scary new hair

Not related to machinima or my teaching...I just got a gift of some crazy scary big hair and was moved to take a picture.

and to share it with you all.

Burning Man in SL

I bought a plot with my machinima buddy, Marc, on the playa for the SecondLife version of Burning Man. We're also in the lottery to win a couple of additional plots. You can check out their webpage at http://www.burn2.org. The image is from their blog to announce the theme...Rites of Passage.

Marc & I previously discussed studying memorials in SL - so one idea for our camp is to look at rites of passage involving death. This idea, of course, put new life in the machinima I was making about death of the human behind the avatar. If we can finish it, we hope to show it at our camp. It depends on how the plots are set up...we might not be able to control the media settings, especially on a little plot. It's a good idea tho.


For me, being in this event is kind of a rite of passage. I've been moving from content consumer to content creator in SL.

• I used to make sculptures for me; now I have a store where I put them up for sale along with houses that I build. I'm learning about communicating in different ways in world.
• I used to watch machinima, laughing at the Divas and marveling at the art. Now I'm acting in them, recording voices, and writing and directing. 
• Last year we visited the camps, watched them burn the man - we went as spectators. This year we will be part of the action. This camp will be something we create. We will make things to give away. We will share the "death machinima" , as we call it. 

It's still a long time till the event. We don't even get our plots assigned till the end of August! Arggghhh. We need to decide if we're going to volunteer for one of the departments to help during the event. It depends on our plot idea develops. One involves a lot of updating throughout the day and interacting with the people who walk by - that might cut down on the volunteering.

We also discussed making some machinima there at the SL Burning Man. It would be interesting to see what you could record in one take with no editing. Or play around with a news format and have "man on the street" interviews. There will be live performers and street theatre and avatars dressed in their best weird outfits. So a lot of opportunities to shoot and practice editing (for me...Marc is already experienced)

I entered a build-off and discovered my inner archaeologist

Last weekend the Builder's Brewery had a build-off - - you get two hours and a strange random sculpty ...go build. That was the extent of the directions *laughs* So far no winner announced, but everybody gets a gift certificate to the store at the Builder's Brewery...lots of good textures there!

A lot of people took part in 4 heats over the weekend. Here are a couple of shots of some entries

Here are some pictures of my entry:


Here is the front on view of the piece - a torso on a table with some bones coming out the back, what looks like a spine, and a bits and pieces box. My random sculpty looked like a vertebrae to me..Or a tooth. The name of the piece is Alien Archaeology: Where does this piece go?

A side view

An overhead shot

This is a closeup of one piece - a box of bits and pieces, little bones, teeth that they haven't fit into the skeleton yet.