Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Maka Orion’s picture “The light of winter is the poetry of patience” struck a chord with me. I immediately recognized the COLD he is portraying. It’s not just his breath condensing in the cold. It’s the way his shoulders hunch forward, how he brings his hands up to warm them despite the gloves, and it’s the effect of black and white. It feels colder. The only thing is he really should unroll his cap and pull it down over his ears. You know it’s cold from the way he holds his body. It’s not below zero (-18 C), though, or the snow flakes would not be so big and soft.
This got me wondering. There are thousands of winter pictures taken by Second Life residents, but how many capture the COLD of winter? After all, in Second Life we have people posing on frozen lakes in bikinis or even less. Most of the snow in Second Life is the soft, fluffy snow of warmer winter days, not the hard dry pellets of a COLD snowy day. I wanted to see the kind of COLD where it has to warm up enough to snow.
To see some real virtual COLD, click here:
Koro Carnell’s “So cold today” looks very cold. Why? It’s the sunny sky. Cold air holds less moisture and the sun is lower in the sky so there is less moisture rising to form clouds. This is the kind of cold that makes ChapStick a necessity. The snow is not billowy, it’s solid and crunchy. This is COLD. Waiting for the school bus when I was a kid, after a couple miles of skiing to the bus stop, has made me a connoisseur of cold. This is COLD.
Ethan Takeda Lane presents “The Cold” and it’s another rare example of an avatar who looks cold. Again, you see the cold in how he hunches his shoulders and brings his arms in. In the cold, we hunch. It’s not something we think about, it happens because that’s how our bodies work. The cold makes our blood vessels contract to preserve heat and our muscles contract. If you want your avatar to look cold, hunching is a requirement.
мєωиєω is another person whose arms and shoulders come forward to conserve body heat. Sadly, she is not dressed for the weather as a sweater is not going to cut it. You can see that though her skin is very pale, her cheeks are reddening a bit in the cold, though her nose is suspiciously pale. I am glad to see, though, that the women in Second Life are not immune to the cold.
Juris Bergmanis is driving a pickup on a cold, clear “Winter Night.” In memory, I can hear the loud, dry crunch of the snow as he drives over it. He looks like he is about to turn into someone’s driveway, so he is close to his destination. The air is clear, looking like the kind of cold that chaps your skin and makes your lungs hurt if you breathe through your mouth. There are a few flakes falling, very few. They could either be flakes shaken loose by the wind in the trees or there is just enough moisture to generate a few flakes, but a negligible amount. It looks COLD.
Allen Nova gives us a cold winter day, we see bright reflections from the sun on the snow. The woman is cold, hunching forward to conserve energy. She’s not dressed for the weather, but residents of Second Life seldom do. This picture, though, reminds me of the coldest I ever felt. I was waiting for the bus in downtown St. Paul, right across from the Colosseum where the time and temperature alternated on the electric sign, back and forth, -42 (-41C) as the more than 30 minutes ticked by. It wasn’t just that I was cold and waiting far too long, it was that stupid sign telling me how cold I was and how long I was waiting. I’ve been in colder weather, but I didn’t have a sign shoving it in my face.
Thanks to Maka Orion’s picture, I went down an interesting rabbit hole. I saw plenty of landscapes that gave me a frisson of recognition. I could feel the cold. But I saw very few avatar pictures that made me feel the cold. There were more avatars in bikinis or nothing at all than avatars who looked cold. Avatars seldom dress for winter weather which is too bad, there are lots of gorgeous coats, scarves, and mittens. Think of all the winter boots! Though, I must confess I don’t think anyone in SL is making the ultimate winter accessory.
All images copyright the various artists.
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Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.)
Cajsa Lilliehook is a seventeen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.
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