Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Melusina Parkin’s photostream is such a palate cleanser for me. I would describe her style as disciplined and austere, in the best possible sense of the word. There is a reason “less is more” has become a universal bit of advice. Excess distracts us with abundance while simplicity lets us focus on the essentials. “Interior Details 4” is stunning. It’s bold, bright, and graphically powerful. It zooms in close, so close that the whole is lost, but we still infer what is not there. We recognize what is unseen. I love it.
We are fast approaching a whole week of server problems caused by Typepad, New World Notes’ blog service. I have a whole host of interesting and inspiring metaverse stories to share, but no point doing so when the images barely load.
If you are somehow able to reach this blog despite loading and image display problems, congrats! Please discuss anything even vaguely related to metaverse platforms in this open forum post.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Kitten Caboose’s “Wheat Fields” gives us the pastoral beauty of fall and, off in the distance, there’s that haystack again. I love the broad expansiveness of this picture. While the tree with the birds by the pond are the focus, it’s taken further back to capture a wider vision. It reminds us of how vast the vistas can be when we look out without limiting our view. [Teleport to Walsh County, click here.]
The Typepad team is continuing to work to fully restore service. At this time, you may see issues such as blogs or images not loading, or you may encounter an error when logging into the application. We are working non-stop to address all remaining problems. #TypepadStatus
Thanks to everyone who recently contacted me about New World Notes not loading or fully displaying since last week. That seems to be due to my blog service Typepad having trouble with server migration and maintenance since roughly October 21, further compounded by a DDOS attack on October 28. You can follow Typepad's Twitter for further updates.
Apologies for the inconvenience! Kinda wild that Linden Lab chose Typepad to host the original New World Notes blog because it launched in October 2003, shortly after Second Life launched commercially. (And I stuck with Typepad when NWN went independent.)
Further irony: At this point I probably need to keep New World Notes on Typepad, at least in an archive form, because at least 25% of daily traffic goes to old posts, even to posts originally published in 2003.
New video from Isabelle and me! Please like, subscribe, and leave comments/suggestions/complaints/etc. below. And yes, I'm still not happy with the quality of my voice recording. (Not sure why, we recorded the audio via Google.) Topics we discuss include:
IRL update from Isabelle!
Size of the metaverse Roblox vs. SL creator revenue
The Taylor Swift metaverse (compared to Suzanne Vega in SL)
Be sure to stay until the end for a glimpse of Suzanne Vega's classic performance of "Tom's Diner" in Second Life. Plus our answers to these viewer questions:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Wicca Merlin’s blog Fashion Addicted is where you go for a gothic, edgy aesthetic any day of the year, so there is no better place to look for Halloween ideas. I mean you can find ideas in April. However, “Tasty, tasty beautiful fear” is from this week. I love the entire dress which you can see when you click through to the blog, but my favorite is the stunning face makeup. Great scary clown makeup. She shot the picture at Everwinter. [Click here to teleport.]
Gloomwood, the new steampunk-themed indie sim game now in Steam Early Access, consciously evokes the classic Thief PC games so much, the publisher Newblood Games even got a special URL to promote it: ThiefWithGuns.com.
It is very much Thief with steampunky guns — but as with the original Thief games from the early 2000s, the whole point is not to use noisy weapons unless you have to. And instead, to stealthily stay in darkness, using the light meter (yes, there’s a Thief-style light meter!) to check how visible you are, and also, avoid stepping on noisy surfaces. The overall experience is incredibly immersive, making you constantly aware of your virtual environment.
I played an earlier version of Gloomwood last month and instantly adored it; the visuals, the emerging story, and above all, the stealthy gameplay and the sense of truly being immersed in the world of the game. It’s what got me into immersive games two decades ago, including (eventually) the Metaverse.
As it happens, Newblood’s Dave Oshry tells me, veterans of late-lamented Thief creator Looking Glass Studios are very much aware of Gloomwood, and even advised on it — including acclaimed designer Warren Spector (Deus Ex/System Shock), who did some early work on Thief:
I also wanted to do a compare and contrast with Volmaire's final image. Above is what Walsh County looks like taken as a direct screengrab from my laptop using the default SL viewer and most (but not all) the graphics features turned on.
And here's what it looks like through Volmaire's lens:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Halloween is nearly here so what are the spookiest, scariest, ickiest pics for the season? This is a spooky picture and really gross which is ideal for a Halloween picture. I would worry about this person any other time of year. “Countdown to Halloween” by Olvar Blakewell.
