Designs by Asp

Wetsuits !

2008-07-11T12:50:00.000Z

A new wetsuit design.

identity - Everyday suit

2008-05-18T16:05:00.008Z

You thought I had stopped working, but no! I have been working away on completely new designs and they have been taking all my time.

I am very fast on the graphics packages but I spend ages trying to get things right, testing various materials, shading, colours and styles. Well now I am happy with my new suit designs and starting to move them from hard-disk to Second Life.

This is a business suit designed to flatter the body, make you look good and to give the correct first impression. This version is from the Everyday range which comes in classic colours of Grey (shown), Blue and Brown and includes matching shirt and flexi tie.

Model is wearing.

identity Everyday - Grey suit
identity - GC Shoes black
identity shape - Alain body shape
Armidi - Cadiz hair
identity [eloh] - male skin
laqroki - male skin

A bridge for Middle Earth

2008-02-10T23:11:00.001Z

This is a bridge I am working for a Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings) sim. This is one of several buildings and the others will include a throne room, library, work room and temple. Then there are all the small props to build, such as a tapestry frame, seats, books, lighting and so on. I just love SL and the ability to try out various things I could never do in real-life.

Disconnected

2008-01-28T14:53:00.000Z

I am offline and may be for a while longer.
My ISP (Internet Service Provider) has been bought out and to cut costs the new owners are moving everyone across to a cheaper network.

They disconnected me on Thursday 23JAN08 and, this being Monday, I have been offline for six days. I was told I would be re-connected last Thursday but things are not looking good.

I am just angry and frustrated and terribly unhappy with my ISP and we will be moving to an alternate supplier as soon as we can.
We started with Pipex some years ago Pipex and have been on the same tarrif of £20 for a 2Mb connection. Meanwhile Pipex introduced cheaper and better services with a 30Mb connection availabe for te same £20. I also found out that our connection is throttled under heavy usage which accounts for the speed dropping to 1.5Mb when playing SL.

Now Tiscali have taken over we have been disconnected for some time. Seems like time move ISP! Their service desk charges 10p/minute and whenever I manage to get onto them spend something like ten minutes waiting and paying to listen to their selection of music.

Read more here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/28/tiscali_pipex_migrations/
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/3373-tiscali-slowly-migrating-pipex-users-to-its-own-platform.html

RPM Car Dealer of the Future

2008-01-16T15:27:00.001Z

My free racing outfits were reviewed at:
G.L.A.M.orous Thanks to Cherlindrea Lamont for reviewing them so carefully and visiting to find out where they could be located!

Animal print

2007-12-19T11:27:00.000Z

Three Animal Print designs and my favourite is the Leopard.

Note: The Giraffe and Zebra are from Zoo animals and the Leopard print is from a Leopard hit by a car.

New design postponed

2007-11-18T22:38:00.000Z

I have a new clothing design which I thought was ready, but I checked it in the new Windlight viewer only to find that windlight renders the clothes with lower contrast so my new top looks flat and listless where in the old viewer it was subtly shaded and coloured. I need to redo the texturing and shading before releasing it.

The same happens with my skin. I have several skins that I use for modelling and all of them are quite light. Under Windlight all the light colours get washed out and my face looks pale and chalky with no detail. My blushed cheeks have gone as well as my eye makeup. I will need too buy new skins which is going to be very expensive. My suggestion is that if you are buying a skin to go for the more suntanned version.

I hope to release two new designs next week.

Racing designs

2007-11-18T22:34:00.000Z

Hard Days Night

2007-11-16T09:06:00.000Z

Picking up on the 1960s, the era of the Beatles, Kinks and Rolling Stones, this suit was designed for a Monkees tribute group. With black felt collar and light gray suit I have included various coloured shirts, including white and black. I named it "Hard Days Night".

Short sleeve sweaters

2007-11-16T08:35:00.000Z

Original short sleeve sweater designs with large yarn patterns in five colours. These are designed to mix and match with my Ms Jane and Formuala ranges, or a good pair of jeans. I will be adding a different shade of blue to give more colour combinations.

Six Ms Jane shoes

2007-11-06T11:30:00.000Z

Classic everyday shoes by identity

RPM-Car

2007-11-06T11:17:00.000Z

Three of my outfits at RPM-Car, two of these outfits are free courtesy of RPM-Car who are giving away branded outfits. RPM-Car can be seen at Dutch Business Park where you can drive a free car, play an asteroid game and have a car built around you.

Fashion show 4NOV

2007-11-04T21:49:00.000Z

Modelling my Dress 50 is Dirjha Summers who kindly took this photo as I crashed trying to do the same!

The show was held in Business Bureau Island and attracted over 40 people. The incredible Seraphine Khorana directed the show, remembering to describe the clothes and introduce observations as she talked. The models were great, including my own Kane Thorne making his first appearance. Kitten Ouatcha had set up the catwalk and reduced drag on the sim. Can't wait for the next show!

Fashion Show November 4th

2007-10-31T22:22:00.000Z

I will be showing the Felicity womens suit, Ms Jane shoes and the BC Mens gray suit at the
Business Boutique Fashion Show 4th November.

I feel tense about as this is my first show. None of my clothes were used at the last fashion show as the male model(s) could not get there as the sim was full. It has been over two months since then and my collection has grown significantly.

Marybell - Dress

2007-10-25T21:29:00.000Z

A simple honey coloured dress. The pattern is of egg shapes with a dark and light pattern though others have seen Giraffe and Tiger patterns.

RPM-Car

2007-10-21T12:25:00.001Z

I have been doing a commision for RPM-Car of free racing clothes. They are a company who understand SL and have a permananet display at Dutch Business Park.

I am making several sets of clothes and the prototype red and black set is show above. This will have a shirt, mens pants and mini-skirt.

Dress 50 in black

2007-10-14T11:26:00.001Z

I am very pleased with this one, red and black are always a good combination.

Autumn fashions - Dress 50

2007-10-14T11:23:00.000Z

Inspired by the latest London Fashions this skirt, trousers and sweater combination picks up on the seasons themes. Combinations of wool and velvet materials, knee-length skirt and cropped sweaters.

The colours of this outfit are based on the Blackberries that I find walking this time of year. Mixing deep ripe blues with the purples of ripening fruit.

Six parts, twelve looks. Includes a knee-length skirt, trousers and top. Accessories include two cropped woolen jumpers.

I called this "Dress 50" as this years fashions seem to look back to the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Re-release of my chinese tops

2007-10-14T11:16:00.000Z

This is an older design but re-released. The top is partly inspired by the Mandarin collar, but I wanted a sexier look. The pants are pinstripe with a slight sheen to them.

This is a darker top. I actually have about five colours but decided to see how they sell.

Update from July to September

2007-10-12T09:29:00.000Z

I have not posted for a while although I have still been busy. My clothes line, identity has been very good for me, but I have not seen sales go up or down in five months. I have tried increasing my advertising through classifieds, openened new shops, put clothes on SL Exchange and OnRez; despite all this my monthly sales have not changed. I need to bring in more Linden Dollars to pay for my Island as I will not use actual real-life money to pay for SL.

I dissapeared for about two months trying to establish a line of fantasy clothing, but have made no sales, despite being happy with the designs.

Now I am back and making more for identity. In the last two months I learnt more about the graphics packages I use and hope to get closer to my original vision. I hope you like my new designs and extensions of old designs.

Ms. Jane shoes

2007-07-12T17:33:00.000Z

The start of my Ms. Jane shoes. I am working on a series of clothes that will all colour co-ordinate and these Red Leather shoes are part of that.

Ms. Jane - New dress and shoes

2007-07-12T17:13:00.000Z

After a lot of adjusting, the Ms. Jane dress is ready for sale. The outfit consists of a top, blouse, glitch pants, prim skirt, stockings and shoes.

The pattern is all my own and based on a set of mix and match colours. I like the dragonfly shape and it looks lovely against the blue and green material.

The shoes are 13 prims and I am quite proud of them. They are quite different, yet will match many different clothes.

The shoes will match the different outfits that i have in production. Hope you like them.

2007-07-10T08:00:00.000Z

This is my mens suits which is available in black, gray, navy and brown. The basic version comes with pants, open jacket, shirt and tie.

Other versions have flexi ties or a selection of shirts.

Felicity womens jacket in black

2007-07-01T16:10:00.000Z

A sexy femme fatale look with a black suit cut for women. The suit comes with matching black blouse and white blouse. Included are two flexi ties, one black, one white. The suit is subtly shaded to enhance you looks with shadowing and creases.

Permissions are:

Suit, mod/transfer
Blouses, copy/mod

The suit comes as separate Jacket and Pants. The pants are a set little loose but not enought to lose shape and with a very small amount of flare at the bottom.

The jacket gorge is placed above the cleavage, any further down and it would distort horribly between your breasts. The lapels are designed to look smart with the width and notch set so they do not twist with poses.

The jacket falls to mid-hip, has 3 buttons with one undone, two waist pockets and is loose but smart.

There are over 60 Photoshop layers in the suit and many subtle creases and highlight to enhance the look.

It is made from a texture that contains a subtle multi-colour stripe that catch the SL lighting giving the suit a subtle sheen. The stripe enhances the contours of the body. This suit is black, but not the pure black that appears on many clothes, like a black hole, devoid of life and movement.

The two shirts come in cream and a black pinstripe. Again the shirts are micro-textured to catch the SL lighting and this really makes a difference to the look.

There are two ties, one white and one black, both with a subtle leather texture. The ties are three prims with flexi. Ties are made with a different stiffness between backwards and forwards so that they flap nicely when moving but resist pushing back into the body when walking forwards.

Instructions are provided for adjusting the Jacket and Pants to your liking. The tie comes adjusted for a regular female shape, 6' tall and with a slim build. If the tie does need to be adjusted there are a detailed description for adjusting the prim tie and they are transfer so they can be adjusted by someone else.

The whole suit is designed to look smart and elegant however you move and whatever you do.

identity for women

2007-06-26T12:34:00.000Z

I am very happy with my mens line of clothes and have been aching to make my womens designs a second reality. I have sketches in my notebook and have been experimenting with shapes. This dress is a pattern I have been playing with and wearing to see if it works as I wanted.

Felicity womens suit

2007-06-26T12:09:00.001Z

I was asked to make a special suit for a lovely lady named Cerebal. I based it on the mens black suit, but there are so many changes in shading and the creases that they are not comparable. I was thinking of Marlene Dietrich as I made this, trying to capture the style and sexines. With fine tailoring and finish, it will become a year-round favourite.

identity ties

2007-06-26T12:06:00.000Z

After many days work I have made about 20 ties, too many to show here! Here is a small sample.

Nine new open neck and casual shirts

2007-06-26T12:03:00.000Z

Here are nine casual and open-neck shirts for wear with one of my open-neck jackets or just with jeans or trousers.

Making a suit

2007-06-26T11:47:00.000Z

For me, making a suit is quite a long business. I start by making the material and this is usually six or more layers in photoshop. I try and give the material a micro-texture with slightly different colours thoughout. When lit in SL, the various colours are picked out and give my suits a soft look with different colours in the shadows and highlights.In contrast most SL suits are made in a single flat colour or with noise added and look dull or flat.

Once I have the material I cut the suit using Fireworks, a vector painting program. I check the cut using the Avatar preview program and go back and forth making sure all the seams line up. Using a vector based program allows me to make pixel fine adjustments to the positions of each part of the suit.

Once the cut is correct, I fill the cut with material and add a layer of shading (not shadows). The shading is generally dark around the waist and bottom of the legs, getting lighter on the shoulders, bottom and knees. I texture the shading to give a richer look to the material underneath.

I add pockets and trim, then the shadows and highlights. After I add the buttons and buttonholes.

A detail of one of my suits showing the completed texture.

Four new suits

2007-06-26T11:34:00.000Z

I just put my suits in a new simpler and smaller package with just pants, jacket and one shirt. My large packs remain on sale and these have ties or extra shirts included.

The British Cut suit is a single breasted shapely suit with thin lapels and medium gorge and is subtly shaded to enhance your body shape and made to hang well. The suit is drawn to suggest a fine wool, like cashmere, catching the light.

Seraphine at Betria

2007-06-16T20:03:00.000Z

Waiting for the fashion show to start. Seraphine (shown on left) organised a show at Betria Prims and the Boutique has been given an opportunity to show a few clothes. The main players are Nicky Ree, who makes amazing clothes but is not well known, Starsong, Diva, Insolence and Casa Del Shai.
I am wearing clothes from Marzipans Closet and feeling a bit formal.
It has started!

P.S. The Boutique are:
StarSong - Business Separates for men AND women (also here on BBI)
Marzipan's Closet - Businesswear for men AND women (also here on BBI) - suits, shoes and formals
Purple Rose Jewelry - Business friendly jewelry - pearls, chains, men's watches and more (also on BBI)
Gracile's - Accessories for women - shoes, stockings, eyes and skins
Fido - Feminine business and after hours dresses

Other people in the show
DIVA Designs - Businesswear and dressy casual for women AND men
Head to Toe - Menswear - formal, business and dressy casual
First Impressions - Businesswear and accessories for women
Cay's Skyshop Hair - Business hair styles for women AND men

Later: Am very impressed with Casa Del Shai, huge improvements since I last saw them and the best swimwear I have seen.
Loved Gracile's shoes as well, beautiful design and well made.
Marzipans Closet come out very well, distinctive classic design but executed very well.

British cut, navy blue mens suit

2007-06-14T10:40:00.000Z

A fine quality British Cut suit, longer lapels, medium gorge and 3 buttons.

This is a suit that means business with a strong classical cut that is elegant and timeless. It includes pants, buttoned jacket and seven shirts. Also includes matching socks.

Three cream shirts and three blue shirts with three tie patterns each. The seventh shirt is cream and designed for a flexi-tie which can be bought at my store in Dutch Business Park.

The suit has over 80 photoshop layers to give a good looking suit.

The material is micro-coloured to catch the light so that as you move there is a subtle play of colours across the suit, much like a fine quality fabric. Look at the many shades of blue on my photographs to get an idea of the effect.

Betria Prime - Summer Romance fashion Show

2007-06-14T10:18:00.001Z

Seraphine has a Summer Romance Show and I am one of the lucky people chosen to exhibit!
I will be showing a mens Navy blue business suit.

Dressed for Tequlia and Hamish's wedding

2007-06-10T01:34:00.000Z

Here I am dressed for the wedding of Hamish Stuart and Tequlia Tapioca.

From top to bottom hair is ETD Janae - blonde, ETD Heart barrette, (CS) Vogue skin - champagne (Green-light), dress Last Call: Toscana (celadon), Shiny Things: zig zag shoe - cream, Burroughs jewelry, eyes by Asp Grelling, animation override by Asp Grelling with walk by Beauvoir Roussel (available at Maitreya), stand poses by Luth Brodie and Beauvoir Roussel.

British cut, mens suit in rich brown

2007-05-30T12:12:00.000Z

A gorgeous rich brown suit for men is now for sale in my store. I am really pleased with the colour, it is rich, dark and businesslike. As always the material is made up of subtle colours and textures that catch the light and make it look something special.

Available at identity mens outfitters

Expressions - changeable look

2007-05-30T12:05:00.001Z

After making many body shapes I noticed that the position of the eyebrows made a big difference to your character. Raised eyebrows, sad, wistful could all be achieved with just eyebrows, so I made twelve different looks.

Available at identity mens outfitters

British cut gray suit finally released.

2007-05-28T17:29:00.000Z

This is my first suit in a series, a British cut gray suit with pants, jacket and seven shirts in one pack. The suit has subtle texturing and stripes which give a more interesting look. Available at identity mens outfitters

This is my first suit and took about 50 hours to create in Adobe Fireworks with about 60 layers, most of them shading and shadows.

The hair is ETD Matthew, shoes by are City Walk by Shiny Things, body shape by identity (available in my shop) and the skin is Lila Natural Skin.

identity name and logo

2007-05-27T11:54:00.000Z

From Designs by Asp

I rejected this brand name weeks ago but instinct and intuition keep drawing me back. Under the identity name I will be making mens and womens clothing. I hope they will be as distinctive as the name suggests while allowing my customers to achieve a personal look with different styles and variations on each piece. Personal looks can be made with colour change and accessories.

Dutch Business Park - Photos

2007-05-26T22:41:00.000Z

Dutch Business Park is ready to open! Here are a few pictures of my work.

Apart from the trees and a few other things the landscaping, buildings, furniture and shops are my own work.

From Designs by Asp

The entrance to the RPM Car section of the Region uses car shapes and 1950's car-parts including bonnet shapes, chrome, lights, pistons and oil. The entrance is a teleport to the car display 250m above.

Taking a break beside one of my waterfalls.

The view from reception looking over the surfing area. We have a shop at the waters edge selling surf gear including surfboards, windsurfers and kite boards.

I have tried to bring some of the best of SL to the Dutch Business Park region, with attractive landscaping and many things to do. My vision is of a company coming here and having their employes from around the world meet and have fun doing things together and learning about each other in a place with little stress and a lot of freedom.

The boat area in Dutch Business Parks. This is the mooring for the boats and sits over the top of the Underlake ballroom. I managed to get a sailing course onto the sim and this is the mooring point for the boats. In the background are my shops. The boats are Flying Tako by Kanker Greenacre.

Lights, atmosphere; Action

2007-05-22T08:07:00.000Z

Linden Labs will change the look of Second Life with new weather (lighting, cloud, atmospheric and water effects after) acquiring Windward Mark Interactive and its shader technology. Second Life will have a more realistic look. Beautiful sunsets, smog choked cities, tropical skies and science-fiction looks can all be created in the new browser and later within Second Life itself.

See Torley's slide show on Flickr.

When the new software is released I am keen to change the look of Dutch Business Parks. A Beta Browser is available which allows us to experiment with looks on our own computers. I cannot wait to see this in action and change the look of Dutch Business Parks, enhancing the atmosphere and general feel of the place.

Beautiful regions like Apollo or Svarga will definitely benefit from the new weather, but they represent less than 1% of the places in SL. You can fly over the mainland for miles and see a patchwork of buildings made to fit each small plot of land with no gardens or landscaping.

SL will look more realistic and bad buildings will stand out with the new weather. See Torley's slides for examples. Rather than increasing the realism of SL, the contrast between the sky and lighting will make the bad buildings more noticeable and draw attention that you are inside a computer game.

The custom built Islands made by professionals will benefit most from these changes. They can integrate the architecture, landscaping and planting with the weather. The average resident will find it hard to achieve the same effects with houses and gardens limited by prim usage.

With these changes it will become more diffcult for business to get started as the overall quality of SL improves. There will be fewer people who can do everything needed to make clothes, gadgets, vehicles, buildings or landscape simulators. There will be experts in different areas and an elite band will be providing the top quality goods. They will probably be supplying the people who can afford these services, i.e. the commercial companies coming in to SL.

Improving the lighting shows up other areas in SL, such as illumination, the sim terrain, particle and body shapes. The prims have just been tackled with the new sculpted prims.
- You can only have six illumination sources at one time
- Terrain is set at the corners of a sim and only 4 textures can be used over the entire sim
- Particles look pretty crude and it needs real skill to make a good looking particle source.
- Body shapes are based on one 'perfect' shape. You cannot go too far away from the perfect shape so you cannot reproducing some real-life faces. Orlando Blooms chin, Angelina Jolie, Dita Von-Tees forehead and Schwarzenegger's body shape are all difficult to do.
- Faces are made hardhiveer as you cannot change the nose length, or eye vertical positions.

I predict we will soon be seeing improvements in these areas.

Improving the weather has lifted the quality of one area of SL and shows up other areas as being poor. I am looking forward to these changes and the improved looks that we will be able to achieve, but not so much to the increased skill levels and time that will be needed to use all of this.

I moved the code

2007-05-14T12:17:00.000Z

I moved the code and examples to another blog, Code by Asp so this blog is purely about design.

I will put my tutorials and notes at Code by Asp.

Lighting at Dutch Business Park

2007-05-10T06:08:00.000Z

This is a photo of the light I was working on for Second Life. All the lighting effects are added by the light on the wall.

My light throws a nice soft, circular light onto the wall and floors with good light inside the building and little going outside.

The light starts to come on as dusk approaches so you can enjoy the wonderful Second Life lighting effects without them being drowned out. By the time the sun sets and darkness falls the light is fully on.

This light will be available at my stores in Dutch Business Park and in Tammora. Search for my shop name "Furnish IT" or look in my profile for links.

Website efficiency and effectiveness

2007-05-08T14:44:00.000Z

CodeTron (Rob) commented on one of my posts. I looked at Rob's blog and that reminded me of something I did a while ago. He was analysing the Google page-rank and mentioned the probablity of being on a web-page.
I ran an internal website for a couple of years and wanted an efficient and effective design. There are many programs that will analyse your web statistics, but few that tell you how to improve your site.
Running our website we wanted to provide information quickly and efficiently and I used one simple measure; for each page I counted how many pages were viewed before getting to the current page.
The number of web pages viewed is a stopping probability and followed a geometric distribution; the probability of stopping gives a measure of how good you web-site is at providing information. The higher the probability of someone leaving, the better the site is at providing information. i.e. The user found the information quickly and left.
Re- reading that (25OCT07) I need to explain. Assuming the site is an information site or product catalogue you want the person to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible and you do that by having found whate they want in as few clicks as possible, i.e. they found what they wanted in the minumum number of clicks and left the site. Most analysis programs count the number of pages viewed per hour/day/whatever and you want that number to be increasing. There are a few ways of doing that, increasing the number of visitors, increasing the number of visits, increasing the number of pages viewed per visit.
Assuming they left on the page they were looking for , then I moved the pages that were most frequently stopped higher up the hierachy (search).
By moving the pages I effectively increased the probability of finding the answer. Within a month I had doubled the probability of finding the required page (as measured by the slope of the geometric distribution). At the same time the number of hits increased dramatically. As the site became more useful, it was used more frequently. I had more visits that viewed fewer pages but my overall traffic (visitors per day) increased substantially.

My store in Dutch Business Park

2007-05-03T22:23:00.000Z

I am sitting in my store in a rare quiet moment one one of my new Sofa's which is made from simulated snake skin. Behind me is a glass topped office desk and far off are the matching conference tables. The sim is not open yet, so my store is sitting here waiting for people to come. My shop, Furnish IT, in Tammora has a selection of my furniture.

I spent a while designing the furniture to be low prim (prime shapes), so that you can get more furniture onto your land plot. The sofa is 12 prims, the conference chairs 10 prims. There is some fantastic furniture in SL but much of it uses a lot of prims. The best furniture uses over 30 prims for a sofa and chairs. I am trying to make good looking furniture but making every prim count.

I am looking forward to the new prim that Linden Labs will be including in the new release. I have already started looking at how to use it and will be including them in my furniture to reduce the number of prims even further.

Shops, names and business

2007-05-03T08:53:00.000Z

As part of Dutch Business park I am building shops selling essentials for business within the park and outside. This photo shows my office furniture shop on top and the mens clothing shop below that and out of sight under the mens shop is the womens shop.

As always I have been struggling with names. Currently my furniture shop is called Furnish IT, but I want a strong name that would be suitable for all three shops. At first I came up with the name 'identity' as a robust name showing my designs were distinctive but the word has too many negative meanings for people. The name 'identity' is not good for searchs as Google gives hundreds of hits even when adding "Second Life" to the search. The search for a name continues.

I must seem very brash starting three shops when three weeks ago I had no stock and no designs. I started with the furniture and made ten different lines and 40 different colours, designs and colours. I still have a few pieces to make, but the basics are all done.

I will be doing mens suits, shirts and ties next and hope to have my first ones ready in a couple of days.

Having furniture, office essentials, clothing and other avatar essentials is all part of the business strategy for Dutch Business Parks.

Reception area - Dutch Business Park

2007-05-02T18:21:00.000Z

This is my first building for Dutch Business Park. The design brief is to be very modern although my style drifts into a more homely style. I like my textures to be a bit grunged up, scratched, abused and interesting. I held back and kept the look fresh and unabused.

The main textures are made in TextureMaker. The planking is from a royalty free wood texture that I manipulated in Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. In Photoshop I took the contrast down using a high-pass filter (see http://www.taunt.com), then adjusted contrast, hue and brightness and finally blurred the image. In Fireworks I added thin parrallel rectangles for the planking, then embossed them to make planks. The glass uses one of my multi-use textures; gray background, noise, blur using a gausian filter, then exported to SL, coloured black and made transparent (transparency 40 to 60%). The aluminium is a light gray background with noise and motion blur. In SL I added a low amount of reflection.

In the future hope to show how I processed the textures.

The garden is bought from The Heart Garden Center.

Arrival

2007-05-02T17:32:00.000Z

Here I am a virtual character in Second Life, living a different existence from my real-life self. In SL I can create, realise dreams and am always discovering new abilities and things I can do. For 8 months I have been learning about Second Life, not just the physical things like building but about society, friends and how people behave.

Second-life has a fascinating enigma; when people hide their real-life selves they are less inhibted and express more about their real selves. I belive that in real-life we project what we think others want to see. In Second-Life we project more of what we really are. Relations in SL can be more open and but when they go wrong, also more raw.

I have been given the opportunity to build an entire private island for Dutch Business Parks. I am buying trees, sound effects, waves and a few other things, but the rest is made by me from terraforming, planting, building offices, furniture to scripting and making custom poses.

The Island is owned by Duke Amsterdam and will be a prestige office area with my shop selling items for the Island. Fortune Babii and Duke Amsterdam will be running the business side once I have handed over the completed Island.

Edited 14MAY07 to say that I have moved scripting and building to Code by Asp.

This blog is about me about the things I make. For coding and tips on building in SL, see my other blog at Code by Asp.