Second Life is almost a teenager!

I remember the first time I heard about Second Life. I can't quite recall where on the internet I'd heard about it, but it was someone's personal website where they talked about having a virtual persona in a virtual world on the internet. As an individual who had grown up MUCKing and MUDding their way through highschool, this was very intriguing to me. Social virtual environments, heavily cruxed on the lifeblood of imagination have always fascinated me. This was no exception.

Alas, I had to wait a year to join because I did not yet own a credit card (yes, this was back in "ye olde SL daes of yore" when you were still required to have a credit card to join), but as soon as I had that little piece of plastic between my fingers, I created my account on August 31, 2005, logged in, and never looked back.

I won't soon forget my initial experience, stepping into the Welcome Area after visiting Orientation Island. This was before Mesh. Before Sculpts. Before Flexi Prims. Before Animated AO's. Everything was built with a mish-mash of spheres and cubes and cones and cylinders and toruses (torii?). Second Life was (and likely always will be) a culture shock for the newly-indoctrinated. I stood there as I watched a tiny hyena in a dress converse with a seductive-looking demon, while Kirby and Bowser and Master Chief flew through the sky overhead. There was someone with pink flamingos attached to themselves every-which way as newbies wandered, rezzing cubes and immediately attaching them to their heads.

I wasted no time IMing everyone I knew to tell them about this phenomenon I'd just discovered. I think my actual words were:

"This is !@#$%^& awesome."

I dove obsessively into this new virtual environment. Within a week, I'd already gotten a handle on how to build. Within two weeks, I'd created my first head of hair. Within one month, I'd created my first sellable product -- and Refined Wild was born.

But enough about my life story! Time to talk about Somniatis.

 :: Somniatis :: Ascension of the Digital Consciousness

 "Somniatis" (sohm-nee-ah-tis); Latin for 'to dream'.
         

Somniatis is a meditation piece -- something of

travel, contemplation and beauty. It flows upward,

towards a higher state of digital consciousness

via surreal imaginings and dream-imagery. Things

become more solid, complex and advanced as

individuals travel to the apex of the spiral -- the

end of their journey -- going from the state of 

"idea" to the state of "completion".
            

On the way back down, the traveler re-connects

with the primal technological state -- the formation 

of the idea. The code. The data. Which works to

operate the abstract core of the completed

thought.
            

Second Life is to live within a collective

consciousness. We journey through these vast

terrains of ever-expanding, ever-changing worlds

-- worlds that are mirrors of our inner thoughts 

and inner selves.
            

Second Life is a pocket dimension of digital

existence, where dreams are realized in a very 

tangible manner. We weave the thread between the

realms of reality and that of our psyche - which

is endless, infinite and ever-growing upward and

outward.
            

We are a generation of digital shamans.

Click the image above to visit "Somniatis"

Somniatis was developed by myself, once again featuring the motion art of Methias Kira from [-Abstract Soul-]. It was assisted in assembly by Saikatsu Epsilon and Kaelis Ember.

Methias and I both have Somniatis-related items you can obtain for FREE by clicking our respective signs at the exhibit! They will only be free for the week of the SL11B celebration, so get those freebies while you can!

There is also a SLtography contest going on, where you could win $10,000L! Click here for details.

Click here for a direct SLurl to Somniatis!

... I'm gonna Gacha, Gacha, Gacha, Gacha!

Since this FGC's theme was '"F" for Fashion', naturally, I made FANS!

"Classic" fan style.

"Paddle" fan style.

Not only are these fans 100% Original Mesh, they are also fully animated (on touch) and are Mod/Copy Tradable. (Details included for Mod/Copy Trade.) At a staggeringly reasonable $25L Per Play, the only winning move for this FANtastic Gacha is to refrain from thinking twice and play anyway!

Remember to stop by the sim Acerbus Silva on or after Sunday, May 4th to grab your very own Fantastic Fantasy Fan!

The World Goth Fair supports the Sophie Lancaster Foundation

Refined Wild will be filling out a nice sponsor booth at the World Goth Fair starting next month, running from May 15th to June 1st, 2014.

This is a charity event, so all donations will go to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, to benefit those who have been victims of, and to raise awareness of, subculture-related hate crimes.

This will be my first strictly Gothic-oriented event -- so I'm going to make something special to appease the dark elegance of SL's Gothic crowd!

"You go this way, I'll go that," said the Bzou. "And we'll see who gets there first."
 

Enchantment is now open to the general public, providing everything you could ever want for all of your Red Riding Hood related needs. As usual, all items are exclusive to this round of Enchantment - including two of my very own products, each up for sale at $200L apiece.

I am one of the very few (read: excruciatingly few) creators that have made something that is specifically male-centric; however, even at that, I've seen more than one female avatar sporting the Big Bad Bloody Bzou mask since the event opened on February 1st. One of the bloggers told me the Big Bad Bloody Bzou stole the show - and perhaps that's sheer flattery - but it's flattery my ego accepts without hesitation.
 

(Especially considering the work that went into that thing.) 
 

The mask that looks amazing with a bit of red lipstick applied is called A Little Bit Red. It's been utilized quite a bit more than the formerly mentioned Bzou mask in the awesome SLtography plastered all over Enchantment's Flickr Page.

I took the above two images myself. I'm not exactly sure how my SLtography stacks up compared to others. I'm far more used to taking product photos, and displaying true-to-form images as to how the objects appear in-world - not making them look all fancy and frilly and filtered in Photoshop. I'm actually surprised how little post-processing I did on the 2nd above image, now that Second Life supports Normal and Specular maps (oh god finally why did that take so long oh good god why) - I only adjusted the contrast on that one.

Tekila used Big Bad Bloody Bzou in droves. I don't think she used A Little Bit Red. At all. Which is amazing. I'm so happy and pleased that she loved this mask. She took many pictures, and wrote a little story revolving around the wolf-head. She used it as a literal wolf-head - which possibly makes her usage of it even better.

I think this is one of Anika Bellissimo's better usages of color in her set of photos. She's definitely showing off the products how they should be seen, in the right set of tones. I like how the bright blue dress and tan boots go with the red in the mask, even though it's a quirky combination.

Natsumi Kanjon is another blogger that created an image that made my eyebrows bounce. She totally "got" how I wanted the mask to look under the hood of the cloak. The "placed" eyes in the Bzou mask is a bit freaky (which is fine - the wolf should be freaky!), as the eye holes will fall on your avatar's eyes, but I understand that there would've been major clipping issues if she hadn't moved it upward, to get that position to work - so good problem solving on her part!

As mentioned before, these items will only be available (at least in their current size, shape and color) until the end of the event. Fill your wolf-sized Red Riding Hood appetite while you can!

[ Enchantment ] SLurl: CLICK HERE!
 

If you can guess what the theme of the event is this month, you win!

So I'm going to be sponsoring (and partaking in) in the 2nd Enchantment Fair event, which is going to have a distinct Little Red Riding Hood flavor. There will be exclusive items created and sold at this event.

I likely would've taken part in the last Enchantment event, which revolved around Snow White, but my dear friend Elysium Hynes didn't give me the heads up until the event was about to start, and admissions had been closed.

This is actually pretty exciting for me. Let's just say I know a little too much about the history behind this fairy tale - it's one of the oldest in existence and definitely one of my top favorites.

It seems like most of the creators are pretty wise about the origins of the story, and how the fairy tale actually goes. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone selling content displaying the gorier and scarier parts of this famous horror tale.

While the event opens early for bloggers (it's a very blog-centric event), it won't be open to the public until February 1st. After that, I believe the event goes for about a month.