Day 71: Masquerade

Today, I thought I heard about this masquerade ball being held at Transylvania in Second Life, a place they must jokingly call Vampire Empire. So, I put on my best masquerade ball outfit and decided to go check it out! And after that encounter at Little Silent Hill, Ive wised up and decided to go adventuring with black hair this time! Nothing bad happens to the dark hair girl, right? :)



Transylvania is certainly a strange town, full of very unusual shops that sell very strange items. Not to mention all the pale people walking around. Maybe they dont get much sun in this sim...



I found this cute little chapel where they must have a lot of weddings. There are poseballs on the ground for wedding parties! With all these weddings going on, I wonder why I dont see any kids around...



Theres something here called Musee des Vampyrs with all kinds of historical information on old historical stuff! It looks beautiful, but I want to find the party before it gets too dark!



Wow, this castle's HUGH! I hope I can find my way around before I miss the party!



Hello? Is anyone home? This is one BIG castle!



Finally! I found the ballroom. But where is everybody? Anyway, I hope the party's starting soon. The sun is about to set!

If you would like to come to Vampire Empire in Transylvania to see the cool shops, amazing atmosphere, the chapel, the museum, and the incredible castle (not to mention joining in with the locals), click on the Search button at the bottom of your screen, select the Places tab, and enter "vampire empire" as the keyword. The SLURL is Transylvania (181,79,32).

You have probably seen statues and other marvelous art pieces around Second Life. Today, I decided to try my hand at sculpting prims by making a masquerade ball mask out of prims.



And heres the result. What do you think?

Many masks in Second Life are made with a single curved prim and a texture of the mask. I wear one all the time as Lady Natalia during role-playing. There are a few masks made completely from prims, but the selection is very limited. So I wanted to try making one.

The challenge with prim sculpting is that there are a limited number of forms than prims can assume. And some of the more exotic forms require a lot of twisting and adjustments. Thats why the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives is such a valuable place: it gives you an idea of what prims can do.

The main challenge with the mask is really the eye holes. Remember, you cant just drill a couple holes in a prim. Otherwise, you could just use a half sphere, make 2 holes and start decorating. Unfortunately, you need to put 2 shapes that have holes in it, connect them to other shapes, and eventually flesh out a mask.

I chose to use 2 hollowed/tapered cylinders as the eye holes. That means I need something like a fancy capital "I" to joing the 2 cylinders. I used the inside of a tortured piece of torus for that. Then I smoothed out the top and bottom of the "I" with a couple of flattened quarter-spheres. I used another couple tapered tori as eyebrows. After that, the cheeks, nose, and the outside gold frame are relatively simple shapes.

And for decoration, I added a little gold torus between the eyes, and a number of colored gems. I got the prim dimensions and textures for gems from a couple classes I took today! See what an education can do? :)

Of course, theres an alterior motive as well! Im going to try to make an animation using the mask. Instead of a "worn" mask, Im planning to put a handle on it and create an animation in Poser to bring it to the face. This should make for an interesting pose for the Miss Second Life Formal Wear event. Ive never made a pose before, so this should be interesting. I have until this Wed (1-1/2 more days) to do it. If I am successful, I will share how its done in a future entry! :)



What happened? Where am I? And whats all this Kool-Aid doing in the water fountain?

Hey, I thought bad things only happen when Im blonde! :P