Second Life Shakespeare

Taking a Deep Breath . . . .

2008-05-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

I'm post-dating this entry so it won't show up for a week. I've blogged enough for today, and while my brain is churning I need to SHUT UP so students can write.

Gemmy A. and I are discussing creating a Second Life learning community in Spring. My class would create content, and her class would market it. I'm planning to make a core product line to help us get started. Also I'll hopefully be able to make a store on DCCCD island to sell the finished products. Any money raised would go to a DCCCD scholarship fund.

My big roadblocks are red tape and my woeful lack of knowledge.

I don't even want to think about the red tape. I'll need a ton of help to get around that roadblock. My lack of knowledge, however, is fixable. My goal is to be a jack-of-all-trades. I need to know a little of everything, and quite a bit about a few specific subjects. Here is my list so far:

LSL Scripting!! So important, and I'm soooo avoiding it. Must be able to script pose balls, facial animations, and vehicles.
Better modeling skills -- practice more than anything
Imported prims. How to make them, and how to get them into SL. Daz Studio and Blender look like the best bets for this. Maybe SketchUp, too, since SketchUp and Blender can talk to each other now.
Better texture skills. I have the newest Painter X, and Photoshop CS3, and two books on texturing.
Better figure animation skills. Must practice more with Poser.
Shortcuts & techniques for constructing clothing for SL.
Better understanding of combat systems, since that's what men spend money on in SL.

My brain hurts just thinking about it, but my heart is singing. I've needed this push.

Good-Bye Ghostdog

2008-05-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

Sad news -- Ben Barnes, Executive Dean of Information Technology at Brookhaven, passed away on Monday. Some of you may have met him on our island in Second Life; his avatar name was Ghostdog Destiny.

I always looked forward to seeing Ghostdog. Every time I saw him he would parade around in avatar outfit after avatar outfit. Superman, Darth Vader . . . no one was safe.

If you go in-world you'll find that the gazebo near the teleport pad has been turned into a memorial. I didn't realize it, but Ghostdog placed the gazebo on the island. (Along with the space pad and the hobbit hut.) I 've been enjoying the gazebo and made it my default "home" location a few weeks ago. It's a nice space to rez into. Now it makes me sad, but I know Ghostdog would want us to continue to enjoy it.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!

2008-05-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

Wow. The semester is over. Ya'll have been just fantastic. Let's recap:

SECOND LIFE: Everyone mastered this new environment in record time. Look at everything we've learned in four weeks!!! Look at how cool we are, and at how well we can navigate this new world!
DICTION: Everyone struggled with Shakespeare. Several of you (Leonard, Veneeta, Seema, Max, and others) did outside research to make sure you understood your parts. Several of you displayed a HUGE amount of courage -- I know it's hard for quieter students to perform like that, but ya'll all came through for me. THANK YOU for not being content with your first takes. Justin, Leonard, Vince and Veneeta performed naturally and with enthusiasm. But those of you who really struggled -- Damien, Mario, EJ, Sean -- I am proudest of your work.
BLOGGING: Almost everyone contributed to this blog, and I'm thrilled with the results. It's great to see all the interaction in the comments. The blog allowed every student to voice an opinion on every aspect of our production. It minimized class discussion, and maximized our work time.
BLOCKING: Justin, Vince and Veneeta blocked out most of R&J while I worked with other students. Because of their contributions the entire class could move forward and create animations. Max and Leonard did blocking for the evening class, and what I've seen so far looks very creative. Leonard has a lot of imagination, and the blocking notes are great. Lots of nice details and ideas for us to mine.
ANIMATION: Justin and Vince figured out how to use the Qavimator software and taught the rest of the class. They figured out how to use the props, how to turn off joint limits, and more. Everyone in the day class made animations.
WARDROBE: Amy, Jessica, Seema, Justin, and Veneeta shopped SL like mad. This was particularly difficult because we had endless variety combined with a SLOW shopping experience. When the MSND class decided on colored skins Jessica went beyond our expectations by asking Bodies by Oh to custom tint her skins. We're all thrilled with the results.
MUSIC: Music for R&J worried me -- where could we possibly get royalty-free music suitable to our production? EJ spent several class sessions in earphones, and found some wonderful stuff.
VIDEO: Several people were involved in the shoot for MSND -- Farley and Jessica starred, while Max and Amy operated the camera. Jessica, I know you didn't ask for this role (that'll teach you to miss class!!) but your performance is great. Leonard provided crucial directions at a key time. Farley is editing the video and has researched screen capture software and also machinima cams. It's been a big relief to have Farley on our team; I could just turn the video over to him and focus on the animation issues.
CONSTRUCTION: Everyone did a little building, but Amy and Sean are our Master Builders. Sean's sake house is fabulous, lot of great texturing and attention to detail. The sushi barstools are so great!!! Amy's theater is really nice -- I love the rooftop party area. But the stained glass floor is my favorite theater detail. Sean put in a lot of classtime on the build. Amy put in long stretches of time working at night. Ya'll did a great job!!
COMIC RELIEF: Ya'll made class fun. Thank you, Farley, Jessica, Justin, Seema, Mario, Amy, Veneeta, and VINCE who came to class in costume!!!
DETERMINATION: We didn't finish the project. I was initially upset about that, but in retrospect I'm glad we didn't. Since most of you want to continue working between semesters we'll have time to pull together a more polished piece. And best of all, it gives me the honor and privilege of working with ya'll again. You have been the most fantastic classes I have ever taught.

Thank you for jumping off this cliff with me. It's been the best jump ever.

Finding Posts / Comments

2008-05-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

If you take a look at the bottom of this post [entry] you will notice it says "comments." This feature allows other people to discuss your post. You can read the comments by clicking "comments."

If you want to find an older post you can use the sidebar. Click on the month you made the post, and the names of all posts for that month will appear. You can also click on the month to see all posts for that month.

Test

2008-05-07T11:19:00.001-07:00

I can not find my first few entries

Avatars in Control

2008-05-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

We start filming in about eight hours. I'm excited. Also nervous. What was I thinking, picking Shakespeare? Yes, we needed something royalty-free, but I could have chosen Oscar Wilde. Or GB Shaw. Instead we are filming a play about words with avatars that do not have moving mouths!! What was I thinking?

That small problem aside, we have other issues:

The main characters all need facial animations, which means buying HUDs for everyone unless I can find a solution in the next couple of hours.
About half of the R&J animations are ready. I still think the day class will finish the project since so many of you are willing to stay late tomorrow.
The MSND group doesn't have any animations ready. At all. Except for some fairy poses Amy found. We have not spent our time wisely, folks!! Luckily this script is mostly talking, unlike R&J's sword fights, so it should go much more smoothly.
The R&J group has a few animations designed for two plus characters. We can't deploy them separately as moving the avatars into the correct position is difficult -- they often need to move an inch or so to the right, but avatars don't have that degree of control. They can STEP to the right, but it's not a baby step.

Wednesday is going to be interesting. Very interesting.

Screen Capture Testing

2008-05-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'm first going to say that I hope we can keep the Shakespeare work up on Second Life so I can go back and reference it. It would be good to continue to work with my class on this project even though the class will be over. I hope we can keep this blog open too. I will be willing to do some work until the summer time showing of the Shakespeare show that Sharon will demo.

I've also been working with a couple of programs for Screen Capture. iShowU is one that I've had to pay for that allows screen capture to include video or real-time animation like Second Life. I've not seen an issue yet with my testing but I do know that on some screen capture software that video is sometimes replaced with nothing or a green block. Like I said I haven't see this with iShowU. Don't confuse iShowU with the Second Life recording software.

The other program that I've purchased is the "Flip4Mac WMV Studio" This allows for the converting of a QuickTime MOV file that iShowU will create to a Windows Media WMV file. Doing this just in case I would need to provide a WMV to a Windows user.

I was also playing around with Apple's Keynote for creating some cool effects with text and pictures. As we learned in class you can export these as a QuickTime MOV file to be used in a video podcast. Wish I would have had more time to have done these cool little shorts.

Alpha Poke Lives!!

2008-05-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

The R&J script has several animation challenges, one of which is to get Tybalt to agressivly poke Romeo in the chest. It's very much a guy move, and we named it the Alpha Poke when working on blocking.

When the class started animating we read a lot of condratictory material on animating hands. It's impossible. It's possible. It's easy. It's hard. It can only happen on Cinco de Mayo.

The Internet is a wonderful source of information. Really. But sometimes there is too much information combined with out-of-date information. It's difficult to decide what is authoratative.

Which is why I'm testing the concept instead of relying on someone else's words. The animation below is horrible, but the last second or two is all that counts. Marylinn clearly points her finger. Our alpha poke can live.

Oh, forget it. I've been trying to embed this video for an hour now. You'll just have to trust me. So help me, Flash's video support gets WORSE every year. Not better. And yes, I could upload to YouTube, but their video quality is sooo bad that we'd end up with a slab hand anyway.

I'll take the AVI down to the Mac lab later, and generate a .MOV file, which will work beautifully. Take THAT, Adobe.

Anyway, it seems hand modifications are somewhat possible. You can't make a modification in the animating software. It won't work, at least not as far as I can tell. Instead you have to upload your BVH file to Second Life, and at that time choose from SL's limited hand modifiers.

This isn't the perfect situation, but ANY solution is better than slab hands.

Long live the alpha poke!!

Windlight

2008-05-06T00:09:00.001-07:00

Me messing around with windlight. I am not very good, but I think it looks, of course fake, but pretty. ^_^

Death by Video Tutorials

2008-05-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm watching lynda.com tutorials on Poser. I know this is worth the invested time. I know this is worth the invested time. I know this is worth the invested time. I know this is worth the invested time. I know this is worth the invested time. I know this is worth the invested time.

I hate these things -- I'm falling asleep again.

I think completing the animations will take brute time, but not much more than that -- with one huge cravat.

We need to have two characters interact -- grapple with each other, for example. This is hard to do in SL. If one avatar tries to grab another the end result will be the first avatar's arms sliding through the second avatar's body.

It is possible to get avatars to interact by using a couples poseball. Each avatar touches the poseball, and a two-character animation plays out on screen. Characters can physically engage in a wide variety of activities including dancing.

I can create the animations. It's a slow process, but I can do it. But I don't know how to create a poseball. There are several free empty poseballs on SL, but they're all for one-avatar animations. Couples poseballs are specialized items that have to be purchased with pre-set animations. I can't find an empty couples ball anywhere.

(sigh) We need a programmer on this team. A good programmer could solve this problem for us in a couple of hours.

Theater Permissions

2008-05-05T09:00:00.002-07:00

Amy, I need to move the theater so the day class can use the ground -- please check the privileges.

R & J status week ending 5-2-08

2008-05-05T06:52:00.000-07:00

R & J is coming to its final moments. We are all working on animations. I have completed most of mine in the assigned list. However, if someone would give me some tip on how to slow it down, it will work terrific. Unlike Flash, in Qavimator, controlling speed with keyframes is not quite working. I am also unable to work with Qavimatior on my Mac at home. Hence most of my work is done in the given limited time.

We also read out our script earlier in the week, practicing for the voice over. On Friday we went into the Mac lab and did our final recording. It was time consuming, yet very enjoyable experience to work in a team with Shakespearean lingo! However none of us had Japanese accent, unlike our costume and set/scene :), hence 'tis going to be funny...
Characters playing their part in Kimonos talking Texan...Nice!

Monday we are hoping to put it all together. Wednesday is our final day of work!
I feel like Cinderella, will not be Lady Capulet after 12:00 any more! My virtual life will sadly be a Sionara! Second life is an experience in itself. Working in a team with students from all kinds of schedule was pretty interesting as I am from non-student background.

Hoping to wrap up Romeo and Juliet, also excited to experience the short play in a virtual scenario, it will be a memorable portfolio piece, an experimental one, I must add! Again if any one has any ideas on slowing Qavimator tips, could you please blog?

Veneeta

Shaky Start

2008-05-05T06:21:00.000-07:00

This, let me remind you, is the last week of the machinima project. And we're probably off to a shaky start. I bought Poser on Saturday and planned to knock out a BUNCH of animations, but my family interfered. I didn't accomplish anything aside from falling asleep while reading a tutorial. But work is finished at 1:15 today, so I'm going to go home and put in some serious seat time.

Here is a list of what needs to be done:

Remaining animations for R&J -- I'm not even sure what is left. Should have given everyone access to the checklist so we could all check things off. Poor planning on my part.
ALL animations for Midsummer's. Jessica, guess what you'll be working on this week?
Landscaping for R&J -- we'll have to move the theater up in the air so Sean and Veneeta can finish this.
Send special video-replacement texture to our island manager so she can upload it.
Finalize choice of screen capture software so we can film Midsummer's and others. Purchase.
Get wings for Oberon. Face lights for any fairies who need them. By fairy poses. Possibly buy those tree avatars from Linden Lifestyles. Possibly buy that flowery fairy bed for Titania.
Make set for Midsummer's. (Easy.) Use Windlight to make a nice sky, at the very least. Maybe find a nice Windlight tutorial.
Find out why I don't have a Film Path camera in my inventory even though I paid for one.
Decide if everyone needs a Huddles. I hope not.
Film all video. (Hopefully on Wednesday in both classes.)
Edit all video (after the semester ends, on my own.)

Lots to do.

(After class) Wow, very productive class, and more on my to-do list.

Sean needs glass textures. Locate. Send him coords or files as attachments in SL.
Veneeta and I need to work on the landscaping. Need free plants. I have a few.

Grrrrrrr . . . .

2008-05-02T21:18:00.001-07:00

Qamivator won't work on my Mac. I was going to create animations tonight, and now I can't. I hate it when I want to be creative but find the medium itself fighting me!!! And it's Friday -- not like there is anything on TV. Grrrrrrrr.

Alternate Use for Alt-Zoom Camera?

2008-05-02T21:00:00.000-07:00

I'm still playing with how we're going to make the avatars move in concert smoothly. My gut is telling me that even little things like moving across the tavern have the potential to be difficult.

That's where th alt-zoom camera might be useful. Its original use is to set up a path for a camera to travel along. (YouTube Video available.) The camera is worn on the head of an avatar, and that avatar films the scene.

I'm wondering if we could just leave off the camera, and use the alt-zoom markers to move characters from one place to another. Since the markers are designed to disappear tis might work.

Or maybe not -- I've never signed in with a second account to watch my primary avatar film. Maybe the camera avatar looks strange.

Maybe someone else has scripted a solution for this, and I'm duplicating needlessly.

(Sort of) Random Blog

2008-05-01T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today i was working at my part-time job (sushi waitress) and I looked up at the screen.. and I saw what appeared to be Second Life. I got really confused and thought I was hallucinating from being on SL too much.. but nope! It was Second Life!
They were talking about it briefly on the news and showing clips of a character flying in a building. Kinda cool~
Have a nice day everyone!

Microphone Settings for the Snowball

2008-05-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

For those who are using the Snowball Mic for your projects and need to know the three settings then I've detailed below:

> Position 1 - Directional cardioid mic

> Position 2 - Directional cardioid mic but it reduces by -10dB for loud areas so speak very close to the mic

> Position 3 - Omni best for a small group of individuals

One week to go

2008-04-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

Lets see....
Today I spent my first Linden Dollar!! Tricksie and I went shopping to get my character outfitted. I'm also now equipped with a greeny, yellow skin. I then went to several different sites looking for shoes and hair. Tricksie and I then bought these fairy outfits. Pretty cute, no?

I found out that the screening wasn't going to be for another month or so, so my anxiety attack is a little calmer. I was going pretty psycho trying to get something that looked half decent in such a short amount of time. I'm sad to think this class is almost over!! I've also got lots of poses and gestures as well as a few animations to those who need it, just let me know.
The class recorded the dialog today, it was kind of painful and embarrassing to hear my own voice reading the lines (lol). Overall i feel like we've made progress today!

PS. I might tear the theater down and start over.

Third Entry

2008-04-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Max and I were assigned to do the blocking for Act ll Scene 1. At first it was a little difficult to begin, but after reading the lines a dozen times the actions began to form in our minds. I am unfamiliar with all the animations avalable but I'm sure almost any movement is possable. In my opinion each character should have blocked their own movements, but by me doing the blocking I did learn more in debth of what is going on in the play.

We discovered that it is not necessary to block a movement to every word; it is not natural. Yes people (avatars) do use body movement when they speak, but lets not over do it. At times we had to stand up and actually act it out. By acting out the words we learned that we only needed to use less than half of the movements we intended to use. We changed the blocking several times until we came up with what we thought would work.

I would like to also add frogs croaking, fireflies flying, and twinkles in the air, appearling at random, pictating a fairyland. I am not sure if this is part of blocking. I know that I am a creative. I wish I had more time to work on my projects. Right now I am fighting an illness that is not letting me be my best. I want to have fun with this project, not feel strained.

Second Entry

2008-04-30T18:38:00.001-07:00

Time is of the essence. I am unfamiliar with software and jargan. I do not feel that I am getting the one on one that I need. There is not even 10 people in the 2 classes being held, I feel I could get more personal help. My lack of knowledge is noticeable, but I'm left to struggle alone. My bigest struggle is overcoming the pain in my right leg. After a long day at work, the long hike to class, and sitting for an additional 3-4 hours. My leg is throbing and is as big as a ballon by the end of the night. It makes it very hard to concentrate in class, all I can think about is getting home and elevating my leg.

I will finish this and all projects. It is too late to turn back now. The pressure is on and I seem to do my best at this point. As I have learned, seperate the people from the problem and move forward. I am working on an additon project at the same time I am working on A Mid Summer's Night Dream. All I can do is my best.

First Entry

2008-04-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

First Entry

It has been about 25 years since the last time I read shakespeare or did anything theathrical. I think this new project is going to be alot of fun. We have all been assigned are parts and duties to produce A Midsummer Nights Dream in Second Life. I have been cast the part of Oberon-King of the fairies. My additional duties will include Filming and Editing. I would also like to design part of the set as well; I haven't discussed this with Sharon yet, but I think I could do it.

There is so much to do in so little time. I need to practice my lines. I think if I recornd and listen to myself, I will remember them faster. I know I will be reading them, but I want to be as elequent as I can. I also will be speaking with an accent and at a fast pace. By what I saw on the viedo my character spoke fast, loud and with much fluctuation in the rhythumm of his speech and tone. I would also like to put my vocal in Grage Band and experiment.

Filming and Editing will be my second task in the porducton. I need to start comming in on Saturdays and familiarizing myself with the controls. I will pick it up fast. I do not get the entire concept of what we are doing, but it will fall into place. If time permits, I nee to ask Sharon if I can help create the set. It doesn't seem that hard. Just a bush or two.

Week Four

2008-04-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

Today I got a new avatar for the play. (Dasher Atlass) I was assinged to find hair and wings for him. I was able to find free hair and wings. We also recorded the audio for the play.

Alt-Zoom Camera

2008-04-30T18:07:00.000-07:00

Part of the project is will be to record/film the show. My group was ask to research "Alt-Zoom Camera". There is a website for it at www.alt-zoom.com but it still looks like it is going to provide more content in the near future. So, I did some more searching and I ended up learning that if you want this camera then it is free. You have to go to Lukanida (you can do a search in SL). Once there then find the theater. There seemed to be a couple but this one was the larger of the two that I saw. Once inside look to the left of the stage and you'll see the box. It says something like Free Machinima Stater Kit.

I then went to some other's in my group. One already had but the other's were teleported. Strange thing I noticed was that I could see on my screen but it took a little time for the box to render on the screen of the other student.

Next thing I had to learn about it was to find out how it works. The best thing I found was on YouTube. Seems like you can position multiple camera angles by place the camera. It looks like you control the camera the same way one makes things.

My other team member is now looking at a more expensive camera. Oh, to use the Alt-zoom Camera you have to have a SL account with at least $10L.

Lost & Found

2008-04-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Jay Jeces, could you please delete your shoe? Thanks!

Fighting Animation

2008-04-30T09:17:00.000-07:00

The fighting animations are the hardes part about this pay in my opinnion. for this we need to either find an object that trigger this type of animation or use huddles to string together multiple animations.

Using an object would be the easist way to creat the fight scenes for us in the short time we have left but there are a two problems. First me have to fin a sutible that would work with our play's setting being in antient Japan and second is finding one within our budget. To this we would need to search in second life but this is also an issue because second life is such a big place with a whle lot fo stores that have different varities of animations.

The huddles are another option that we have for animating the fighting scene but this seems to be a lot mre difficult and time consuming because of the nature of what we would have to do to animate the fight. We would have to string together multiple poses. Tis would be very time consuming but we would have more freedom to animate the scene how we would want to.

Right now we ar seeing whic options would work better for us and I hope we can find the object that will work best for us.

Sound Design

2008-04-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

For the second life project I have been doing I am doing the sound effect and BGM for the project. This isa little difficult because the setting of our play is in during old Japanese time.

For the sound effect I have been searching for some good sword effect such as when two sword collide and the swinging of the sword. I first went to google and searched for sword sound effects and came up with sites like www.soundsnap.com and www.audiosparx.com. These sites had found a few sound effects but I felt they didn't work for our project. I later tried entering katana sound effect and I found the sound effects that I wanted to use.

For the BGM this is what is goving me the most problem because I need to find the right music to each scene I found one on a CD that might work though I dont if it will work within our play. For the fight scenes these are the one that I'm really having a problem with am trying to find music for.

I will keep on trying to find the music for now and hope to find the right one soons.

Animation & Filming -- The Scary Truth

2008-04-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

OK, Justin, here we go -- I can string animations together using a HUD known as Huddles. It allows users to build and play macros for avatars. It isn't the quickest process ever, and the price is a little high. Not really high for what the device does, but high when I have to buy eight non-transfer devices for students to use. Devices I'll never see again.

Huddles does have a way to target different avatars, but as a group they can only perform one action. (We saw this when we danced in class -- everyone did the same dance!) I've emailed the creator to see if maybe I've missed something.

There are several cameras in SL that help with filming. I'll be researching those this afternoon. The Alt-Zoom camera is famous, but it was also one of the first. Maybe there is something better out there now?

It looks like we'll have to have a specific avatar devoted to filming. That avatar will also have to control the environmental settings for the sim.

animating

2008-04-28T11:48:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, before we really got into any of the developement of the characters, I had these ideas of all the cool things we could do. Things change. There are a few major limitations to the animation in second life. The biggest one is the faces dont move, next is the hands that remain open, and lastly the lack of fluidity. I am using QAvimator to make the motions, and it is very easy and straighforward. However, it is tedious and time consuming. At the very beginning of the project we were just kind of sent out on our own to just try and figure out what we need and how to go about getting it. This didnt produce much.

After the "drifting," Sharon stepped in and started assigning tasks and roles according to skill sets. Having a central figure head with the general idea of the project on a very high level is CRUCIAL! We started to actually block and story board. This helped me so much to be able to see a list of all the actions each character makes at each point. I am currently working on a master list which will list the animations in chronological order so we can basically just focus on camera angle and perspective during the shooting process.

In Second Life (Henceforth referred to as SL) animations can be either bought or imported from another program. I have found a lot of freebie animations, mostly from "Freebies Dungeon," which we can use for many of the less significant gestures. They range from simple fighting moves to pointing and various other emotional gestures. The trouble I forsee with these however, is the lack of fluidity. I am still not convinced we are going to be able to string these along effectively without a master commander of all the avatars. Even if we can make a master system, I don't think it will be very smooth.

For the animations i can't find, I am going to have to make them. This is very cool. Out of all the tasks in this project so far this is the one that I personally find interesting. In QAvimator, the character can be manipulated in a frame by frame system. You want to start out with your character in a "hands to the side pose," bringing it out of the original T pose it starts out with. Upon gaining the right open frame, it is a good practice to lock the first frame. When a motion is desired, it is most effective to drag your frames over and start with what you want it to look like at the end of one "string" of movements. By that i mean; if you were to make a character wave the first pose I would make would be the hand rising up about seven frames from the start frame. At that point, you can slide the frames back and forth and see that the program has filled in the tween motions. You have an arm rising naturally. Once that happens, about three frames after the last stopping point you will start the next phase of movement, the side to side motion of the hand. At the end of each "Key" frame, it is a good practice to analyze each tween frame to smooth out any of the midmotion frames that may have gone out of wack. The main thing to keep in mind when animating is; the motion of one part of the body usually involves many other parts of the body as well. In order to keep things looking natural it is good to keep going over the entire animation to make sure you don't stray away from what you originally intended.

I am still worried about how the main swordfight is going to turn out. The issue I have is that the objects in second life are ghosts. By that i mean they go right through everything. The objects don't behave according to real physics. This presents a problem when swords should hit and bounce off each other. If that doesn't happen the characters are just gonna flail around. hopefully someone has a magical solution to this problem. Things are not all bad though. Most of the dramatic motions will be very easy to do, and will hopefully make up some for the limitations of combat in SL.

Time is our major limitation here. If we had more concentrated time for about four or five hours at a time this would be so much simpler. Although, in the real world time constraints are a very real issue that can only be surmounted by busting some butt. We have blocked and diagramed every detail down to the very end, and it willbe very interesting to see.

What I've been doing.

2008-04-28T11:02:00.001-07:00

For the day class Romeo & Juliet I've been mostly working on the building of the props and set for the machinima. I've included pictures of some of the things I've finished below. The set is going well in terms of modeling, texturing is another story. I usually try to just throw on any random texture because the default wood texture that you get when you original rez a prim is ugly ugly ugly. Sometimes the random texture ends up working out, but otherwise I'm going to need to go into photoshop or something and design my own.

Besides that, I'm playing the part of Romeo, and I'm really not much of a performing arts kind of person, so I'm not great at doing the voice for him. But I think somehow I'll try to make it work. Overall I like where this machinima is going, I like the costumes, I like the scene, I like the set I've made, and I think the final product will turn out well.

Random Stuff with Hair

2008-04-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

In second life I was able to find a bunch of free hair for my Benvolio Character and I played with the hair settings to make several hair designs for other characters.

Hopefully these hairs will be useful. I was able to get a free katana and a free shinai which is a bamboo training sword for kendo. I tried finding a few free battle systems but I could only find a Sci-Fi battle system for a Star Wars role-playing game. So that wouldn't work.

I have been attempting to use qavimator to make some animations but I'm not very good at it. I keep forgetting to animate the inbetween motions so the limbs don't just jump to their next keyframe. I've been playing around with the movements to animate a fight, but a fight system was bought so I can now focus on the smaller/easier animations.

Today Veneeta, Justin, and I went over the blocking for the script so we can get an idea of how everyone is going to be interacting in Second Life. We were able to finish the blocking and Veneeta is going to be typing it out for the new script.

The Countdown Begins . . . .

2008-04-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

We have TWO WEEKS to wrap this thing up.

I'm not so worried about the day class -- they have three class sessions this week plus next week's sessions. A few people are risking Bs and Cs on this assignment through lack of participation (in class and in this blog) but we'll finish the project with or without them.

I do wish the day class animation group would share -- I wanted to spend this morning working on animations, but I can't because nothing has been shared with the group.

The evening class . . . we have two class sessions. And a critical lack of non-participation, leading to all sorts of issues.

- Where are our blocking notes? The group responsible for that information has not followed through. I wanted to start messing with the animations independently, but I can't because the assigned information has not been shared with the group.

- Wardrobe isn't finished, but I don't think that will be tough. We'll give the generic avatars to Tricksie, and she'll have them outfitted before we can blink.

- The theater is going great, but it does need some work. Only one of the two students assigned to this project are actually working on it!!

- I feel really great about leaving the video in the hands of its assigned group, but I'm feeling less overjoyed about our chances for getting the video into SL. I've hit a technical/personnel snag on my end that I'm hoping to resolve in the next few days.

- Unlike the day class, we haven't even read through the script once. I'm very worried about what the results will be once we sit in front of a microphone. Since we're working with animation voices are crucial. Try to imagine Toy Story without Tom Hanks and Tim Allen's voices -- it just doesn't work.

Lots to do, limited time, and a lack of participation. My fingers are crossed.

R&J status for school week ending Friday 4/25/08

2008-04-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

This week I worked hard on the storyboard drawing which I turned in. The storyboard is not quite complete till we read the rest of the script and plan camera angles and movements of each character further. Sharon arranged for it to be scanned as well. This will help us to have a clear road map as to where our animation scenes will go!

I have also referenced several books from the library to draw out a nice elevation of the whole landscape of the garden where the Tavern sits, keeping in mind the time period. I did show Sharon a rough draft of my landscape sketch in ink. I made some textures in Photoshop just so we don't have generic Second Life textures. Sharon had spoken about the unit of measure used in Second Life is measured in meters. I have worked on textures keeping this in mind as well.

In class I build objects and tried texture mapping it. I am unable to try out different textures on 3D objects as each time I want to upload something, I don't have access to Linden, which slows me down. I am hoping to work more on Monday and would also like to know when/how the voice over will be recorded. I am also looking forward to complete rest of the story board as we have to act out the rest of the play, looking for Sharon's help. Direction is crucial. I like my Kimono and hair. I put some grey in it. I also worked on the eye, to make it Japanese.

Sean mentioned he needs glass texture, I have now created this in Photoshop. I hope the transparency will look good as I really worked hard on the mask and alpha channel.

Veneeta

workingg

2008-04-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

Today I spent a couple of hours working on the building again. I tried to go shopping for some more house furniture/building freebies but my computer cries every time I try, so I could only stop by Junky Monkey for about 4 minutes.
I did some changes to the building.. I thought it looked a little too square-ish so I'm going to try to make a more interested layout. I added a new spiral staircase, as well as a more decorative entry-way. It's under construction so you can't take the stairs upstairs, you've gotta just fly up there. I hope everyone likes what it's looking like so far.

PS: Marilyn Marrieux, you have ownership of a leopard couch and a window that i can't delete/modify .
Tricksie Delight, you have a blue table floating in the middle of the first floor that i can't delete either :(

Thanks!

PPS: i can't wait to see the fairy outfits / skins.

Fairies

2008-04-25T19:37:00.001-07:00

I know we probably already have all the costumes, but omg I just found these and I had to post them up, they are super cute! ^_^

Damein's Blogging Assignment

2008-04-25T08:35:00.001-07:00

1. Pretend you are sitting next to a person who has never been in Second Life. Tell the person what Second Life is like. Write at least five sentences.

A someone who is sitting on the couch into the building.
A someone who is flying in the sky to another buildings.
A someone who is pointing to the advertisements about what is inside Northlake backpack.
A someone who is walking across the street and building.
A someone who is riding the plastic float in the water.

2. On Monday we built a snowman in Second Life. Pretend you are teaching someone else to build a snowman in Second Life. Write the directions for building a snowman using at least five sentences.

The snowman have an orange carrot on his nose.
The snowman have stem arms in the left and right side.
The snowman wears a black hat.
The snowman have no legs.
The snowman have three balls around his body.

3. We bought new clothes for your Second Life avatar. Your avatar will wear the clothing when we act out Romeo and Juliet. You write a sentence telling what you like best about the new clothing. Next you write a sentence telling what you don't like about the new clothing.

I like those large T-shirt about YMCA. I do not like those small jacket about soccer.

4. I gave you Romeo and Juliet today. Mr. F wrote the story so you can understand it better. Read the story, and highlight any words you do not know. List the words below.

Mask
Tail
Costume

Theater Wish List

2008-04-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

A little more about the theater Amy is work on -- the inside portion will be the theater, where we will hold a screening party for the finished machinimas. It'll feature either theater seating (like in a movie theater or opera house) or sofas. Ya'll have to decide.

The upper level will be a hangout/party area. I think right now it has freebie furniture -- a gazebo and a pool table Amy picked up. Last night we talked about adding a dance floor. We're also considering a bar, but I'm worried a virtual martini might violate the Student Code of Conduct.

I want a "wish list" of items for our theater & roof space. Please use the comments to let me know if there is anything you would like to see. Personally I want some interactive games. Jessica and I played a two-player Connect Four clone a few days ago. Something simple like that would be good for the party. The evening class didn't spend much money on costuming, so we'll have some funds left over for more elaborate party items.

My original screening party plan was to invite all the students in the class, plus their Second Life friends. I also wanted to send an email out to the college so anyone interested could participate. It happens that the District is planning a summer event for Second Life, so there is a possibility we'll combine it with the screening.

This would be good because more people will get to see what you have done, but also a little stressful because we know people will be seeing your work. Use comments to let me know what you think.

Oh man

2008-04-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

Last night I was on Second Life until 4:30AM. I went to work at 10:30AM and came home at 3:30... and I've been on and off Second Life since 3:30 PM (it is now almost 1AM). Jeezzz.. 10 hours!! Today I spent a lot of time with Jesscah and Ms.Sharon (lol, Jesscah told me not to call you that!).. We fixed the technical difficulties and shopped around. My days are a little hazy I can't recall what i did last night, and what i did today..

I know for sure we fixed the flooring and the glass walls because they were being funky and getting this weird "height difference" effect every time you walked around. We also discussed whether we should have those chairs i have there now, or if we should change to a lounge type of seating arrangement. What do ya'll think?? Lounge?Baroque?

Theres a lot of random stuff going on so it might look a little crazy if you all are coming by.. I think once the floor gets leveled it'll come together more..

Ps. is anyone else having a hard time getting upstairs or is it just me?

Last Nights Class

2008-04-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

While working on the Shakespeare project I noticed how we were having issues with the video that needed to be edited. I should have remembered that since the video was already in a QuickTime format (e.g., .mov ) then I could have used my QuickTime Pro copy to cut out all the unneed footage. This allows for a smaller file size (less time to ingest) in an editor like iMovie or FinalCut. Usually editors keep the whole file intact just allowing pointers to what will be visually exported back out as a QuickTime file.

Speaking of software I've used an open source program call "HandBrake". It is good for taking only sections out of DVD movies so you can do what you need to do with them. You should remember to follow copyrights rules. An example of what I used it for in the past was taking an old DVD that was originally a VHS tape of me flying. Did this so I could have it for making duplicate DVD's or using from a computer (i.e., QuickTime movie). Will look to see what other cool features it has.

The last thing I have to mention is that this class has helped me use Blogger in our Project. I've had a few friends and coworkers that have created some blogs but I didn't really have the need or time to create one. Now that it was part of our project I explored some cool features. I then noticed others in our class made their own blogs so I decide I would see about making my own.

Fairy Skins

2008-04-24T00:55:00.000-07:00

Since I can only make three sets, I added every picture in this set, the last ones should be the new fairy skins.

Lalalalalaa~~

2008-04-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

Today I spent the day starting on the structure for the theater. I had an idea going but somehow it turned into a weird taj mahal looking thing.. I wasn't really digging it so I had to delete it and move in a different direction. If you visit the land, this is probably what you see. I wanted to have walls but it makes it a really big pain in the butt to see what you are doing / maneuver. I also went to a place called Burns and picked up a bunch more wings and poses. Hopefully everything will pull together by next class. It's weird to think how this semester has whizzed by so quickly. I've gotta get this structure together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Third week in Second Life

2008-04-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

This week I have been assinged to build the theatre with Amy. I had to make a frame using Photoshop and import to second life to place inside the theatre. The frame had to be saved in Targa format using channels to have the forground transparent.

Second week in Second Life

2008-04-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

This week I learn how to shop. well not really shop but get free stuff. Learned how to teleport and I visited junky monkey (for free stuff) and I entered the dcccd property for the first time.

First experiences w/ Second Life

2008-04-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

I had never even heard of Second Life b4 this class. I began in orientation island. Learned how to move/fly/camera views and how to modify my appearence.

Shakespeare Video Shoot

2008-04-23T16:44:00.000-07:00

Last week we did the video shoot for the "First Life (real world)" part of the project. It was fun and I think we have enough footage to get the point across. I believe the best use of the footage will be for visual effect and not worry about audio. I think we will add text/subtitle or do the voice over.

I would take any suggestions on how the movie will be shown in Second Life. I've visited a few locations in Second Life that show videos and will research how to do this.

The final thing I would like to talk about is how much I laughed the last class. I had placed "Short-shorts" on my Second Life character. Then I went around finding others in my class that were on second life. You got to understand how conservative I am so when I did something funny like this I really couldn't hold my laughter back. Check out the photo. Just so you know I dress very business casual and this look is 180 degrees opposite from what I would have even done as a joke in real life. I discovered the ability to make my pants this short by changing my appearance settings. By the way I did this as a joke so I doubt I'll be walking around like this until I need another laugh.

Garden

2008-04-23T10:21:00.001-07:00

Tavern Inspiration

2008-04-23T10:11:00.001-07:00

R&J Costumes / Skin / Hair

2008-04-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

It was so much fun shopping for costumes / skins / hair. Sharon and myself are finally satisfied getting the costumes to match for the Montagues and the Capulets. The two respectable families have a distinct color scheme. The most outstanding costume is going to be worn by the Prince of Verona. I love the kimonos chosen for the Geisha's too. Hopefully all the characters will look age appropriate too with the skin chosen for them.

I must say shopping is quite time consuming in Second Life because you have to walk and walk in several Malls until you find something appropriate. IT IS CERTAINLY WORTH THE EFFORT!!

Shopping -- Worth The Effort?

2008-04-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

I have a love/hate relationship with shopping in Second Life. It's great that there is such tremendous variety -- I've been looking at kimonos for two weeks now, and I've probably seen a tenth of what is available. And everything fits, unlike real life, which is WONDERFUL.

But on the negative side, it's freaking slow. It can take twenty or thirty minutes to make my avatar crawl through one store. I can walk faster than that in real life, and I'm not in shape, unless you count round.

The web is faster. I could see 500 kimonos in the space of an hour if Second Life had an online shopping venue. Yes, it's cool to go to a virtual mall, but every mall I've been to is mostly just a collection of JPEGs on a wall. Isn't there a better use of space? (And don't get me started on those freaking slow kiosks.) Yes, the variety is overwhelming, but I'd rather not have the 'chain store' repeats. Can't tell you how many times I've stood around waiting for a shop to rez only to find I've been to that exact same store in a different mall.

There are times when a real virtual store is needed -- for furniture and animations, for instance. And I think clothing designers should maintain an SL presence, if just for customer service and fashion shows. Yes, I'll admit there are exceptions.

But if all those stupid laggy clothing JPEGs were out on the web somewhere I could shop faster and smarter. And spend more money more quickly.

Google Checkout is free -- maybe SL merchants could start adding JPEGs there, and have the price of the item be zero dollars? And include an SLurl in the description so we can visit in-world and pay with Lindens?

There has got to be a better way.

Well..

2008-04-22T21:52:00.001-07:00

I had an accident while shopping today.. Oops..

Shoe Shopping

2008-04-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

I was actually looking for clothes and fairy skins, I promise.. I just couldn't pass up showing these shoes, they are awesome.

R&J Update

2008-04-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

Script has been updated w/ some blocking.

Misc Notes

2008-04-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

R&J is rocking along -- today class was great, everyone was working on something. Sean is doing a FANTASTIC job on the set, Seema and I have almost finished the clothing (finally!!), Vince & Justin are working on the animations, and EJ is now in charge of the music. Now I need to get the MSND group up to this level.

Amy and I have been discussing the costuming for MSND, and she wanted princess fairies but I wanted natural fairies. After seeing Jessica's costume today I'm thinking punk princess fairies would be better and faster. Of course that would mean re-shopping, so I'm not sure. We'll have to discuss it Wednesday night.

Something interesting happened while shopping for skins. I asked a store owner if she knew where I could get middle-aged skins (for Lady Capulet). She tried to talk me into one of hers, and during the conversation I told her it was for a machinima. Her reply surprised me. She was willing to give us a price break, but she also said that since she developed the skin she owned the copyright and we couldn't use it in machinima without her permission. She would be happy to grant it for a student project, though.

Hmm. I had never really considered copyright issues in SL, except for obvious things like using someone else's textures without permission. Or engaging in infringing behavior, like sticking a Coca-Cola logo on a tee shirt.

Personally I'm not sure she has a virtual leg to stand on. If I bought a dress in real life and decided to wear it in a video I wouldn't have to ask permission. Ditto if I had plastic surgery and flashed my new nose on screen. And does the store owner expect people to ask permission before taking snapshots of their avatars??? I don't think so.

Of course the laws might be different where the store owner lives, so I just agreed with her. I might have pressed the issue if her skins weren't so sexy, but since they won't work it wasn't worth the effort.

Costuming for R&J

2008-04-21T21:11:00.001-07:00

Nice people in SL

2008-04-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

I met the owner of Bodies By Oh, and she is going to help out with skins that we need, and set an affordable price on them. :) I've got her making a pink skin for the faeries, you know me, I have to add a little pink. *^_^*
Kitaro 217, 172, 58

Funny & useful stuff in SL

2008-04-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

Two funny things and then two non funny, but useful things..
Hope nobody is offended by these.. :D

R&J status for week ending 4/18/08

2008-04-20T19:48:00.000-07:00

Our second life project ideas seem to be finding it's feet, slowly but steadily.

Second Life is a challenge to many of us as we are not able to build stuff as easily as one would in other 3D programs. Sorry Second Life, your building options are not user friendly! It is time consuming "Much ado about nothing."

Reading aloud R& J's script in a group in class this week, once again, getting familiar with Shakespeare's style of writing and discussing the hidden meaning of sentences was worth the time.

I have several images which I shall bring along. Storyboard has to be pretty detailed and closely matched to script as per Sharon, just so we have a road map to where we are heading, which is fine.

When they fight outside, is it going to be a Night scene? Moon shining? If they fight outside in the dark, what's the lighting going to be like? Do we have some sort of lantern's hanging off of posts or something? Or is early to late evening light? Also when all the citizens show up outside, do we have enough standing room in the given area/garden?

I'm still working hard on my storyboard. However, stepping outside of the class on Friday, measuring the area and enacting the scene did give me a closer insight of each character in the given scene. Sharon and Justin went further and read the script pretty closely going through the movement, camera angles, and emotions mainly of Benvolio, Mercutio, Tybalt and, Romeo. This enabled me to retrieve/extract visuals in my mind as I watched them playing various characters. It all made sense as my thoughts were totally different from theirs. To make Japanese version of R & J is fun, but drawing Japanese Shakespearean characters is bit challenging. Study of Japanese culture, color, architecture, clothing and the like along with Second Life is surely a learning experience!

Veneeta

Hidden River & More

2008-04-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

Shopping in Hidden River, Shinjuku, Dumfoot, Valyard, Gurnion, Ribeata, and Motomachi. Looking mainly for skins for Lord Montague and Lady Capulet. Why does everyone in Second Life look twenty years old??????

From SL to Blogger via Flickr

2008-04-18T19:07:00.001-07:00

As demonstrated in class today -- here is the method used to send a group of screen shots from Second Life to Flickr, and then have the photo show up on our group blog. This is really nice for location scouting trips, shopping expeditions, etc. as the coordinate and region show up in the shot so you can find things again later.

This looks like a lot of work, but once you have everything set up it's a breeze. Really.

To make this work you will need

A Second Life account
A Flickr account
A Blogger account

Laying the Groundwork

Discover the special email address you can use with your Flickr account by visiting this help page and following the links.
Remember this is a strange email address ending in photos.flickr.com -- not one of your usual addresses.

In Second Life

Choose File > Take Snapshot.
Click the "More" option
(Optionally) choose the Show Interface checkbox -- this is what makes sure the region & coordinates show in the photo!
Click Send
Put your Flickr email address in the Send Box
In the subject type tags: followed by a word or phrase that will describe this set of photos. Example (tags: "lady capulet", romeo) -- don't put the ( ) in! "Lady Capulet" gets quotes because it's two words.
Click send.
It might take a few minutes, but your photo should show up in Flickr.

In PictoBrowser

You can post a series of photos by using the PictoBrowser.
Click the word "PictoBrowser" in the lower right corner of the example on the page.
This should launch the page where you can create your own PictoBrowser widget.
It starts by asking for your Flickr user name, so type it in.
Next tell it you would like to use keywords.
Find the keyword you used when you sent the photos to Flickr
You will get a message that your PictoBorwser is ready. Ignore it and click Customize.
You'll have to re-enter your Flickr ID and the keyword.
Set the width to 400. We'll fix the height in a second.
Click on all of the following:
Image Alignment: Top
Initial Scale to Fit: On
Image Title: Off
Image Notes: Off
Now you can fix the height. Play with the height slider until you can see all of the image. Try to close the gap between the bottom interface and the image.
Click Continue
On the next screen, highlight and right-click to copy the text. (Don't CTRL+C, it doesn't work for some reason)

In Blogger

Log in
Start a new post
Click the Edit HTML tab
Delete anything that appears
Paste the PictoBrowser code.
SAVE or PUBLISH the page.
You may modify the entry to include a title and and any text that you like.

What is Machinima?

2008-04-18T09:54:00.000-07:00

The Machinima Archive is dedicated to the academic investigation and historical preservation of the emerging art form known as machinima.

My project three is about a person is flying to another buildings to walk and look around.

We are doing outside to measure the yard of triangle for knights who were fight.

Test -- Second Life Groundbreaking

2008-04-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

Shopping in Asakusa

2008-04-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Am i doing this correctly?

2008-04-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

Second Life is kind of like a new drug to the avid computer user like myself. Thanks for Ms. Sharon for getting me hooked! I just ate crawfish so my fingers are burning while I type (tried too hard to get those tails out) I'll try not to make any typos. Anyway, the other day we worked on filming the "humans" and it was fun to watch. We spent close to 4 hours working on the project before and during class.
I searched for wardrobe, as i took that role, but it's kind of hard to find something I am dieing to pay money for. When I think fairy, i think of a princess type fairy, but i think Ms. Sharon was thinking more along the lines of a flying insect-ish fairy.. more Tinkerbell if you would? So i'm trying to look for something along those lines. I don't know what im going to do for Obiron and Ms. Sharon suggested dressing Puck in leather pants and wings! Any other suggestions for character wardrobe???
I picked up a lot of freebie boxes at that Junkie Monkey or Monkey Junkie or whatever it was, some of those include: wings, poses, particles and textures.
I also found "fairy" poses (25 for $50L) on a different site, but I'll see what everyone thinks of the freebie ones. For wings, we're using free ones, i think the box i got from MJ will be good.. Hm.... what else?......... Oh yes. Ms.Sharon and I were having a hard time finding a body/skin that would suit Obiron's character.. So if anyone finds something they think is suitable, i could use the help :(

So to sum it up ---
Things to find:
1. Big Nice Tree(!!) & landscape
2. Outfits_ for 2 male fairies, 1 female fairy and the king & queen
3. Skins/Body for the King

Goodnight!

R&J Brainstorming

2008-04-16T10:20:00.001-07:00

~~~R&J Group

Excellent class session. Today we (mostly) cleaned up the space, read through the script twice, and brainstormed on the problems we're facing.

This is a quick recap of the issues students raised.

Need for a Project Manager
HUGE need for a better storyboard
Music??????? Sounds???????
Acting -- problems with inflections and dialog.
Animations -- what do we need? Do we have enough? How can we make more?
Costuming
- Initial characterizations need to be re-done.
- Might need to buy shapes, skins, hair . . . which will hurt the budget!
- Need extra avatars to be bystanders, page, etc.
Sets
- Need to be planned out now so we can start blocking
- Need space plans and possibly elevations
- Need better grasp of how to build things
- Need a list of stuff to build
Transference of knowledge
- Want to work together on building
- Want to work more in groups
- Need to blog more

Specific goals from the class session:

On Friday we'll talk more about each individual bullet point. Also work on storyboard and hopefully block out action.
Seema will post written character sketches on the blog so everyone can comment BEFORE she starts shopping again.
Vince will find places to shop. Use of PPT is encouraged, upload the PPT to the server and link. Vince also has a budget of L$1000 to find Japanese textures.
Justin will develop a list of animations needed.
Veneeta will make a space-planning diagram to help us start with blocking.

Must . . . . Stop . . . . Shopping

2008-04-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

I've spent $30 real American dollars in Second Life today; buying fake stuff. This is so weird. Most of the money went to test things for class. I can justify that as a creative and educational expense. But how do I justify buying clothing for my avatar???

And tomorrow I'm leading a Second Life shopping workshop specifically for teachers who want better-looking avatars.

This is out of control. Really out of control.

All Talk, Some Action

2008-04-15T21:06:00.000-07:00

After more research I've discovered that Huddle is a really good animation manager -- I'm going to buy it and see. It L$ 1500, which is a little steep but it's supposed to allow you to script other people, so we'd only have to own one copy. I think maybe I'll get Sharon Krell, my other avatar, to buy it. If that's true we could control animations from Krell, leaving Marylinn free to film.

More on animations -- people are using Poser to develop SL animations. v7 is only $139, and I'm very tempted to order it. But who am I fooling? We have four weeks to finish our overly ambitious project -- no way do I have time to learn new software, let alone teach the class.

There is also a freeware OpenGL called Avimator, and DAZ Studio will also make SL animations. I wish we had time to explore this in more detail.

It's a little funny -- I wanted this to be a learning/creation experiment, but so far it's more like a giant scavenger hunt. I know we're learning from it -- research and soft skills if nothing else. It's a little scary when I ask students to work in groups to solve a problem. No one tries to define goals or assign tasks. Instead everyone shops.

I wish I had more time for this -- maybe a special topics class on the metaverse? But who would sign up? I can never get cool classes like that to make. And it would be sooooo cool. We could make digital clothing, bodies, animations . . . even a store front to earn Linden Dollars.

Back to talking -- CrazyTalk looks like it would do what we want, but I don't think we have the time or the finances ($149) to experiment with it.

(sigh) Maybe one of my students will be more ambitious than I am.

All Emotional

2008-04-15T19:00:00.001-07:00

I've been worried about Shakespeare because the text is very emotional. We'll have microphones, of course, so people can hear our voices. But the contrast between a passionate voice and a neutrally-expressive avatar could be . . . comical, maybe? Or creepy?

Tonight I did some research and found a few devices that will allow avatars to display facial emotion. It isn't perfect -- they keep bobbing their heads between sentences and I can't figure out why -- but this is far, far better than the 'ole poker-faced avatars.

The Auto Emote 2 ran me L$ 500. If I type a key phrase into the chat window -- like "I am sad" -- the avatar's face will change. Maybe we can find a way to string the gestures together so we can show them in a cycle.

The Gesticulator is L$ 400. I can't quite figure out how it works, except to click little buttons in the interface. That will be too slow for our purposes. We need to string all the expressions together, and cue them when needed.

These finds are an improvement, but they're still not perfection. Plus every principal actor will need one (excepting our humans in MSND) which will skyrocket development costs.

Please Delete Excess Stuff

2008-04-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

Please, please, please remember to set GROUP PERMISSIONS on anything you build. Share your object with the group so any one of us can modify/move/delete. As far as I can tell, Sean is the only person who did this.

My evening class needs space, too. If you placed a generic building or plant, or anything else that you can pull out of inventory when needed, please go remove it from the region ASAP.

Romeo & Juliet: Costumes for your Avatars

2008-04-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

Here are the costumes I have selected for your Avatars.

1. Romeo:
Site - Samurai Island
Store name - Japanese Goods Shop Giorno Brando
Costume name - Camellia
Price - $ 200

2. Tybalt:
Site - Samurai Island
Store name - Japanese Goods Shop Giorno Brando
Costume name - Volcano Fire (it has a black fire motif)
Price - $ 200

3. Mercutio:
Site - Samurai Island
Store name - Japanese Goods Shop Giorno Brando
Costume name - Color Stream
Price - $ 200

4. Benvolio:
Site - Samurai Island
Store name - Japanese Goods Shop Giorno Brando
Costume name - Bamboo
Price - $ 200

5. Lady Capulet
Site - Amatsu Mitsukai
Costume - Free Kimono
Owner - Suzzane Logan
Price - $ 0.00

6. Citizen
Site -Amatsu Mitsukai
Costume - Free Men's Yukata
Owner - Amari Gable
Price - $ 0.00

7. Escalus
Site -Amatsu Mitsukai
Costume - Japanese Outfit D
Price - $ 150.00

8. Montague
Site -Amatsu Mitsukai
Store - Amarismiles
Costume - A K Emperor Beige Yukata
Price - $ 200.00

Total is coming up to $ 1150.00 If you are not able to locate the costumes, I can help you all.
Thanks,
Seema B.

MSND Recap

2008-04-11T20:40:00.001-07:00

This is a quick recap of events in the evening class meeting on 4/9. This class is working on a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream [MSND], specifically the scene where the audience first sees the fairy court.

After viewing the scene in two different productions and watching A Midsummer Night's Dream: What To Make Of Magic (great video with outtakes of several productions plus discussion about staging the play) the class was ready to make some decisions about our production.

And boy, did we ever hit a home run. Farley had an excellent idea. One of the major themes in the story is the separation between the human world and the fairy world. Farley wants to emphasize that separation by filming actors in real life as the humans. Then we'll make a video board in Second Life, and have the fairies (all SL characters) interact with the videotaped humans.

It reminded me of the old Hanna-Barbera Huck Finn series, where the real-life characters fought off animated bad guys. I think this is going to be great.

Veneeta's Backdrop status (R&J)

2008-04-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

I looked up some interesting sites for Japanese woodcut art to create a mood for these terrible guys to fight and break! I got to take a tea break now!
Will have more soon once I brainstorm with my Sensei!

Sionara,
Veneeta Yamaguchi

My First Blog Entry for Shakespeare Project (MSND)

2008-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

This is my first blog entry for our Shakespeare project. Looking forward to using the various web based tools to complete this project. These web apps would be Blogger, Second Life, Gmail, etc. Even better that we are using Macs. One benefit from being in this class is having to squeeze this work into my busy schedule. I see the benefit of using these new web apps in business and really think new small startup companies could be very successful if they design new processes around these online apps.

I think we've decided what the concept of our Midsummer Night project will be like. I think if we keep things simple that we can get the work done quickly but still have a play that looks cool and can entertain.

Plan to bring a second camera and tripod for the real world part of the scene. I'll keep an eye on the weather but it looks like it will be nice that day. Temperatures will be in the high 70's and we will have about two hours of sun light if we start around 5:00 Pm.

Second Life People (R&J)

2008-04-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

The people were walking and flying to another places. They are not real animation in Second Life.

Shakespeare (MSND)

2008-04-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

After watching parts of the movie "A Midsummer Nights Dream", I am defintely going to get a hold of the movie somewhere, because I have never seen or read anything about Shakespeare before. It was very interesting though, but like I stated I have to watch it again to kind of understand what the movie is about. The scene that we create in Second Life, I think will be an experiment I will never forget.

Fun Day watching Shakespeare Movies (R&J)

2008-04-10T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we had a great class yesterday watching scenes from Mid Summer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet. We thoroughly enjoyed watching and comparing the various versions of the movies made in different times. We had a good time discussing the props / backdrops / costumes / facial expressions / music etc.... we need to take care of while re-creating the scenes in Second life. I am excited about this project. Looking forward to creating Shakespeare characters with a modern look!!

Video Day

2008-04-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

The morning class went very well -- tons of energy and enthusiasm. Before today I thought each class would undertake two scenes, but after listening to the students today we dialed it back to one. The class voted to do Romeo and Juliet, leaving Midsummer's for the evening class. (I just don't have enough class time with the evening class -- I'm picking a scene for them instead of allowing them to pick.)

We viewed our scene in three R&J performances, one right after the other. The first was a very traditional performance produced by Franco Zeffirelli, with lots of color and action. Then we saw the Leonardo diCaprio/Clare Danes film, complete with gore and fab sets and costuming. And lastly we watched our scene in the R&J ballet, starring Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn.

The class enjoyed the comparison, and everyone is thinking proactively, looking for problems before we encounter them. (Check out the transcript.) We've picked roles and assigned tasks. Everyone is making a storyboard for next class. We'll distill those down to one master storyboard and start working on scenes, props, and costuming.

The class also decided to so something a little radical -- after hearing about a samurai-themed Hamlet performance I went to several years ago they decided to make R&J samurai-themed as well. This is going to be fun.

Shakespeare Scores

2008-04-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

When I asked NLC's favorite Humanities teacher to serve as Theatrical Advisor I bribed her with a role. (Not that it took much bribing.) Sherry's true love is drama, especially musical theater, so I asked her to perform one of Shakespeare's songs.

I'm like to find a scene with a nice song so her Second Life avatar can perform, too, but what I'm really after is opening and closing music for the machinimas.

And stupid non-musical me -- I thought if you had the words you could sort of make up a tune as you went along. I read between the lines of a conversation, though, and realized Sherry wanted a score.

My Input strength (from StrentghsQuest, basically the ability to collect stuff) took over the car and forced an all-night drive. After five hours of pouring through the Internet I've compiled a list of public domain Shakespeare scores. Hopefully one of these old, old tunes will work. And hopefully we can find someone to accompany Sherry.

Why We Blog

2008-04-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

This is a classroom blog for Sharon Huston's classes at North Lake College. This semester (Spring 2008) students in Web Animation and Web Multimedia will work together to create Shakespeare machinima in Second Life. Each class is responsible for re-creating one famous scene from any of Shakespeare's works.

The daytime class (Seema, Vince, Veneeta, Damien, EJ, Justin and Sean) will take on the Big Fight Scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Tybalt kills Mercutio, followed by Romeo killing Tybalt.

The evening class will create magic by enacting Act I Scene III of a Midsummer Night's Dream, where the two fairy courts meet and Oberon casts his plan.

Technically the classes will be using mainly Macintosh computers and software. (All the movie-making will happen on a Mac. We'll limit our PC use to Second Life and graphics.)

All students involved in the process will be required to post weekly. Our blog has three goals:

Facilitate group communication
Document class participation
Share our new knowledge with the world

This group will also rely heavily on Google Docs and Flickr as information repositories.

As always, our focus is on learning. Posts should focus on

Group communications and group dynamics
Problems you encounter with this project
How you solve the problems -- or failed to solve them!
Good resources

A typical post should be at least three paragraphs.