My Patreon Supporters
Hypnotic Romance, an SL sim with secluded spaces for couples. Click here to teleport.
The Virtual Worlds Museum. Click here to teleport to their Second Life hub with tribute to sunsetted worlds!
“TV POWWW!” by Tom Boellstorff & Braxton Soderman. Read about the first televised videogame here.
The Fitting Room: Try out new SL fits in a secure, private space. Click here to teleport.
Breedables CoOp, helping the SL pet community grow through shared resources. Go here to get started.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Selen’s “The Puppet” is eye-catching with its outsized hand that makes the avatar appear tiny, an actual puppet. I love that it is all in yellow, orange, and brown. By limiting the colors, the focus becomes on form more than anything else.
For another strange and captivating picture, click here:
Remember Second Life's odd new homepage that debuted last month, inexplicably featuring a real life model depicting an elf? If you go to the homepage now without logging in, you'll see it's been updated with a minute+ video that still includes that RL model, but now, also her SL analog (above). The video also depicts several RL models "becoming" their avatars — a pretty good way of depicting one core feature of Second Life. (I'm still perplexed by the RL teaser last month, but let that go.)
I'm also glad to see so much emphasis on the new tagline — "Explore. Discover. Create." — which is also not bad for a tagline, even if it doesn't convey the full platform's potential. (What happened to "Play" and "Socialize"?) And the new video, while a big improvement, still doesn't actually depict the Create piece. How do you appeal to all the creators in, say, ROBLOX, who are reaching their early twenties and are potentially interested in a virtual world targeted at non-teens that offers a better revenue deal than ROBLOX's 50/50 split? The video itself also seems rather dark (both visually and thematically) and a bit too self-serious for a virtual world popular with tinies and virtual Kim Kardashians.
Anyway, more screengrabs from the video below, which oddly isn't on the official YouTube channel yet… but maybe it'll debut as an actual ad on TV first?
"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!
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.
For some cyberpunk action, click here:
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:
I don't always get my metaverse news from Vogue Magazine, but when I do, I'm not surprised IMVU is involved:
“Fashion is at the epicenter of why people create avatars and connect with others on IMVU,” says Lindsay Anne Aamodt, the site’s senior director of marketing. “Part of that is because dressing up an avatar in a digital space gives people access to anything that they want to look like, and it’s hard to do that in the real world.”
… Now, she’s spearheading a first-of-its-kind virtual fashion show on IMVU that unites the real-world labels Collina Strada, Gypsy Sport, Mowalola, Freak City, Bruce Glen, My Mum Made It, and Mimi Wade with expert creators who know their way around the 3D meshing and texturing process that brings IMVU’s clothes and accessories to life. The show will stream on May 27, after which IMVU users will be able buy and dress their avatars in the designer looks they saw on the virtual runway.
Subscribe to IMVU's YouTube channel to watch the show. Reached by phone after a whirlwind of preparing for this event over the last 6 months, Lindsay tells me that it was Vogue's global director who first reached out to IMVU about covering the show, after hearing about it from one of the brands.
While there have been similar crossover events in other virtual worlds (for instance, Armani once had an official store in Second Life, with decidedly mixed results), this is the most prominent real-to-virtual fashion launch in some time.
Another newsworthy feature:
