Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Mya Audebarn’s “La Petife Fille De La Mer” made me think of Alberto Vargas. I had to check to make sure it was Second Life, it looks so much like a painting. I love it when I see someone paying homage to the great artists through Second Life and showing how very versatile Second Life artists are. There is such great variety in how people express their love for Second Life.
S.Y.N.C. is an upcoming machinma shot entirely in VRChat, and it's among the most amazing that I've seen -- along with the professional polish, the many fight scenes (via guns, swords, and full contact kung fu) are impressively fluid and articulated. And as befits most metaverse projects with this level of excellence, it's a fully furry production.
Directed and starring "Legend50210" (let's call him Legend for short), the footage is captured, he tells me, "using the natively supported stream camera function supplied by VRChat. I hold the artificial camera in my hand and move it accordingly like an actual camera minus the weight."
The action scenes are, as they appear, shot with the actor in a full body rig:
"Most people on the platform use the standard form of 6 point tracking which accommodates for head, hands, feet and hips. Me, I went all out and got added ones that include my chest, knees and elbows, bringing my points of tracking up to 11."
At first I thought the scenes were shot with actors logged onto VRChat from various parts of the world. But the way these scenes are actually shot is perhaps even more painstakingly impressive:
Despite all the dune buggies in the teaser trailer, it's not There, but Everywhere. However, detailed information about it exists nowhere -- except, that is, in the studio of Build A Rocket Boy, founded former Rockstar North head Leslie Benzies. The montage video shows glimpses of many environments and some Fortnite-type combat, and from what a game industry reporter could glean, it's going to be a metaverse-ish platform of some kind:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Dia’s pictures catch my eye with the excellent poses and her care in shooting them. Take this untitled picture. Both sneakers are on the floor, no slight hover or subtle sinking into the floor. Her fingers touch her hand, the elbow is behind but not in the leg.
Using Bento and HUDs or third party viewers that let people fine tune poses, this kind of excellence is increasingly common. But for someone like me who fought with poses in 2007, it still is wondrous to see. Especially in such a striking picture. There’s something lonely about this pic, perhaps because the light is so dusty. I imagine her waiting for someone who is very, very late, wondering whether she should just give up and go home.
Scrambling in response to much Internet snark, Mark Zuckerberg recently updated his Keane-eyed Horizon Worlds avatar that he posted to Facebook last week (above left) with a much more detailed and realistic version (above right). Writing:
I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic -- it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more -- even on headsets -- and Horizon is improving very quickly.
It’s a mystery why his first version was so basic -- both the avatar and the user-made Eiffel tower in the background -- but even stranger to me is what it implies about Meta’s underlying conception for metaverse platform avatars. Apparently, it includes the premise that avatars should be a mixed reality variation of the real world user, and that consumers even want this.
For newcomers to metaverse platforms, this is a common assumption -- probably because the mainstream press devotes so much coverage to one-off mixed reality events where it makes sense for avatars to somewhat resemble their real owners. In other words, celebrity appearances. For instance, Travis Scott in Fortnite, Lil Nas X in Roblox, or more locally, Matthew Ball in Breakroom.
But this is actually the exception. Overwhelmingly, metaverse platform users do not prefer avatars based on their real life appearance, even when the internal tools to customize them that way exist.
This is an important distinction to understand, because it reflects both the market preference and the underlying psychological needs which drive it:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Channon’s “It’s Complicated” is a wonderful example of how powerful a duotone can be. They don’t have to be black and white and different colors bring subtly different subtext. Blue is associated with the freedom of the wide open skies. It’s a futuristic color, frequently the color of lighting in space movies and tv series. Think of Tron. [See trailer here.] The bright, blue light of this duotone is the color of the future.
To see more examples of Charron’s use of color, click here:
Like all artforms new technology comes along, and equivalent debates arise in different fields. “Is electronic music really music?” Same question.
Some people will always value craft (or instrumentalism, in the music case) and so for them no it won't be art. And that’s fine.
For the rest of us art is about ideas. Brian Eno talks at length about how he allows machines (or software) to create sounds. and how his role becomes that of a curator. When the pseudo-random oscillators create a pleasing result only then does he mark that recording as one to keep. And what order does he edit and present them in? That is the art that makes his ambient music interesting.
Or consider another form of art where it's also possible to cheaply and quickly generate many, many digital images:
Mobile phones in the 80s were incredibly expensive and bulky, the connectivity was sporadic and low quality, but their fundamental utility for communicating with anyone by phone nearly anywhere you carried one was immediately and universally obvious. This use case was so valuable, early adopters were willing to put up with their many shortcomings...
"The images I'm generating is unique to me; it starts with my imagination. The machine attempts to understand and match my text with imagery. I don't think anyone who sees my work would say it's not art..."
If you were to judge Second Life only by how it's mostly depicted on Flickr or Facebook, you'd assume it's a photorealistic fashion simulator. But among the Second Life users of Japan, many of whom congregate on Twitter, Second Life is just as much (if not moreso) a comically zany and quirky play space, where you're just as likely to, say, come across a giant circus hamster playing Pokémon GO.
"I think most Japanese SLers grew up in a quirky culture in real life," New World Notes' Japanese translator Sanny Yoshikawa tells me. (That's Sanny above, as the hamster.) "We played gacha or funny arcade games when we were little kids. Then we moved to Nintendo and PlayStation. Also, so many funny anime and TV shows were always beside us. I think we are native to quirky culture."
Sounds right to me. Now that I'm following hundreds of Japanese SLers on Twitter, my feed is blessed with adorably goofy and wacky images on the daily, depicting a Second Life that reminds me of its earlier, Bebop Reality days before mesh had moved the economy and culture toward high end fashion.
More on that topic another day, but for now, here's a glimpse of SL Japan, with some translation from Sanny when necessary. She helps explain, for example, why a buff naked guy with Gundam weaponry and a teddy bear helmet is wearing a salad on his crotch:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Kristal creates beautifully romantic fantasy-themed pictures such as “Fly Higher.” I love the movement created by her flowing hair, the blowing leaves, and the skirt. I love the bright light in the background blowing out the background and casting her avatar into semi-shadow. I love the color suggestive of heat and sunshine. She kindly included a SLurl. [Click here to teleport}
Here's Why Midjourney-Generated AI Images Can Be Called Art
Really smart points by reader "Liv", on whether AI generated images like Dr. Nettrice Gaskins' Midjourney-based works can be called art:
Or consider another form of art where it's also possible to cheaply and quickly generate many, many digital images:
Continue reading "Here's Why Midjourney-Generated AI Images Can Be Called Art" »
Posted on Monday, August 22, 2022 at 12:45 PM in AI, Comment of the Week | Permalink | Comments (1)
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