a rigged mesh avatar. It was created in Blender. It attaches to any attachment point, just like a prim article of clothing. Since it's rigged mesh, it automatically conforms to the body wherever you attach it." That also means her avatar works with all the standard SL animations, she added.

But now that she's a tall avatar, does she feel tall herself, as the Proteus Effect might suggest? "I don't know if my identity changes that much," she says, "but certainly my perspective does. I'm not naturally outgoing, so standing out like this is a bit of a novel experience."

And here's the thing: you will soon get a chance to see the world from her perspective more or less, for Ms. Ceri Quixote will soon sell a somewhat less tall version of her incredibly tall avatars in the Marketplace. And after that, giants will roam the world, and unless regulations against them are imposed, Second Life will never be the same.

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Comments

[Ezra]

Now for a God of War or Shadow of the Colossus scripted combat system.

[jjccc coronet (@JJcccART)]

muted

[Marianne McCann]

Impressive.

I wish the movie showed more movement than it did, but cool anyway

[Wizard Gynoid]

maybe she will run into King Kong somewhere...

[Softpaw Sommer]

She hung out at Fantasy Faire a lot last week and is as nice as she is big.

[Emerald Wynn]

YESSSSS! I'll be first in line to buy one of those AVs!

[Recka Wuyts]

Will there be a SLand of Giants?

[Kara Trapdoor]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/karatrapdoor/6965741630/ I saw her at the Fantasy Faire too and people just stood around watching it was soo cool. She gave me permission to film and I put a little of it at the end of this vid if you want to see more. It was very fun to see. She was very nice.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

I will be close behind you in line, Emerald. :)

[Metacam Oh]

And a new Second Life species is born

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Why should they be forbidden? Perhaps the constraints on avatars made sense in the beginning, but the world is built up enough that I don't think there will be the sort of "avatar arms race" that LL initially feared; only the few who really truly wish to be giants or giantesses will do so. (BIGAVS and other giant avatar aids have been around for quite a while without SL being overrun by giants.)

I suspect that the issues of clothing for mesh avatars will cut down the numbers of giant avatars still further. Also, if mesh avatars are physical objects, so that as a giant you really won't be able to get through the door (unlike the avatar stretchers that use a bug in SL animation so that the avatar looks stretched out, but to the SL server is unchanged in height), that will still further ensure that people will think seriously before adopting such an avatar.

[Deoridhe Quandry]

She has a shorter, maybe 12 or 13 foot avatar she put on to dance with us a while as the Faire was closing. I have to admit, I'm terribly tempted to pick one up, too!

[yoshiko Fazuku]

Now if only i could get a Godzilla avatar for my Otaku Zone sim on Avination

[Salazar Jack]

Giants once roamed the regions of Cowell and Noyo years ago… http://snapZ.me/s/37297 – I’m glad to see they have returned.

[chefkoch.resident]

If you think that this avatar is big then you should have a look at my giant avatar which is 345meter (check out my blog, scroll down there) or look at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandolo_magnesi/7017369097/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandolo_magnesi/7017366679/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandolo_magnesi/7017371309/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bandolo_magnesi/7025362603/stats/

Greets Jeff Gogh

[Silverfox Rainbow]

i saw her at the fantasy faire she was usally at the tides sim, i was so impressed with it but it was so funny when i was exploring with a friend

me: 'giant woman!'

friend: 'where?' (walks into a pillar face first! trying to see)

[Orca Flotta]

It sure is funny.

And that's it, that's all. I can't see any sense or purpose behind giant avies. Can't walk thru doors, can't explore properly, can't use vehicles, look stupid and wrong wherever they are.

In my time in SL I shrunk from a 2.50 meters woman to a "dwarfish" 1.97 girl (still enormous if compared to RL). And it feels so much better being on the small side of things. I don't look like riding kiddie bikes and cars or sailing model boats anymore, I can move inside my house without running into walls, I can look other avies in the face when chatting, the world became bigger. All is good now.

[Adeon Writer]

That avatar is great, but wait a minute.

You can see mesh now? :D

[John Branch]

I can see that some commenters here are eager to have a giant avie, but I'm not. Abandoning the human scale would seem like a loss to me.

[Uccello]

@Marianne The avatar movement is pretty good, actually. It seemed very natural. I spoke with Ceri at the Fantasy Faire recently and snapped a few pix http://poultryreport.blogspot.com/2012/04/fantasy-faire-macro-avie.html

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Ms. Flotta and Mr. Branch: I understand your point of view; I even agree with it... part of the time. Most of the time, though, my theme song is by Billy Joel. "I don't know why I go to extremes..."

I make my avatar as tall, leggy, and busty as I can. I've been a Victorian bearded lady. I'm hoping that mesh avatars will let me have both an immense bosom and Mlle. Polaire's thirteen-inch waistline.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Oops. Continuing.. SL is supposed to be "your world... your imagination". Of course I will honor sim, store, and landowners' wishes--I would never take up more than one seat or row in an SL auditorium or restaurant. But yes, at least part of the time, with permission, I'd love to be a few hundred feet tall. Or a very voluptuous fairy other times.

(Too bad the machinamist didn't use The Bobs' "My, I'm Large"...:))

[Salazar Jack]

Giants play an important role in the storytelling of worlds. Without them there would be no jack and the Beanstalk, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair, Attack of the 40 Foot Woman or Gulliver’s Travels. I welcome their existence and look forward to the day when I might stumble upon a cake with the words, "Eat Me” written in frosting.

[foneco zuzu]

"Your Word, Your Imagination"
No matter how i disagree or not with using mesh viewers or with mesh in itself, Any has the right to be or look as they wish, it they behave accordingly to LL TOS and most important, to common sense!

[Pussycat Catnap]

I actually think this is really cool.

As one of those 'to-scale' folks, who is big on proportion / anatomy / and proper use of scale...

One reason to get normal avatars to their right scale is so that giant avatars, that are meant to convey the theme of being tall, can actually be giant. Proper use of scale is important for dramatic effect: so that a tiny creature appears tiny, and a giant one appears giant.

Likewise proper use of proportions is important: so that when you deform/distort, you do it for effect to achieve a certain reaction / impact in the observer.

Basic art-class / design-class lesson.

The funny thing about this avatar is that by being -NOT- based on the SL mesh, it is actually better proportioned than most SL women avatars. Note how long the arms are - that's how they are SUPPOSED to be.

Kudos on a job well done.

I do wonder how much distance is covered when walking - does it seem to walk very slowly due to still moving at the speed of a regular avatar, or is she using a speed booster to cover 'to scale' amounts of ground with a step?

[Hamlet Au]

"You can see mesh now? :D"

Dude, I had to stand there for like 15 minutes getting this girl to fully display. And even then I got all the fancy ass features turned down. I couldn't to show the big shadow she cast!

[Adeon Writer]

I know you think it's a ridiculous concept, and unnecessary, and I agree, but you really need to let one of these eggheads fix your install some weekend. It's worth it in the long run.

[Aliasi Stonebender]

I'm also one of the giant avatar users. I don't go to such extremes (not because I *can't*, just that I stick to a 2x to 6x scale for practical purposes - I have larger ones in inventory) but for people asking why... why make petites? Why make furries? Why, in fact, make anything?

It's SL, people do stuff. Deal with it. :)

[BaadKitteh]

Not only is she not necessarily the tallest, she's far from the first to do this; a couple of ladies in my flickr group have been running around in "giant" mesh avis for a month or more now.

[acehomey]

This opens the door for favorite fictional giants to roam around SL. I'm already picturing japanese monster battles -- Godzilla! Ultraman! :D

[Winter Jefferson]

REally pretty 200 foot tall woman? Someone get me a bunch of roses, a Barry White CD and a cherrypicker. STAT.

[Dave Bell]

The usual AVs I run are what could be called film-star heroic, people who would be taller than average in the real world, but not gigantic. And there is a tendency for people to go for really tall AVs to get supermodel proportions.

This is something completely different.

I could see a character of this sort appearing in an SL version of the story of Jason and the Argonauts. Talos, throwing boulders at the Argo.

[chefkoch.resident]

I found some older clips on my Harddisk and compiled a fast raw cut clip with it:

The biggest mesh avatar of secondlife - 345meter Giant Colossus HD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je2iqYgiMf0

Its the smallest one of my giant avatars.
Greets Jeff Gogh.