New World Notes

Celebrate Pride Month By Sending Us Virtual World Images & Stories for Our #Virtualpride Challenge!

"She kissed the Captain" by Cadwyn Daffyd

To celebrate Pride Month, create virtual world images that express your LGBT pride -- then in the image description, tell us what your activity in the virtual world means to your real life as an LGBT person. Tag Cajsa on Flickr and add the hashtag #Virtualpride. Our favorite images -- and stories -- will be featured in Cajsa's regular column.

Images from any virtual world open enough to enable LGBT expression encouraged. To help spark your creative juices, here's some favorite images/stories of ours!

Abyss Hunts Has SL Shopping Tips for This Month's Cyberpunk Fair & More!

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Abyss Hunts is the name of Abyss Artful’s blog. She describes it this way, “I have been hunting outfits for years piece by piece in SL, mostly shiny ones. Here you will see some Cyberpunk/Role Play/Fantasy/Gothic/Fetish pictures and bold styles.” I appreciate the explanation as the title could be understood to mean freebie hunting. I was very much taken with Time Is a River, The whole woman floating in the water trope has an entirely different context when the woman is a mermaid. I was particularly taken with the hair that flows so beautifully in the water. 

• Hair: Tableau Vivant WATER LILY GACHA Flowing
• Tattoos: Nefakalum Code Silver

For some cyberpunk action, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: A Mysterious Avatar Group Selfie & Virtual Eye Contact

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Maasya excels at photos catching people in the act of being people. For example, who has not gone nose-to-nose with this terrifying fanged quadruped? She captures the strange relationship between humans and their feline overlords that is characterized by devotion on the one side and bemused curiosity on the other. The eye contact is everything. 

The next picture has me so curious, click here:

Moodily Beautiful Screenshots of a Beautifully Unconventional Avatar

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Nora’s untitled picture is a fabulous naturalistic self-portrait. I love how comfortable and at-ease her avatar seems. She is kind enough to include the pose in the description. The pose is very appealing. Add to that, her use of black and white makes it all about light and dark, about shadows and contrasts, and she uses them brilliantly. 

Nora really explores the different between pretty and beautiful, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Kimberlyann Creates Wildly Different Images, All Good

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Kimberlyann’s photostream is full of striking images. “Lone Wolf'' seems just terrifying to me and I love it. It makes me think of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, ostensibly the most haunted forest in the world. You don’t have to go out west to find ghost towns. There’s also this “Blair Witch Project” vibe, the blurred and ever-expanded trees. 

For more something far less spooky, click here:

Shopping for SL Male Fashion? Look Inside Taylor Belmont's Dirty Mind

The Dirty Mind blog is by Taker Belmont. I got a kick out of post #41 with the banana swing. The banana outfit is such a clever choice. It has a sort of mod meets camp feeling. The gold pillars are too much which makes them perfectly campy. 

• 055 SumBoss  - [ GUILTY ] Man Cave (exclusive)
• Banana Swing & Tree Light Set - CROWDED ROOM Marketplace

And now for something completely different, click here:

Today's SL Flickr Pick: Sharp Male Fashion Imagery from Alfred Wessex

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I love “To the Moon” from Alfred Wessex. I love how he shows the avatars’ love for each other in such a simple way, how she leans into him, how he rests his arm on her leg. It shows a couple attuned to each other in an ordinary moment enjoying the night sky. I also like the subtle light that illuminates some of the grass but fades quickly outside their magic circle.

Wessex does great fashion shoots; for more, click here:

This Artist Uses Second Life Wireframe & Layering to Create Amazing Images

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“The Magician” seems so perfect for a 1970’s roch concept album. I love the psychedelic exuberance of the picture with the mirror-like shards exploding outward from the epicenter where the Magician has materialized from some hole in the stage before some dramatic opening riff during which the rest of the band arrives. This is one of the many creative and exciting pictures by Hermes Kondor. 

Hermes is an experimenter, for more, click here:

This Artist Elevates Virtual World Screenshots With Unexpected Angles

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I like pictures that confound me. “Snapshot 45” is confounding. She’s standing on a wall for a house that looks like it’s built on a dock and there are fish swimming by. It makes no sense which is perfect because I can imagine the fish are actually taxis swimming from fare to fare or the house is underwater and people have gills. On the side of being underwater, there is the seagrass and the sandy bottom. On the side of being aboveground, there is the electric pole with the isolators. Is it both? In Second Life it can be anything. 

I love her way with angles, for more, click here:

SL Fashion Friday: Two Stylish Looks from Two Shopping Events

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Chic at Phil’s Place has been keeping us informed of the best in fashion since 2008. As one of the old guard, she has kept going while many others have taken long sabbaticals (ahem, me!) or quit altogether. I love how she focuses on one item in Unseelie, the fabulous foot jewelry from Lassitude & Ennui. 

Lassitude & Ennui’s Unseelie foot jewels are at the Chronicles and Legends event -- click here to teleport. 

For a mod look, click here: