Day 80: Small Town Girl

Welcome to Stockton Springs, a quiet little town in Second Life. Today, Im just a "normal" girl visiting a small, American town. No monsters. No jumping off death-defying ski slopes. No mermaid fins. (Dont worry, this wont last long :P)



Stockton is an amazingly detailed little town. When I say detailed, I mean texture. Look around town, and you will notice the large number of original high quality textures. Nothing glaring or in-your-face. The textures are all used subtly to give you that little town feeling.

The main activity in town is the large ice skating rink in the town square. BTW, this is where I came to see Santa, skate, and have a giant snowball fight a couple days ago! :)



Stockton has its very own drive-in theater! You can drive/rez your own car into the theater and enjoy the movie or chat with your "friend" ;P I didnt have a car, so I rezzed a motorcycle. Just for the record, Im not a biker chick in RL: Im actually afraid of motorcycles. I keep a motorcycle in Inventory just in case I needed a vehicle in SL. Who knew I would ever need a car in SL? OK, now that I know, Ill go find something at Yadni's... :)



One of the highlights of Stockton is the open-air Serenity Chapel, a reproduction of the real life Thorn Crown Chapel in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. A photo cannot do justice to the care and detail involved. If I ever get married in SL, this would certainly be a good spot! :P



Stockton Springs throws occasional parties and concerts at the Roadhouse. I wonder if my friend Caterin would be interested in this. (She is planning to play every piano in SL) But she tends to hang out with the classy crowd (you know, tuxedoes, ballgowns, and grand pianos). So this may not qualify :P



And what little town is complete without a bad area, complete with trailer, car on blocks, giant satellite dish, and tons of really *CUTE* stray cats!! These 2 purring furballs came right up and nudged me moments after I took this pix. Awwww...I wish I could take them all home with me! :)

Stockton Springs is the labor of love of Becky Rawley and Caitlin Benton, an amazing pair of artist and animator. Caitlin gave me a tour of the town. You can sense the care and fun they had in putting this town together.

Bring a friend and come explore Stockton Springs. Press the Search button at the bottom of your screen, select the Places tab, and enter "stockton" as the keyword. Here is the SLURL: Fand (128,128,0).



Today, I wanted to build a normal tank top with skirt outfit. I have a few freebie tank tops, but as I mentioned before, spaghetti straps look horrible in SL. So I made a tank top with broader straps. It still has a painted-on appearance up close (thats unavoidable in SL clothing), but its much better than the spaghetti strap syndrome.

Oh, and the skirt! Based on a really nice texture I found on deviantart.com. The skirt has 2 interesting aspects:

First, most prim skirts use a repeating pattern, since most prim skirts are made up of a skirt and multiple prim panels. Getting the patterns to line up is difficult at best (and probably impossible in most cases). But by using an abstract pattern, I dont need a very precise match...a rough match would suffice. So I tried to match the texture on the prim portion to the skirt portion. This gave the prim skirt a more interesting, colorful appearance.

Second, Ged Larsen, one of our readers, created an updated version of the Necklace Generator. This version removed a lot of issues and gave very precise control over panel angles (for controlling poof). I spent most of the day learning how to use this new script, mostly to stop doing the things I did to compensate for issues with the original Necklace Generator script. This skirt is the first product from that script! Im not dreading the Necklace Generator anymore! Thank you so very much!

Ged Larsen's LoopRez Generator is now available at the Sirena Hair & Fashion store. Here is the SLURL: West Sunset (160,50,22).



But Santa...I wanted the '54 convertible in light blue... :(