Creation!

The second visit to Second Life involved a bit more exploration, as well as an attempt to update my look. I used the Beginner-friendly location suggestions to find an island with clothes and skins for my avatar. The first location was full, so I clicked on the next one on the list, an island with a large white building, walls plastered from top to bottom with images. The images were like posters or banners, advertising wares in a straightforward way. I could tell that these were all uniquely produced 3D hair and clothing renderings, as many were proudly signed by a user. I flew around the interior of the building and tried to pick out some cool hair and clothes. Some, I realized were for sale, and others were available for free. I clicked on a couple of simpler designs, but it seemed pointless... I was downloading the object, but had no idea how to locate it in my inventory to wear it. This was when I began to experiment with the appearance editor, accidentally adding the game preset shape hair to my more cute/finished hairdo that came with the female gladiator. It looked pretty ridiculous and glitchy, and I couldn't figure out how to 'undo' this makeover. I finally just resorted to clicking on the original avatar again. My body slowly went gray, and then individual parts of my body and clothing were made visible again. Phew. I flew around the island a bit and then decided it was time to move on.

Faery Crossing seemed like a more exciting location, so I chose to teleport there. I appeared in the "Learning Grove," which is where my impressions of Second Life began to soften. There were signs and arrows directing me onto a path with number signs indicating the steps that I should take to acquaint myself with the world. Each step was accompanied by a large sign that explained an important part of Second Life such as how to operate the viewing mode and how to move. There were objects laid out with instructions for how to use them. I left Second Life feeling a bit more acquainted with the controls.

Step 1: Learning to Walk

Learning to use my inventory!

Interesting descriptive terms for face editing...

Why are there dressing rooms?

The next time I entered Second Life, I followed a couple more steps until I came to the one that was really a game-changer for me. A "sand box" was placed in the corner of the room/area with instructions about how to make an object. I made a cube, then a sphere, and then a tiny pyramid. Though the instructions did not go into detail about how you may edit these objects, it did say something that was quite profound: everything you see in Second Life was made by somebody. I hadn't really considered this before. Although there is clearly a monetary component, as was discussed in our last meeting, there is still a tremendous amount of "stuff" that is available for free use.

The building process is not exactly hands-on... It looks more like casting a spell.

Inspired by this, I decided to try my hand at rendering. I adjusted some of the size attributes of the cube, and then added chose its texture to be "flesh." I applied a high level of wind and gravity which yielded very interesting results. I had made a huge cube that rolled around and flopped over itself seemingly randomly. To further highlight this sort of bizarre combination of hard-lines and soft fleshiness, I applied a chain-mail overlay to the object. After taking a couple of screen shots of my creation, I decided to "put it on" as that seems to be one of the easiest actions in Second Life (an observation which is perhaps interesting and worth investigating). I put it on my right wrist, and hilariously, it looked like I had created some sort of box-costume for myself, though this was not my intention. After trying to take a few more pictures to document this object, I decided to "take it off." Unfortunately, the cube just disappeared, rather than reappearing in the sand box. Nooo! my beautiful cube was gone. Fortunately, I had some understanding of the way the inventory worked at this point and found it again, but the only action that I could figure out was "wearing" the object. I went back into the edit-object mode and moved it over to the side so that I could at least see my avatar fully, but still kept it "attached" to my right wrist. With this new sort of companion, I exited the Learning Grove and made my way across a thin bridge to investigate the rest of Faery Crossing.

My box costume.

My box companion.

Leaving the Learning Grove.