Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Pavel Stransky is an experimenter, mostly with light, but also with depth of field, overlays, and filters. He takes his pictures in an older version of the Black Dragon viewer as he has not made the shift from WindLight to EEP yet.
He described his process for the above picture to me this way: “Created in Black Dragon, where I played with the focus and then tried different options and adjustments in Photoshop until this image was created. I take photos exclusively on BD. I may surprise you, but I don't use EEP. Fortunately, I have a very old version of BD, which does not yet have EEP.”
For more pics, including a very happy accident, click here:
This spectacular montage machinima may seem like a big budget commercial for Second Life (and it's definitely more dazzling than the actual ad Linden Lab paid for in 2021), but it's actually more interesting than that:
It's a showreel of ads for top metaverse brands inside the Second Life economy, created by Teal Aurelia, a recent art school grad whose machinima tribute to SL artists last year went low key viral across the community.
Since then, she's crafted herself into a creator of video ads for Second Life brands that align with her own aesthetic focus:
"Really I'm here to film monsters and magic and defiant women," as Teal tells me. "I usually only accept commissions from brands that suit those cinematic visuals, so it's just a process of weaving their work with mine rather than trying to film what I hope a brand represents."
To put it another way: The most watched Second Life machinima now are Second Life brand ads by Teal. While live "let's play" type videos can garner many more views, self-contained narrative SL machinima shorts typically earn a several hundred/a few thousand views.
But by my rough count across her main social media channels (Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, etc.) Teal Aurelia's ads have attracted well over 350,000 views. While her clients haven't shared subsequent sales figures, "most clients have come back to me to request multiple commissions," she says. "So I take that as a good sign?"
Some of Second Life's top brands — i.e. those grossing over $1 million USD a year — have even offered to hire her exclusively as their full time ad director. "It's amazing anyone would ask me that, but I really think my videos have only been successful so far because I work alone and make what I love."
I actually think if any company hires her full-time, it should probably be Linden Lab itself, but that's just me. In any case, the success of her video ads illustrates the importance of advertising metaverse platform-based content outside the platform, across the asynchronous social media ecosystem.
Here's a look at some recent favorite ads, along with some more Teal insights on her creative approach:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Issa Avon posted a picture of a beautiful modern home that nestles into the landscape. While not identical, it is so very much like Fallingwater, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright home. From her description, it is a rented home. Home rentals in SL have leveled up since I rented an 87 prim house on the Linden Ocean. That waterfall is amazing. I just love everything about this picture. Issa is the owner of Nova Rentals, so perhaps you can get on a waiting list.
For more of Issa Avon’s lovely landscapes, click here:
Created and hosted by Geoff Keighley — who back in the day, worked with me on an editorial project devoted to modding communities in gaming — it's a great addition to the Game Awards, recognition that UGC/metaverse platforms are a growing force in the game industry as a whole. Hopefully we'll see this become an official category in future Game Awards, across many platforms. (User-made Roblox experiences, I never tire of pointing out, are as popular as many top AAA games, and have become incredibly ambitious in recent years.)
Among the Best Island nominees is one close to my heart: Murder Mystery (Island Code: 8513-2892-9361). It was created by Alliance, a creative studio that's featured in my book for its innovative work creating branded Fortnite experiences for top brands like Doritos and Joe Biden's 2020 Presential campaign. (Seriously.)
Since launching Murder Mystery, Alliance CEO/co-founder Mackenize Jackson (aka MackJack) tells me it's been played over 4 million times in its first two months.
"We hit 1 million players in the first week of release," she tells me. "We’ve had a lot of players engaging with the game, making content, and we’re excited to continue making future content updates on the game!"
As the name suggests, gameplay is highly multiplayer and plot twisty:
UPDATE, 9:00PM: The Napoleon outfit featured in most of the following images is still available on the The Fifty sim through December 20th — click here to teleport.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
I noticed there are a lot of pictures of Second Life users dressed up as Napoleon, or a simulacrum of Napoleon, just as Masa Plympton did here, showing off her "Emperor uniform" which recently went on sale in-world.
Of course, I did then search for “Napoleon” across my Second Life Flickr channels, though oddly enough, I found more pictures when I searched for “Emperor.”
He is a fascinating character to roleplay, isn’t he? Though many people may only think of him due to the new Ridley Scott/Joaquin Phoenix movie, he had such a profound effect on Europe, far beyond his conquest. He had judges rewrite the laws of France, establishing equality before the law. It was not just adopted in France, but also in several places he conquered, and it was very influential on Louisiana’s laws, making it the only state not using English common law.
For more emperor cosplay, many in Masa's Napoleon outfit, click here:
Here's the results of last week's survey, asking how much generative AI will change movies, music, and metaverse platforms. By and overwhelming 65%, the majority opinion is that AI's impact will be nominal, and that generative AI programs like ChatGPT and Midjourney will just become one of many other high tech tools in our creative tool chest. Less than 1 in 4 said AI's impact will be "radical".
So I guess that settles it!
Though in fairness, with just 26 responses, this is a pretty small data sample — most other New World Notes surveys get 200-500 responses. So maybe these results indicate most readers are very unsure on the topic. (Or maybe don't really care either way?)
What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem is a new guest essay I wrote for VentureBeat, and I hope you consider reading and sharing on social media! The quotes around "the Metaverse" are intentional, because I'm talking about the straw man version most people in tech have been toying with recently, not the actual execution. Opener:
It’s now two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta, ushering in a brief but blazing enthusiasm over “the Metaverse”, a concept from science fiction that suddenly seemed to be the next inevitable leap in technology. For most people in tech, however, the term has since lost its luster, seemingly supplanted by any product with “artificial intelligence” attached to its description.
But the true story of the Metaverse’s rise and fall in public awareness is much more complicated and interesting than simply being the short life cycle of a buzzword — it also reflects a collective failure of both imagination and understanding.
One point I haven't discussed in awhile goes to what I believe is a gender bias that's cost the industry — and Meta in particular — tens of billions of dollars:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Kilolo Jenkins’ blog Class & Sass has always been a true slice of SLife blog. In a recent couple of posts she’s included her sister Pookie. The above picture is from Plate Training, a post recounting what happened to the Thanksgiving Dinner stuffing. I am so tickled by the food stains and mess. That’s what every Second Life needs, a little mess.
Food Mess on Pookie’s Face & Hands: ~:DudaDreams: Smash The Cake
After much anticipation (at least by me), the developers at Build a Rocket* have just unveiled on Twitch an extensive teaser of their new metaverse platform, Everywhere. The studio was founded by Leslie Benzies, formerly president of Rockstar North, lead developer of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, so I’ve been wondering how a team with a stellar background in AAA open world sandbox games would far creating a very open virtual world.
Watch above — the audio doesn’t fully come in until 8:15, a new sizzle reel starts at around 11:30, and actual live gameplay starts at about 16:00 in.
While it looks very much like a video gamey experience in the vein of Core, the team emphasizes that Arcadia, the platform building tool, enables any kind of creation. (“If you just want to build a house, you can do that,” as one of them says.) We also get a glimpse of the Arcadia user interface, which does look impressively sleek and user-friendly.
The team seems to be striving to create a single shard experience, or at least the simulation of one, linking various experiences with portals that players can travel through; so that’s further intriguing.
My only negative hit from this preview is a lack of diverse avatars:
![[Deadwool] Emperor uniform](https://wagnerjamesau.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/53351162213_02bc2dbfeb_z.jpg?w=640&h=413)
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 