CREAMSHOP: It has been raining there for a long long time now...

Posted by Alpha Auer ;-)

A very special thank you goes to Naxos Loon, who alerted us to the existence of CREAMSHOP...

Charon is the ferryman of Hades who carries the souls of the dead across the river Styx that divides the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for the passage, is placed on or in the mouth of a dead person. And those who can not pay the fee, are to wander the shores for one hundred years - so, tells us Greek Mythology. And then, there is this little girl who is bored of sitting on the riverbank when suddenly she sees a rabbit in a coat, holding a pocket watch run by, lamenting that he is running late. She follows him into a rabbit hole and falls very slowly down a tunnel lined with curious objects... And so, tells us Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland.



Now this may only be my fanciful imagination but it would seem to me like as if it is a bizarre hybrid of these two archetypal characters who greets you at the gates of CREAMSHOP: A rabbit on a raft, who tries to paddle you across a dark river of rain water. The attempt fails, you wind up going round and round; so you decide to make it on foot like one of those long gone souls that have been unable to pay their coin.

A walk in a dark tunnel, sloshing along up to your knees in water, all too quickly leads you to a courtyard - and sadly here the mythical part of your journey is pretty much over. You are very much back in Real Life - and a tormented one at that! Indeed the extraordinary success of the designer of the sim, SAZAE Yoshikawa, lies in that within the limited boundaries of a Second Life island she has managed to bring to life the desolation of the aftermath of a very real, very natural disaster. These things do happen in Real Life! Very much so, in fact.



Creamshop is tormented by rain. It has been raining for weeks, if not indeed months: A once lovely, but now flooded courtyard is deserted except for a flock of desparate ducks and swans paddling in the flotsam of toppled over bookshelves and soaked cardboard boxes. Weeds and flowers sway helplessly in the deluge. And in fact, so long has the rain been here that aquatic flora such as weeds, water lilies and bulrushes have now begun to join them.





The usage of space as metaphor is one of the key elements of SAZAE Yoshikawa's success. Enclosing the disaster within a courtyard considerably heightens the sense of surrendering to the inevitability of a natural disaster, of there really being no way out, of claustrophobia... A second design element used with well grounded knowledge here is color: Yoshikawa has chosen two colors that form an almost complementary contrast - violet and green, throughout the colorization of the sim. This could have become a mine field of error, however since the designer uses only very slightly saturated, almost grayish values on all of the large surfaces, what ends up happening here is that the contrast, while heightening our sense of doom, manages to still achieve great harmony. An unsettling harmony! Indeed, I hereby take my virtual hat off to SAZAE Yoshikawa for this stunning palette. Third, is the usage of detail and the integration of ready made objects into the overall design system: The flora, the fauna, the flotsam, the debris and especially the weather system - for the large part these were probably created by people other than SAZAE Yoshikawa. Which is precisely as I think that it should be. If you can integrate the design work of other content creators into your work - do it! This is how economy in the metaverse works! So, again, well done! A very special mention also needs to be made of the way in which lighting, achieved particularly through the usage of the glow effect, that has been implemented in the flooded courtyard. And finally the usage of sound: Again, this mainly comes from the objects, such as the weather system and the ducks but the sound scape created with these is once again of SAZAE Yoshikawa's own fine work.


The record shop is not the shop proper, but part of the mise-en scène of the courtyard. I wish the mayhem in here had spilled over into the shop itself as well...

But now, onto some criticism - alas: The stunning effect of the courtyard is left behind pretty much the moment that you walk up the steps and enter the shop proper. Suddenly you are in a perfectly clean and well designed - but all in all, ordinary looking Second Life shop, selling highly predictable Second Life gear. With the deluge outside, wouldn't it have been great if for instance the electricity had gone and we had to fumble our way around in the dark a bit? If there was a bit of water on those pristine white floors? A bit more than the odd tumbled over tailors dummy and a couple of dry (?) cardboard boxes scattered here and there to follow through on the theme so successfully instigated outside? And when it comes to the merchandise, I have to say that I am truly disappointed: The level of imagination that created Rabbit-Charon and the level of narrative skills that would have managed to create the flooded courtyard surely could do better than that? Please do not get me wrong: Everything is well designed. In fact there is a balloon-skirt mini dress there, that I may go and get before too long myself. However, here is the thing: I already have that dress in Real Life. In a virtual life, where the sky is the limit, coupled with the fact that, quite obviously, SAZAE Yoshikawa has what it takes to reach for the sky - why stay earthbound?

You can teleport to CREAMSHOP directly from here. You can see more and larger pictures of our visit there here.

The stuff of nightmares - Higashiosaka

3:30pm Update: I've just met Jigoku Landman, the sole creator of Higashiosaka, and a Japanese designer who developed the sim for the IT and metaverse development company Regional Information and Communication Technology Laboratory, Inc.

Jigoku means hell in Japanese, and it is widely depicted in paintings that are hung in traditional Buddhist temples. Some of these paintings are national treasures.

He told me that he hasn't had nightmares while creating Higashiosaka, but that his parents would tell him stories about Jigoku when he'd been bad as a child. o.O

~*~

Again, Naxos Loon, NPIRL's consummate sleuth in Second Life®, has found us an extraordinary hell... Higashiosaka. Bosch has nothing on this one, and yes, it is the stuff of nightmares. Created by Jigoku Landman (rez 3/20/08).



Music - Composed by Tillman Sillescu, BMI

Teleport directly from here.

Get in touch with your quirkiness with the help of Vooner Voom

News travels fast on the grid. Today and within minutes, both surrealist four Yip (her avatars! Her installations and wings and furniture!) and uber extreme adventurer Naxos Loon , alerted me to Vooner Voom's quirky store (teleport directly from here). This is a place to stop by for madcap and eccentric avatars (want to be a school of fish, all by your lonesome? This is the place!) and toys (rubber ducky, I love you!), but when you are there, be sure to touch the door on the back wall to be transported into an odd little room.



Vooner is Japanese and while he just celebrated his first rez day, his sculpty work is fantastic.



He certainly has a different perspective on things...

What is your favorite mirroring tool?

Naxos Loon shared this well-done vid on a new mirroring tool called the Symmetrizor that automatically duplicates your creations on one side to the other.



You can see an in-world demo by teleporting here.

Naiman Broome's hyper-realistic waves

Naiman Broome (rez: 7/20/2007) is a telecommunications engineer from Italy who worked in 3dsMax and Photoshop to create the foamiest, most believable waves I have seen to date in Second Life®.


Music by Mark Allaway, PRS

Naiman also works with Sculptpaint and Wings to make sculpties.

You can purchase these waves at a little hut on the far end of his idyllic island, Las Arenas Rosadas, which means, the pink sands. Apparently, they have only been on sale a few weeks (teleport directly from here).



Naiman is currently working on a new project with Cuba and the Buena Vista Social Club for inspirations. That should open in about a month's time.

Many thanks to Naxos Loon who always finds us wonderful things.

Your photos, your world

Naxos Loon suggested I try Tag Galaxy and then type "NPIRL" as a tag. The first word out of my mouth was... "fantastic." If you have pics on Flickr, you are in for a treat, but any tag word will do.

You guys sooo rock! *Does a little dance* - Chimp case: CLOSED

Once upon a time, three days ago, (doesn't it seem like a million years ago, already?), l discovered an avatar that enthralled me, and promptly crashed, only to discover that logins had been disabled. I shared the few facts I had - as well as my frustration - with you here and slipped off to bed. Incredibly, the next morning... between this blog, Flickr, Twitter and my email, I found over a dozen suggestions for who the creator might be.

Before I say one more word, I want to wrap my virtual arms around all the imaginative, resourceful, helpful, curious and fascinating folks who people Second Life - especially those of you who immediately chimed in - and give you a giant pixelated hug. You're the bee's knees. You're top shelf! I am madly in love with this community. <3

It was Arahan Claveau who suggested that this character might be based on The Monkey King.

Then, Jamma Newt was the first to suggest that the chimp was a creation by Ripped Winkler, followed by, Jurin Juran via Tweet, and Maya and Constance via email. Logins were still disabled...

Finally, Naxos Loon presented us with a Slex address to buy Ripped Winkler's chimp avatars, and the icing on the cake was Mr. Oh's accurate contribution of the source of the glasses.

Well, I've since exchanged IMs with both Ripped Winkler and the fabulous chimp himself, apes Later, and here's what I learned...


Turns out that the worldly, high-style, cyber-chimp apes Later, had been afk while I had stood there asking him questions on Friday night

The chimp avatar is Ripped Winkler's (teleport directly from here). The glasses are, indeed, AVZ Vision Enhancement specs by !AVZ! Cyberpunk Fashion (teleport directly from here. apes made the stick himself, but the superb animations were by Jackie Jetcity, and can be purchased - dirt cheap, I might add - at his store, J's Factory (teleport directly from here). Jackie thoughtfully provides a free stick.

By the way, if I were a Neko, I would not want to live another day without Jackie's outrageously good feline animations set.

I asked apes if he is a builder, to which he said "no," but he did reply in the affirmative when I inquired if he was just a great shopper. I didn't get an answer when I asked - very nicely - if he'd take me shopping with him sometime... heh... and then he had to leave in a hurry to go food shopping... IRL! Sadly, I did not come away with the sources for his clothes, boots, and crown. Sorry.

Ripped Winkler - who missed all the fuss having been away on a brief holiday - came back to my many IM's and said, "Looks like my chimp avie... ie skin, shape, hair and fur. Any clothing and accessories aren't mine, as I leave that for the customers to get creative with. My monkeys come with full simian AO's, too, so the anims on that avatar are probably in the staff he is holding." Ripped's chimps come in both female and male shapes in the one package and were created last fall. He went on to explain that he made the chimp's skin "with a bit of gimp and avpainter, but I'm using zbrush now, which is so much better to work with."