Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Claire Vuissent’s self-portrait of herself as a photographer made me smile. I love her work and have since someone recommended I follow her back in 2023.
I often look at people’s Flickr faves to find new people to follow and thought it’s been a long while since I played my Faves game where I hop from one person’s faves to the next. If you want to play, too, the only rule is you keep looking at their faves until you find someone who is new to you. So whom did I find among Claire’s faves?
For new-to-me faves from Claire, click here:
Good conversation on the post about making realistic mesh humans SL's main default avatar type.
Reflecting on their own experience, Ghost Bird writes:
This drove me away from SL. The focus on photorealistic bodies turned the culture into a gross mirror of exactly what should be left in RL: misogyny, racism, classism, sexualisation and, ironically, materialism. Abstract, whimsical avatars and spaces obviously aren't free from bad behaviour, but I am convinced stylisation helps and photorealism hurts when it comes to socialising and community-building in virtual spaces.
I just visited the official Second Life homepage and was surprised to see it totally cramped with realistic mesh humans — specifically attractive males/females in their 20s (as above) like a crew roadtripping to Coachella. (I.E., highly privileged people from California and/or who can afford thousands of dollars to travel there and attend Coachella.) Used to be there would be a smattering/token appearance of non-humans on the SL website but I'm not even seeing any of those at the moment.
Luther Weymann argues a large part of the SL community has not bothered upgrading anyway:
Image by Susanne Drechsler
Since the flat avatars of Project Mesh Revolution have provoked quite a lot of buzz – but also, a fair amount of anger from SLers who were expecting a standard mesh body — here's an apropos excerpt from Making a Metaverse That Matters.
While many people in the virtual world industry buy the myth that ultra-realistic human avatars should be the end goal, my reporting about what they did to Second Life suggests otherwise. Here's the excerpt:
Myth: Photo-realistic human avatars and world graphics are the Metaverse’s end goal
This is a favorite myth among metaverse advocates who consult or work for companies producing 3D graphics cards, 3D development software, and 3D engines.
There is actually no proven relationship whatsoever between the popularity of a metaverse platform and photo-realistic graphics. Despite this, a wealth of metaverse startups and platforms frequently announce new plans to roll out ever more realistic environmental graphics, and ever more eerily human-like avatars.
The very most popular platforms, Minecraft and Roblox, are intentionally low-fi, immersive through their physics and responsiveness. Their whimsical avatars are similarly abstract.
Why this is likely relates to their core user base: People in their teens and pre-teens, who are often still uncomfortable and unsure about their own real life identity and appearance. This seems even more acute for teen girls and young women, still negotiating the social expectations and judgements around their real life presentation; presenting them with a lifelike avatar to customize is effectively asking them to take even more social expectations and judgements.
We also have something of an opposite proof point.
At launch, Second Life avatars were human by default but not realistic. The internal prim creation tools encouraged the construction of avatar attachments (robot helmets, furry tails, etc.), which led to a wide variety of avatar types and environments to explore.
The arrival of mesh in Second Life in 2010 — high resolution 3D files created in offline software and then uploaded into the virtual world — greatly changed this dynamic:
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Squeeze’s untitled picture fascinated me. It seems like a crown of thorns but is it blowing apart or coming together? Her face is downcast so perhaps it is assembling on her head. Either way, it is a fascinating concept. Her stream is dominated by black and white, though there are some color pictures, too. There are several gorgeous headshots, some as striking as this and other beautiful ones.
For more of Squeeeze’s work, click here:
Update, 10:35pm: To add some more background to this, IP brand lawyers have historically gone after users who've uploaded virtual world UGC recreations of their brand/copyrighted material as here and also here.
Since its March 27th Early Access launch on Steam, life simulator/UGC platform inZOI from KRAFTON is already a solid hit, selling an estimated 750,000-1.5 million copies.* The UGC side is also highly active, with thousands of users uploading content to inZOI's user-to-user creator platform Canvas, where players can upload and download content created with the game's studio tools. (Tutorial for doing that yourself after the break.)
As virtual world blogger Alicia Chenaux just noticed, Canvas is already crawling with IP-infringing content:
Yeah, Second Life designers are 100% going to end up with their creations ripped and put into the InZoi Canvas thing. (Canvas is like their TS4 style gallery where you can download custom content.) I already see a lot of Sims 4 items. And a TON of IP stuff. lol Like, I opened up Canvas and immediately saw Miu Miu bags, Burberry clothes, Fendi, Vuitton, etc. So that's a thing.
I just opened up Canvas and can also confirm that, yes, that's a thing. (Sims 4 content in the screengrab above; I searched for some well-known SL brands, but so far, nothing there I can see.)
I'm somewhat surprised popular IP brand names aren't automatically filtered out in the Canvas upload process, but inZOI's fan content guidelines does warn, "As a creator, it’s your sole responsibility to obtain permission from any third party whose IP you plan to use for your Content." I assume that means if a lawyer from Burberry or whoever sends KRAFTON a nastygram, KRAFTON is passing it on to the user who uploaded Burberry content.
I hope the brand owners don't sicc lawyers on inZOI creators, and instead see this as a great grassroots marketing opportunity. Then again, I doubt Electronic Arts is happy to see its Sims brand — a direct if now-lagging competitor to inZOI — being co-opted on Canvas. Anyway, I've reached out to Krafton for an official comment on the topic.
That aside, watch the Canvas tutorial below. It's quite an impressive and growing UGC platform already, which will help insure inZOI's popularity.
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 