Photographers are going to have a field day at Bentham. There simply isn't a Windlight preset that it doesn't look great in. It's those light rays...
This is one scary forest. I got so spooked at times, while walking around taking pics, that I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. In the interest of full disclosure, its creator, the hobbit Andrek Lowell, is a dear friend and also the creator of my own sim, Chakryn Forest.
The mushroom forest
"I hate this place," said Andrek, while we were standing in one particularly creepy area surrounded by glowing red eyes in the darkness. "It gets to me big time. Scared of my own creations... yeesh."
Andrek Lowell
A few weeks ago, Lauren Bentham commissioned Andrek to create Bentham Forest on a Homestead sim in Second Life®. She would later add several elements of her own, including the elder mushrooms, a shack and the lighted path to it, as well as sculptures by Pumpkin Tripsa and trees with eyes by lonetorus Habilis. Andrek included four of his super entertaining quests, as well as forest-appropriate gifts for visitors.
Dark passageway
What was your assignment?
Andrek Lowell: My assignment was to create a dark haunted forest. Her wording for it was a "dark version of Chakryn." My first reaction was, "eh..." mainly because Chakryn, light or dark, is still Chakryn, so I decided to go with a more themed version. I designed this project as a game for the mind. I tried my best to portray the feeling of unease, and dread, if not outright fear.
Did you spook yourself?
Andrek Lowell: Several times. I can barely stand going into a couple of the installations. I tweak and then port right the heck out.
The whole thing is 2,404 prims!
Andrek Lowell: About 400 - 600 of those aren't mine.
Did you do all in 3ds?
Andrek Lowell: All of this is done in Max yep, 'cept for the sounds. I did those using Audacity.
What is your favorite part?
Andrek Lowell: I particularly like the mushroom forest. I've been wanting to do something like that for a while. Other than that, I love the crystal caves. Um... there isn't much of this sim I don't like really.
Andrek Lowell standing in the crystal cave
How many quests are there? Are they difficult?
Andrek Lowell: I created four quests, using scripts by Desdemona Enfield. Two of them are pretty easy. Only one of them gives location hints. Hopefully they won't be as easy as Chakryn quests are. Two of the quests have three items to find, one has four items, and the last has five items. The quests feature items created by Lauren, as rewards for completion. I've also hidden five crates of goodies: small elements of the forest.
So, how much fun was this?
Andrek Lowell: It was hard to stop working, and I forgot to eat today, =).
The elder mushrooms - with the faces - are by the sim's owner, Lauren Bentham
What kind of forest would you like to make next?
Andrek Lowell: I want to make a new Chakryn Forest on Blue Mars, and also I've very much wanted to make mushrooms for a while. My hope is to one day create a hyper fantasy forest, where the rules of nature apply loosely, like they sorta do here: Giant things, odd things, lights that don't make sense but look neat, basically a fairy tale... large mushrooms, glittering trees, but with a warm, joyful, colorful setting.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Andrek Lowell's new Bentham Forest... will creep you out
Thursday, June 4, 2009
The Flora of the Rain Forest and Jedda Zenovka
Posted by Alpha Auer
"Welcome to Wild Designs... (says Jedda Zenovka) Home of unique and funky Organic designs....
You can take the girl out of the jungle...
But you cant take the jungle out of the girl!
Rainbow Obsidian
A usually dark outer appearance contrasted by a soul filled with burning light
Jaguars dont need self help books!
... Live light free and happy
And have a wonderful day!"
Initially introduced to me by Truthseeker Young, Jedda Zenovka is a regular visitor at Syncretia. During the year or so that I have been Jedda's friend I have come to care a great deal for this lovely, sensitive, talented lady with a huge flair for converting the flora of her home land, the Australian Rain Forest, into formal investigations of botanical shapes, using a virtual 3D building environment and terrain to achieve some remarkable translations/transformations from the organic to the synthetic.
Her flowers and mushrooms have been used to create the virtual garden at Happy Clam Island and I urge you to go and check out this shimmering, glowing virtual space by teleporting from here.
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A complex underwater garden in which Jedda Zenovka weaves together a multitude of shapes and colors to great effect can be seen at Terravia Island. Teleport from here.
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You can teleport to Jedda Zenovka's Wild Designs from here, and also here.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Soror Nishi: "Your computer screen is stained glass"
Posted by Bettina Tizzy
Every time I teleport to see a new creation by Soror Nishi, I feel the same kind of rush that I used to get when I would open up a fresh and fragrant pack of fruit-flavored Life Savers as a child. In fact, if I could eat prims, I think Soror’s trees would make a righteous summer lunch.
Soror is best known for her electrifying and primordial forests, "ancient trees," and bodacious flowers, but she also makes avatar adornments such as sinewy and curvilinear antlers, and brightly colored jewelry.
All photographs above by Lem Skall
Don't let Soror fool you, and she will, given the chance (she's a kidder, that one). In reality, she's a Brit, but has been known to describe herself as hailing from Harajuku, being the daughter of a flower seller and having a software magnate for a husband. In truth, she is an artist who invades our senses with her bold colors, and paints her textures rather than photograph them.
Soror Nishi
In a notecard that accompanied a recent art show of hers, I read that "Concerned about the diminishing native flora of Second Life®, she set about planting and nurturing the plants that the Lindens had cleared from the land with an over-grazing of goats and the like. Her work in preserving "the Ancient Ones" for future generations is well known, and her recent discoveries of rare orchids have generated much interest." She's like that. It is quite true.
There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted. - Henry Matisse
I used to associate Soror's exotic and glowing colors with the Mayan world, where every textile and craft dances in vivid shades, but she enhanced and modernized that view when I spoke with her.
Soror Nishi: I think that light through glass, which is what we are working with… is particularly suited to bright color. If you want earth colors, use oil paint.
Stained glass?
Soror Nishi: Yes. The computer screen is a stained glass. It is like television, which is badly used, really. The screen has amazing possibilities, but is best shown off with colors. The Simpsons for example... Virtual worlds have more in common with stained glass than with photography, and (our) failure to recognize this results in poor copies of boring everyday objects, architecture, flora and fauna. These colors belong in Second Life by virtue of the medium we use. The extensive attempts some make to populate this new world with "realistic" copies of the Old World show a colonial tendency to ignore the native culture and superimpose a pre-formed visual style.
Soror Nishi at Hotel Dare
Hotel Dare, conceived and curated by Gattina Dumpling, is a concept space that goes far beyond the typical gallery setting to feature the location-appropriate works of rotating artists who have been given a hotel "room" to do whatever they wish with it. Dare has relocated to the new Poetik sim and Gattina invited Soror to collaborate with CensoredMy Lunt and become a hotel "guest."
Open the typical hotel door to enter Soror and CensoredMy's "room" and find yourself walking through boldly colored tunnels infused with psychedelic particle effects...
... and strange mushrooms that you wouldn't dream of eating unless... well, I do believe that Les Fauves artists would have thought they'd died and gone to heaven.
Waiting at the end of the room is an explanation of what you have just experienced. I'll let you be surprised. Teleport directly to Poetik from here.
You can purchase Soror's landscape art, jewelry and accoutrements at Nishi Beach (teleport directly from here).
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Nautilus
Nautilus is a region very recently added to the world of Second Life®, rezzed slightly to the north of the Japanese Continent, covering a total of 22 sims, a sizable portion of which are submerged under the ocean. I found out about Nautilus pretty much during the first hours that it was rezzed since the event happened almost literally on our doorstep at Klein, the whacko sim that is one of my two Second Life homes, housing my beloved alpha.land.
These sims are far from being mere empty pieces of land; indeed they are built quite extensively based upon a theme, which seems to me to evolve around the Minoan or early Greek civilizations. This work has been undertaken by the Linden Department of Public Works and the Mole Family. There are many things that I liked about Nautilus and a few things that left me dubious. So, I will reverse the usual practice of leaving critique to the end and air out my misgivings first and then proceed onto all the good things that I saw.
My first problem is the conspicuous absence of any kind of terraforming above sea level. Indeed, for the largest part the land is as flat as can be, whereas in the parts that have been raised the elevations are abrupt and geometric, causing sudden harsh breaks and shadows. This would maybe have worked had the theme of the building activity been of a kind that would have complemented a geometrically structured terrain. As it is, the rezed material looks lost and out of place placed upon the huge flat expanses of virtual grass since the building work undertaken sustains a detailed realism which does not get followed through on the ground that it has been erected. 
My second issue is with the city planning, which has been implemented on a grid system. Again, in my view, very problematic; taking away a great deal from the thematic credibility of the region given that the urban evolution of the period in question was emergent rather than planned, houses growing in an organic manner, following the curvatures of land, water, access routes and safety zones. Indeed gridded city planning is something which to the best of my knowledge came into existence only after the Enlightenment on any kind of a big scale. So, even if temples or public areas would be built upon geometric principles, the town itself would huddle around these pivots in a more or less higgledy piggledy fashion, creating the peculiar charm which we see in the centers of most old world cities even today. An excellent example of a historic town implemented in Second Life was the, sadly no longer existent, Romenna by Nick Lassard and I really would have loved to see something more along those lines materialize at Nautilus as well.
And now onto the good stuff, and here I think I will do less talking and let the many images that we took in Nautilus speak for themselves.
The building work executed by the Mole Family is impeccable in detail as well as in overall structure. The many temples and public areas are beautifully proportioned, conveying a satisfying sense of space as well as vista. The perspectives generated by the columned walkways and pergolas that traverse the countryside of Nautilus are a joy to walk in and to gaze upon. Particularly charming is the huge public bath... 
... as are the civic areas around some of the smaller harbors. 
And of course special mention needs to be made of the big temple, situated in the Central Citadel. The interior of this building is nothing short of a virtual feast of spatial light and harmony, complemented by a huge version of one of the glowing pink quartz crystal central altars, which are a recurring theme across the entire region.
The texturing of the public spaces of Nautilus is amongst some of the best that I have seen in Second Life, again hugely to the credit of the Mole Family. Sadly the dwellings that make up the bulk of the prim work leave something to be desired in terms of texture, particularly when placed in proximity to the gorgeous public builds.
The underwater domain of Nautilus was of particular interest to me since as a builder I have used it quite extensively myself, immersing considerable portions of Syncretia under the ocean. Indeed I have plans to submerge the entire island in its next incarnation, which I will be undertaking before long. Here at Nautilus a certain effort has indeed been made. However, all in all, the underwater is not nearly as well built and textured as what is to be seen above sea level. It would have been great to see portions of the city above sunk under the sea, maybe in the shape of ruins, in addition to the odd ship and plane wrecks and wall remnants encountered here and there. 
Underwater photographs courtesy of Hardwarehacker Hoch
One of the biggest aesthetic problems in Second Life for me is the foliage. Not to put too fine a point on it, I do not like Second Life plants. Amongst other issues this also lies in the way in which the plants of Second Life sink into the virtual soil. Thus, unless some effort is made to integrate these two design elements (i.e., the plant and the soil), for me no plant ever manages to take root in Second Life convincingly. There are cases where the extraordinary skill of the landscaper will overcome the inherent shortcomings and perform miracles in this regard, as would be the case in Chakryn Forest where Andrek Lowell has performed just such a miracle. Under the ocean in Nautilus, where rezzing has ended up relying largely on underwater flora this shortcoming to me became glaringly obvious. The good thing about the ocean depths is that some excellent terraforming, indeed almost good enough to make up for the shortcomings of the foliage has been undertaken.
We are told by Linden Labs that "there look to be several hundred parcels available, all of them 1024 square meters in size". Thus Nautilus will be an area available for Residency and "auctions for the new area will go live on the 24th October with all auctions starting at L$2000".
You can teleport to the Nautilus Central Citadel directly from here and once there continue to investigate this huge region spreading before your eyes in all compass directions. You can also see many large sized images of Nautilus here and here.
Friday, June 20, 2008
These are a few of my favorite things...
The Garden of NPIRL Delights - generously sponsored by Rezzable Productions - is almost over... *sobs* The last day is June 23. There are so many little and big things that I am going to miss.
Collaboration is a powerful thing, and dozens of people made enormous contributions that few people are aware of.
One day before the Garden opened, Ravenelle Zugzwang and Soror Nishi helped me landscape it with their exquisite trees and sculptures. 
Ravenelle's sculptures range from surreal to breathtakingly beautiful, and they lift the landscape here and there 
This photo of one of the many colorful and dreamy trees by soror Nishi by Neon Hammerer
Minutes before the Garden opened to the public, artoo Magneto sent over his phenomenal 3D trees, and elros Tumominen helped me install a few of his flaming sculptures.
I hope Glyph Graves will participate in any project I take on. His flowers! His willingness to work with others! 
The Garden is closing... sigh.
