New World Notes

Cajsa's Choices: Icy Fun from Hope Oakley

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

Hope Oakley is having fun and I love to see it. Her photostream is a celebration of what brought most of us to Second Life in the first place, meeting people, forming friendships, and having a blast doing whatever they feel like doing.”HopeVandelJazzy Skating” is delightful. I love the humorous touch of the person on the left of the chorus line starting to fall. They joys of skating.

For more of Hope having fun, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Warm & Cozy Virtual Spaces Photographed by Kumomi

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

Kumomi loves to shoot pictures of her home and surroundings. This picture really called out to me because it looks so comfy and cozy. It’s 36° F and chilly where I am IRL, but this gave me a virtual warming up.

I love how cuddly this feels with all those pillows and blankets. It appeals in appearance, but in real life, every single one of those pillows would be on the floor. I can’t stand pillows! I like a flat pillow so my neck doesn’t bend. I also would probably chuck most of the covers. I like one thick quilt. But my way never looks cozy. This room will raise the room’s perceived temperature at least ten degrees. 

For more of Kumomi’s coziness, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Supremely Cool Avatar Self-Portraits by Ines Lauria

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

Инес Масуки ...🚭, or Ines Lauria, chose this single picture for her Flickr showcase and it’s an apt choice as it very much captures her sensibility. Despite the “No Smoking” symbol in her account handle, it’s a bit of work to find a picture of her without a cigarette. She seems very much the laconic, cool young mod, casually dressed with a cigarette in hand. The sort of cool edge that makes even the most casual clothes seem like high fashion. 

For more from Ines, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Tupper Moran's Delightful Rockwell-Esque Americana Re-Enacted by Second Life Avatars

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

Tupper Moran wrote in the description for “The Puppy Shower” that she likes Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade’s artwork and aspires to offer an homage to their work with her own. She seems to trend more toward Rockwell by featuring several people in the midst of living life, the way he did. In “The Puppy Shower” they are all laughing because the puppy just shook water off to dry while giving the woman a shower. It’s a fun picture and does have that feeling of Americana that was central to Rockwell and Kinkade’s work. 

“The Trick or Treat Gang Cometh, Again” is another slice-of-life Americana, the annual candypalooza that occurs when families knock on neighbors’ doors and are rewarded with candy.

The title made me look for an earlier Trick or Treat Gang picture and from 2022, I found this delight: 

 

12 Amazing Second Life Images We Couldn't Feature Last Year. So Here They Are to Start 2025!

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

I suppose opening the new year by looking back at the old year is a bit at cross-purposes, but I can’t resist. I thought it might be fun to highlight some favorites that for one reason or another, I failed to highlight in 2024. I love this gorgeous picture from January. It’s called “Walk with Me” from Vee. She erases most of her picture, leaving the essentials. You just see her legs, the shadow tells you it’s a sunny day and there are the wildflowers along the path suggesting she’s enjoying some free time outdoors. In an interesting play on the rule of thirds, her subject fills one-third while white space fills two-thirds of the picture. It’s brilliant.  

Aria Blackwood posted “I’ll Find Someone Like You” in February. I love the way the structural details of the building seem almost like lace in the silhouette, while the fronds of the pine trees look like feathers. The sun is setting behind the house, the light creating a vignette framing the picture beautifully.

Samyi posted “Paris Piage” in March. He uses Depth of Field in an interesting way. The sharpest part of the picture is a rivet in the folding chair. Everything becomes more blurred as they are more distant from that rivet. The way he frames the picture, he almost divides it into quadrants, but the rivets are perfectly in place for the Rule of Thirds. 

Sari Choche posted “At Night” in April. I love this for capturing exactly how I feel when I wake up in the middle of the night, confused. The circle of light over her head could be the flash of a camera but to me, it is the disappearing remnants of a dream, the kind of dream that wakes you up in the middle of the night. This picture made me feel seen because I seldom know why I wake up in the middle of the night, but I will sit up and my thought balloon is exactly this empty. 

For more 2024 favorites I missed , click here:

 

Casja's Choices: My Five Favorite Second Life-Themed Flickr Groups of 2024 -- Consider Joining Them in 2025!

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

Joanna Kitten’s “To the Lighthouse” is just one of thousands of pictures of Second Life birds in Second Life Avians, a Flickr group organized by Bella Blackheart.She took an interesting approach to the Rule of Odd Numbers. There are five birds, four in the background and one in the foreground, in the upper right. I confess, for a moment or two, I mistook the umbrella for a corvid which made me laugh and love this picture even more. I love birds but am allergic to their feathers, fortunately I am not allergic to Second Life birds. So the bird groups are dear to my heart, which puts this group on my list of favorite SL Flickr groups of 2024, and the first to be featured in today’s column. 

For more of my favorite Flickr groups, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Beautifully Icy Photographs of Virtual Winter in Second Life

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:

Cajsa's Choices: Leloo Ulf Whimsically Depicts the Animals of Second Life

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

Leloo Ulf captured a small scene at Cica Ghost’s fantastical Spring creation. If you go now, you can see her Snowflake world, just as fun and whimsical. Cica’s work often makes me feel like I am visiting a Dr. Seuss world. I love how Leloo composed the pic. We get the feeling he’s looking at us and holding back a chuckle at how silly we humans are. Others have shared their photos in Cica’s Flickr group but only Leloo has captured this expression. It’s quite amazing because it’s not like he has a Bento head. 

For more of Leloo’s whimsical pics, click here:

Seven Stunning Second Life Avatar Depictions of Shakespeare's Ophelia

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

Blaire Naverre created this marvelous homage to John Everett Millais’ portrait of Shakespeare’s Ophelia. She has the flowers, the dark blue of the stream, all the details are so well done. Lizzie Siddal, an artist’s model who went on to be an artist in her own right, got very sick while modeling for this picture, because she was laying in a bathtub full of cold water. Millais ended up paying her doctor bills. Blaire’s recreation is free of colds and flus and is a stunning achievement. Millais’ Ophelia is certainly the most well known of the multitude of artworks depicting this tragic character. (Though if you think artists have it bad for Ophelia, you should see the scholars.)

Perhaps Ophelia fascinates because she went mad and killed herself and we’re not sure why. Was she the despairing woman who loved someone who did not love her back or the disillusioned daughter mourning the murder of her father by the man she loved? Whatever the reason, she is a popular subject in art. I am not exempt from the impulse to portray her. 

Here’s my SL-based “Ophelia at Versaille” from 2008. 

For more Second Life-based Ophelias, click here:

Cajsa's Choices: Beautifully Composed, Story-Rich SL Imagery by Dopamine

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

Dopamine is a lovely little chemical that makes us happy. You could call it a neuromotivator if that were a word. 

Dopamine is also a woman who tells the most wonderful stories with her photos and perhaps motivates others with her skill as a storytelling photographer. This is a familiar scene for those in snowy climes though my dad taught me to never push from right behind the wheel because the moment the wheel gets traction, that poor guy is going to get piles of snow in his face. 

For more of Dopamine’s stories, click here: