From Glitch to Glam: Second Life Bug Serendipity (slightly NSFW)

I dropped into Second Life on Saturday afternoon for the opening of my good friend Nightflower's Artist's Cooperative. I quickly noticed many avatars in the crowd wearing cool-looking black skin.

I was intrigued. Was this some new fashion trend I'd missed? In local chat I asked something like, "Who started the black skin avatar craze?" Silence. No response at all.

Of course, it turned out it was just a software glitch causing a few avatars to render improperly on my screen. The dead air after my question was likely because no one had a clue what the hell I was talking about. Or they thought it was a racist remark related to our ebony-skinned DJ, GoSpeed Racer. Oh well.

Later that night, I decided to try duplicating what I'd seen by creating a solid black texture and applying it to my skin and eyes. It worked! I took a few photographs like the one below and went to bed.

I woke up way-too-early-for-a-Sunday-morning and couldn't get back to sleep. On a whim, I decided to jump inworld and grab a little video. Nightflower was online so I asked if she'd join me for a "ShadowPlay" shoot. She was kind enough to agree and we had a good time messing around on a rooftop in the middle of Extropia Core. I spent a few hours editing that afternoon to create the video I posted yesterday.

Here are a couple of still shots from Sunday morning. They are unretouched except for cropping.

Finally, here's a shot taken with CodeBastard Redgrave's cool FilterCam HUD.

I really like the black avatar look. It's kind of like being a walking infographic character. New fashion trend? What do you think?

VIDEO: Nightflower Submits to the Dark Side

ShadowPlay from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Next time: The embarrassing story of how I stumbled onto this idea, plus shadowplay erotica.

Virtual Vixens from Concept to Comic

Botgirl's New Rules for Media Coverage of Second Life

1. Find a few supermodels using Second Life the next time you run a story.

Maybe virtual worlds are mostly populated by obese yokels wearing frumpy clothes and bad haircuts. But give us a break. I know that out of the millions of avatarians online there must a couple of hot-looking real life people hooking-up behind the scenes other than The League of Virtual Vixens.

2. If you think extreme virtual makeovers are creepy, maybe you should question your glamorous coverage of real life celebrities.

Outside of a seasonal photo featuring a fat, sleep deprived or head-shaven Brittney, you hardly ever show a celebrity who hasn't had four hours of professional makeup, hair and wardrobe support. If we're living in fantasy land, you wrote the book and sold the movie rights.

3. Stop pretending that internet affairs are a newfangled trend.

There's been sex on the internet since before there was the internet. If mainstream coverage of cyberculture wasn't so shallow, sketchy, sporadic and sensational, maybe you could do stories that escape the black hole gravity of tabloid journalism. Sex sells and your coverage smells. Cool. That rhymes.

Vixens Trailer Two - Try your own remix

Here's a new improved trailer. When you view the video on animoto, the circular arrow icon beneath the video lets you do your own remix of the images with the soundtrack of your choice. Try it. It's fun. Post the link in the comments.

Video Teaser for Marriage Under Attack in Second LIfe Comic

Here's a fun trailer from the comic posted earlier today

Expose' on Real Cause of Second Life Affairs and Divorces

This may be NSF for some environments
Click the image above for the full story in webcomic form.

Or the image below for the e-book.

Get your own - Open publication