Thursday, August 28, 2008

The kiss I longed for was nowhere to be found

Last night, I worked from mid-evening into the wee hours trying to stage a kiss for a particularly important scene. After going through poseballs, love HUDS, friends' poseballs and finally a scripted bed, I couldn't find a single worthy shot.

I have never felt so frustrated and blocked in my creative work by an aspect of Second Life that resisted an easy solution or alternative.

Kisses are hard. Oh, that's a bit of an ambiguous sentence. What I mean to communicate is that compared to typical shots, a realistic and emotionally moving kiss is really, really difficult to capture. Any clumsiness in the angle of the heads, the positions of the arms or hands, the facial expressions, bad body intersections, etc. stand out in ways that can not be easly fixed in post-production. It's possible to luck out with an animation, but I think this will take some custom tweaking.

Any ideas? Maybe I should host an event, inviting people to bring their favorite standing kiss poseballs to the set? In any case, wish me luck.
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousAugust 28, 2008 at 1:25 PM

    'zactly what sort of kiss were you looking for that was hard to find a good one of? Or was it just what no kisses that you could find at all were good enough for the shot you wanted?

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  2. AnonymousAugust 28, 2008 at 2:16 PM

    The kind of kiss that brings time to its knees and draws the entire universe to its burning center. That's not asking too much, is it?

    To be a little more concrete: a standing kiss depicting both passion and tenderness. Ideally, an animation that will allow a series of still shots that tell its story.

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  3. AnonymousAugust 28, 2008 at 2:48 PM

    Sadly you struck on a problem which I've found irks me in realms beyond photography. It's just damned hard to find any decent sort of kissing motion, or a hug for that matter. In fairness it is hard to find solutions to posing two avatars in itself, but troubles are doubled when one considers how even height can cause problems. It may not be much of an excuse, but while I detest the lack I would not envy those people trying to fill the void. So many problems to consider...

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  4. AnonymousAugust 29, 2008 at 12:39 AM

    For all my kisses photo I have ended up making my own custom animation. They only working one angel, you have to compromise on much to make a kiss photo in sl.

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  5. AnonymousAugust 29, 2008 at 4:57 PM

    From what I've seen :) the "Resolution" series is very nice. Bits and Bobs, is it? And there's another one... Adoration? There are a few scattered around the PIER sim; check out the pier area next to the dancing area, and the inside area inside from the main dancing area. Not sure I've ever been forward enough to try to take a picture of a couple using them :) but from casual voyeurism I would suspect they might do...

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  6. AnonymousSeptember 4, 2008 at 4:26 AM

    I'd highly recommend Bits & Bobs "Soul Intentions." Easily modified to get the avies to line up nicely, too. :-)

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A beautiful thought experiment personified through the imagined perspective of a self-aware avatar. My creator's site can is at http://fourworlds.tumblr.com