Next Monday [my birthday], I am rebooting my sardonic soap opera of sex, death and very pointy teeth: Love Has Fangs. Follow the adventures of Anneka, a recent convert to the undead, and Will, her much older and not-at-all-wiser boyfriend. The weirdness begins on Monday, May 5th. Watch the following space: http://www.oddpla.net/lhf/ Nothing there yet, but there will be soon.

 …According to Adam Sternbergh’s recent New Yorker article, You Walk Wrong, your feet are unhappy because you treat them as insensate supports for more important parts of your body, when, in fact, they should be getting as much attention as your hands. Here’s the most striking quote:

Admittedly, there’s something counterintuitive about the idea that less padding on your foot equals less shock on your body. But that’s only if we continue to think of our feet as lifeless blocks of flesh that hold us upright. The sole of your foot has over 200,000 nerve endings in it, one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the body. Our feet are designed to act as earthward antennae, helping us balance and transmitting information to us about the ground we’re walking on.

Think about that. Our feet were not originally developed just to be props for the rest of our bodies. When our hands and feet were less differentiated, both of them served to explore our environments with delicacy and sensitivity, as well as to move us around. In relegating feet to the status of lumps used for locomotion, we have deprived ourselves of a huge percentage of our sensorium.

The Dracula Research Centre has a collection of documents about Bram Stoker and the creation of Dracula, a huge bibliography about Dracula [and vampires in general, I think], not to mention the Journal of Dracula Studies online in RTF!!! What an exciting treasure trove! I’m going to hurry home, reading Tananarive Due’s The Living Blood [#2 in the African Immortals series, about a small society of seriously disturbed and arrogant immortal dudes who are very vampiric] along the way, working on LHF when I get home and doing more research. [Oh, I just learned that Blood Colony, #3 in the African Immortals series, comes out in June. Exciting!]

Building on my previous comments about season 5 Nip/Tuck, here are some more observations. As the main characters, Greater Asshole [=Dr. Christian Troy, played by Julian McMahon] and Lesser Asshole [=Dr. Sean McNamara, played by Dylan Walsh], try to set up a new plastic surgery practice in Los Angeles, they become seduced by the entertainment industry. Lesser Asshole establishes a recurring role on Hearts And Scalpels, a medical drama show, while, in one episode, Greater Asshole convinces Lesser Asshole that there should be a reality show about their lives, Plastic Fantastic. In a clever development, much of the episode, called Damien Sands, consists of the pilot of Plastic Fantastic, complete with appropriate titles and interstitials.

Despite its obsession with the entertainment industry in this season, Nip/Tuck refuses to make the most interesting leap: for the characters to realize that their lives are just as soap-operatic as the shows they are involved in. Refusing to acknowledge the meta-melodrama inherent in the situation, Nip/Tuck plays the most stereotypical plot devices — in the last ep alone, an incestuous relationship is broken up; Julia wakes up from a coma with retrograde amnesia, and Sean gets stabbed in the back by his deranged ex-agent — seriously, with solemn music underneath them. I’m supposed to feel sympathy for these characters, but I can’t because I’m all too aware how cliched the plot developments are. Therefore I get a little bored with the proceedings. By ignoring the fact that it is a high-gloss SOAP OPERA, Nip/Tuck disservices itself.

I refuse to go into plot details because it’s a classic soap opera, but suffice it to say that, with all its methheads, womanizers, opportunistic lesbians, sociopathic daughters and Weirdo Patients of the Week, Nip/Tuck season 5 proves an endless round of super-dramatic and increasingly silly plot twists anchored only by the high production values and the characters’ great exertions to put some emotional heft behind the endless corkscrews of obsession and betrayal. For the most part, the actors do succeed at making the outlandish stories actually believable, especially Julian McMahon, who, I am very pleased to report, exhibits a little more actorly skill here than he did in Charmed. He doesn’t have a great range, but he plays the asshole Christian pretty well. Hooray for potato chip TV — you can’t watch just one episode. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a more sex-obsessed, sex-driven set of characters in my viewing. Brainless, glossy, stereotypical, overdone and addictive.

Season 1 of Hex looks interesting. Teenaged witch with newly discovered magic powers and ghostly best friend falls in love with fallen angel and learns about magic. Wonder where I can see it?

NBC tries so hard to pump up interest in the pilot of Bionic Woman [redux], but its sluggish script, murky plot, dank sets, Keanu-Reeves-worthy “acting” [i.e., standing there like a piece of lumber], plethora of unidentified characters and lack of chemistry between anyone except for Jamie Sommers and Sarah Corvus [who keep eye-fucking each other every time they meet] kill it. You can watch past eps here, but why would you want to? Well, I suppose they’re a good cure for insomnia. How can such a fertile concept of bioethics, body modification, the construction of disability and “freakdom,” infiltration of the military into civilian life and the technological disenfranchisement of women end up so damn DULL in execution?

…I never thought I’d see them copping to it in an ad of theirs. Can you guess what the ad below [by Haye and Partner, Unterhaching, Germany, ganked from Ad Goodness] is selling? Frankly, my first guess was “shit sandwiches.” Fossilized sandwiches? Coprolite sandwiches? Answer below ad.

Apparently it’s supposed to be selling McDonald’s coffee. Apparently that crap-colored object is supposed to be a coffee bean with an identity crisis. Could have fooled me. Usually ads fail for me because I’m distracted by their sociological implications. Very rarely do I just fail to understand what the heck is going on, on a very basic level, in an ad.

Thinking the of ep of Moonlight in which vampires were pretending to be human [The Mortal Cure] and its inverse, B.C. [summarized here, in which humans take drugs to feel vampiric], I got to wondering… What if there was a synthetic drug for modern American vampires [as opposed to the many other kinds running around in my universe] that simulated the effects of being human: i.e., reduced strength and speed, reduced sensorium, reduced immune system, tolerance for daylight, garlic and major religious symbols? 

Pushing Daisies is still blooming. I still enjoy it for all the reasons that I enumerated in my first review. I also enjoy it because of its aesthetic choices. The show characterizes its personalities with the use of extremes. For example, Emerson the PI just doesn’t enjoy knitting; he carries knitting needles everywhere, lines his desk drawers with self-knitted socks and ogles knitting pop-up books. Olive the waiter just doesn’t have a mild penchant for paisley; she has an entire house decorated in it, from wallpaper to rug to upholstery. The use of bright, obvious extremity telegraphs information about personalities definitively, quickly and humorously. I am trying to pursue such a stylized means of character development in some parts of LHF, so I watch Pushing Daisies’ use of exaggeration with interest.

Seasons 1 and 2 of The Twilight Zone, one of my all-time faves, are available for streaming online with commercials. YAY FREE TWILIGHT ZONE!!!

Moonlight never fails to piss me off, yet I keep watching. Today’s current source of annoyance, as I listen to grainy videos on fanpop.com, is El Doofus Grande Mick’s job and motivations.

Over on Moonlight, previously mentioned here, season 1, ep. 12, The Mortal Cure, summarized here,  El Doofus Grande, Mick, learns about a temporary antidote to vampirism. Developed during the French Revolution [?!], this herbal compound temporarily makes a vampire mortal if absorbed through an open wound. That’s a neat plot device: temporary mortality. Too bad I didn’t think of it.

Overall, Moonlight alternates between pissing me off and entertaining me. The overdetermined and shallow narration adds nothing and detracts a lot from the story. The characters aren’t particularly deep. At the same time, the creators seem to have invested actual brainpower into vampires not only as supernaturals, but also as members of a subculture with its own hierarchy and rules.

…which I got from armeleia.
I am obviously my parents’ child.
I arrange my books according to Library of Congress catalog order.

Raines, a series tragically canceled too soon, features the titular homicide detective, whose hook is that he imagines the victims whose cases he pursues. His evolving conceptions of them literalize his deductive process as he figures out their stories. For example, in Meet Juan Doe, the dead man starts off as a rotten corpse, but resembles a living human being as soon as Raines finds a driver’s license and photo. In the end, it’s always shown that Raines’ ability to psychologize the victims and picture them as complete people, rather than dead bodies, helps him to solve the crimes and understand himself a bit more. Solid acting, dry humor, thoughtful show. Entire run can be watched on Hulu. [Filed under “vampires” because people come back from the dead.]

I really like Raines for a few reasons. 1) Because I talk to myself [and frequently talk back], any show with a character who does the same interests me, especially if the show portrays him as unusual, but also imaginative, intuitive and successful because of this trait. Raines frequently worries that he’s going crazy, and everyone agrees that he’s mentally disturbed, but they don’t automatically demonize the way he talks to people in his head.

Incidentally, the show nails perfectly the ways in which seemingly independent imaginary characters talk to their creators. Raines’ characters appear and disappear easily, changing clothes and hairstyle as quickly as a thought. Their forcefulness distracts him, not because he’s literally hearing them [hallucinating], but because he’s imagining so hard that he tunes out the outside world. The characters don’t know any factual information that Raines doesn’t know; at the same time, they often make astute observations about emotions or motivations that Raines has a hard time grasping himself. They’re very Trickster-like.

2) In a manner unusual for a cop show, Raines focuses on the victims and gives them a voice. While many cop shows are about the mechanics of solving crimes [examples: any Law & Order, Bones, etc.], Raines is about as character-driven as a cop show can be. Most of the action occurs in Raines’ head, and it consists of his perceptions changing about the victims as he learns more about them. While Raines seeks to learn how the victims were murdered, the show seems just as interested in why. With most cop shows, the victim’s body is the beginning of the case investigation and the true meat of the show. With Raines, the victim’s body represents the end of a life which the show seeks to delve into and reconstruct.

3) To the end of reconstructing lives, Raines enjoys subverting stereotypes. Again, in the example of Meet Juan Doe, Juan at first appears to be an illegal Mexican immigrant out to take the life of an anti-immigration city councilman who came to LA illegally himself. Turns out that Juan was coming to see his dad, the councilman, to show him his daughter-in-law and grandson. The councilman shot his son, thinking his son was an assassin. In the pilot, prostitute Sandy Boundreau is earning money to help her mom leave her abusive husband; plus she refuses to play along with a wife to entrap a husband into supposedly cheating. By refusing to accept that characters are as cliched and evil as they may initially appear, the show argues for optimism and, surprisingly for a cop show, a view of human nature as good.

Subject: Vacuum cleaner ad below, ganked from Inventorspot. Sorry…I don’t have a larger version, and the only context that I have is that it’s an ad for a German appliance. Too good to pass up, though.

Topics of discussion: “sex sells,” objectification, gender roles, mainstream commodification of BDSM subculture, differences between advertising norms in different countries.

Ready, set, discuss!!

Hulu has the entire run of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 2 seasons of 30-minute “playlets” that compare favorably to one of my favorite shows, The Twilight Zone, only with all the thrills, chills and twists coming from psychological exploration, rather than science-fiction and fantasy elements. 

To capitalize on the great success of best-selling comic book The Crow a movie came out in 1994, followed by a bunch of subpar sequels and one season of a TV show, the subject of this review. The Crow: Stairway to Heaven follows the same general plot of the comic book, with Draven returning to avenge his and his girlfriend’s death. After the show burns through this major plotline in the first two eps, it has no idea what to do with the angst-ridden avenger. I mean, if he’s “put things right,” as was his assignment, why is he continuing to hang around? DVD Verdict sums it up:

It’s clear that the creators of the series didn’t have a long-range plan for the show. The first two episodes cover the basic plot of the film, and then the series settles into a “freak of the week” groove, as Eric takes care of a new baddie in each episode.

Having never read or seen anything else of The Crow, I have to say that there’s an interesting idea buried in the series. The Crow supposedly comes back to “set things right,” which he interprets as killing his killers. At the same time, besides supernatural butt-kicking skills, he also has the much more fascinating power of reading emotions and memories from his surroundings and transferring these to other people, as when he sends all Jenko’s victims’ pain back on Jenko: “All their pain, all at once, all for you.” 

This is truly cool, as it explores the tension in the Crow’s nature. Killed because of violence, brought back because of violence and adept at dealing violence, he nevertheless illustrates all that is detrimental about violent solutions. Furthermore, in his painful power of empathy, the Crow illustrates an alternative means of dealing with suffering: putting the criminals in the mindsets of their victims.

In summary, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven represents a host of missed opportunities, further dragged down by thoroughly mediocre acting [with the exception of Katie Stuart as Sarah Mohr, a grungy skater girl who somehow is friends with the Crow] and too many electric guitars. [Filed under “vampires” because the Crow is undead, indestructible, funereal and out for blood.]

I checked out ep 2 of season 1 of Moonlight this morning. After having previously slagged it as “treading in a well-worn path” and then later as a “tortured cliche,” I am pleasantly surprised to find out that, despite being derivative and unoriginal, it’s still solid. Writing’s not particularly tight or quippy, and the crime plots are about as sophisticated as an ep of Witchblade, but there are a few glimmers of hope. 

1. The angstball vampire Mick has a snarkball friend played by Jason Dohring, who is so good at playing snarkballs, as we have seen with his role as Logan in Veronica Mars. The snarkball balances out the angstball.

2. There appears to be a sense of humor burbling somewhere in the show’s veins. When Mick flashed back to the 1980s when he was killing cavalierly, Duran Duran’s Hungry Like The Wolf played in pitch-perfect counterpoint.

3. Unlike Angel, who just sat around looking so unexpressive that I couldn’t believe he was suffering, Mick actually has a moment in which he communicates his shame clearly. After being shot by silver bullets [poisonous to vampires in this universe], he crawls back to his pad and slurps desperately at a blood bag [which has an obvious congruence with a baby bottle, thus underlining his vulnerability in this scene]. While he’s pushing fluids, suspicious reporter/mortal love interest comes by. Gasping in pain and hunger, Mick says, “Please don’t look at me.” He just sounded really wretched at that moment, which I appreciated. I like characters in states of humiliation.

Unfortunately, there is no place online to view past eps beside those illegally posted in segments [of crappy quality] on Daily Motion. The AOHell links don’t work, and I am sad about that.

I checked out the pilot of New Amsterdam just now. It concerns a 400-year-old immortal homicide detective who will die only when he finds his soulmate. Derivative but potentially interesting, right? Wrong. The actors have no chemistry or interest in their parts; the mysteries have no originality; the “quips” are stupid and bloodless, and the main character is incredibly dull for someone who supposedly has a death wish. I think he’s supposed to be a lonely, suffering character, but he doesn’t seem either lonely or suffering. He just seems bored, detached and incapable of human connection, living because that’s all he knows how to do. Kill it! [Filed under “vampires” because it addresses immortality…BADLY.]

Oh look — some eps of Moonlight on AOHell TV…

I burned through a few eps of Bones this afternoon, observing with glee the sparring between forensic anthropologist/socially inept nerd Temperance Brennan and her extroverted, severely annoying partner Seeley Booth. Their humorous, semi-antagonistic relationship drives the series, often highlighted by the B stories among the energetic and amusing secondaries at the forensics lab. Engaging characters, solid plotlines, moderate suspense and realistic gore make for a pretty good show. It’s kind of like Law and Order with more character development and tongue in cheek.

So I checked in to Hulu to watch 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails, previously mentioned here. Instead of being a full TV miniseries, it was actually a collection of mini-eps, 3 to 5 minutes in length, that were originally posted on a Web site. It was something about a frenetic weirdo wearing a knit hat, despite the fact that he was in New Orleans, trying to pay back money he didn’t have and bring information to his friend who communicated online with someone who was a prostitute, and his girlfriend was tweaking out from lack of drugs, and some vampire researcher’s office got completely trashed, and, oh yeah, somehow we managed to wedge about 2 gruesome demises and 3 vampire sightings in per ep.

I just watched the latest ep, Jus In Bello, of Season 3 of Supernatural [mentioned previously here and here] and, lo and behold, I still love that show.  Part of my attachment to it can be explained by my crush on Jensen Ackles [who plays Dean, the really-tries-to-be-macho one], but, beyond that, it’s just all-around high quality. 

In a show with only two returning characters — our protagonists, the brothers Winchester — the responsibility for success or failure depends in large part on how the actors take on the parts of the main characters, and let me say that Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki do very well with their roles. They both use body language to add expressive depths to their characters that the scripts don’t provide, and, even when the scripts are cliche fests, both Ackles and Padelecki deliver their lines with enough convincing emotion to make the cliches work. 

Furthermore, the two actors have a real chemistry with each other. On screen, they seem very relaxed and familiar when interacting with each other; they seem to really like each other and to have fun doing the show, and their enjoyment comes across as a camaraderie that is perfect for the brotherly characters they are playing. I could watch an entire ep of Supernatural where Sam and Dean were trapped in a cell and all they were doing was talking — that’s how believable and interesting the characters are when played by Ackles and Padelecki.

I hope it goes on for a 4th season!

Just recently Hulu.com opened up for public viewing. It contains clips and full episodes of past and current TV shows. It also contains clips and full-length features for certain films. Like ABC, Hulu sponsors the full-length offerings by interspersing them with ads. Among the interesting options:

30 Days of Night: Blood Trails: A miniseries that acts as a prequel to vampire gorefest 30 Days of Night.

Bones: A romance/crime drama. Starring the unbearably tofu-like David Bore-anaz, but I think I can live with that.

Cleopatra 2525: Sexy women, skimpy outfits, schlocky effects.

28 Days Later: Zombies.

Attack of the Puppet People: People try to escape from the man who minaturized them.

Quills: Geoffrey Rush chews up the scenery, swallows it, shits it out and smears it all over the walls as the Marquis de Sade. Hurrah!!

I was reading When The Chenoo Howls by Joseph and James Bruchac, an awesome collection of monster stories from Native American traditions, when I came to the realization that most cultures distinguish between the smart vampiric or cannibalistic creatures and the dumb ones.

On and off for the past few months, I’ve been trying to make a digital verson of the penanggal, a Malay vampire with a distinctively monstrous appearance.

Keanu Reaves as Jonathan Harker: [brain is on screensaver]

Anthony Hopkins as Abraham van Helsing: I chew ze scenery, ja? Is between my tees, ja? HAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Bill Campbell as Quincey P. Morris: Goldurn it and tarnation! I’m madder than a riled-up hornet. Dadgum — how many fake folksy expressions does a feller have to use to compensate for the fact that his Texan hick character has got as much karikter development as an advertising picture on the side of a feed sack?

Gary Oldman as Dracula: I am sensitive. Note the deep wells of feeling in my large liquid brown puppy-dog eyes. Well, actually, they’re more like the eyes of a hairy horny werewolf, given that I screw Sadie Frost’s character on a sundial in a labyrinth while looking like a monkey/bat combo. But pay no attention to my furry palms.

Winona Ryder as Mina Murray: Sure, it makes no sense at all that an unaccompanied fin-de-siecle woman engaged to be married to an utter twit would a) be walking around scummy London unaccompanied and b) allow herself to be accosted by a mysterious “Prince Vlad” and then c) go see nudie movies with him and d) pet wolves, but THROW ME A BONE HERE! I’m doing the best I can with utterly stupid material.

Bosoms: [heave heave]

Red Water: [gush gush]

Scenery: Hello! We are obviously matte paintings and sound stages and overly employed dry ice! Not to mention soap flakes for snow. But you should give us an Oscar anyway. Or two. Or three. PLEAAAAAASE.

Crosses: Watch how we break. This is Very Symbolic. VERY SYMBOLIC.

Annie Lennox: You know, I’m just going to ignore the entire movie and write a seriously awesome love song for the end credits that transcends any of the efforts put forth by the cast in terms of quality. 

EDITED TO ADD: Viewers: Mmm, this cheese tastes good.

36 questions, 3-word answers. Yanked from ashbet.

1. Where is your cell phone?
In my purse.

“I never realized we had such a collection of things that cover your whole head and face.”

“I never realized how many of them you can’t wear outside the bedroom!”

Bandit mask http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Props/9402/Bandit.Face.Scarf.aspx

Hood 01 http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=45098

Masks on sticks http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=12263

Mask and cowl http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=43825&page=2

I wish I could find a free mask with zippers on it. [Apparently these are called gimp masks, which puzzles me to no end.]

EDIT:

Blindfold http://www.most-digital-creations.com/free_poser_poses_textures_morphs_props_15.htm

High fantasy veil http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=21

Please wait while the squirrel collects all the nuts on your hard drive.

I got a squirrel this morning, primarily because it was on sale. It is a lot cuter than a real squirrel. It is also a lot skinnier. It needs more fat…also some French fries. [You wouldn’t believe some of the things squirrels in the city eat!] I am not particularly perturbed that it is Mimic-compatible [i.e., set up for a program that makes it talk], but I am rather perturbed that it has facial expressions. When the HELL have you ever seen a smiling squirrel?

Now I should find a use for it in LHF. Knowing my characters, they would probably eat it or drink its blood at the very least.

This weekend I did an episode where Will and Velvette were at the Downtown Crossing station. I just dropped them and their shopping bags against various photos I took of the station interior. Lo and behold — how quickly did these simple pictures render, without multiple props and 3-D sets to inflate their developing times!! I’m going to have to set more eps against photoed backdrops, for my 3-D interior sets render too slowly for me [120 seconds as opposed to 20].

The Chocolatiers thought that it would be merciful if they killed Affie out of Materyllis’ sight, but Materyllis disagreed. She loved Affie like her own daughter, and she believed that she herself should euthanize Affie. So she did.

After Affie’s death in maybe 1960 or so, Materyllis changed her ways. She left the Chocolatiers. She moved back to her Yerxa Road house in North Cambridge. Those mortals who remembered Materyllis noticed that, when she moved back into the neighborhood, she was not as active as she had been. Materyllis used to actively make and maintain friendships with mortals when she initially lived on Yerxa Road. Now she answered requests from old-timers, but she did not seek out new mortal friends and patients. Because she was more removed from her neighborhood, her air of mystery lent itself to forbidding rumors about her being a cannibalistic, murdering witch.

Materyllis’ relationships with other vampires changed as well. After withdrawing physically from the Chocolatiers, she seemed to withdraw emotionally as well. Susie felt this most strongly, noting that Materyllis did not talk to her as much, visit her as frequently or even really confide in her. Materyllis was nothing but cordial to the Chocolatiers, and she responded when they asked her for help, but she certainly was extinguished.

Over time, Materyllis’ increasing reclusivity and remoteness converged with her reputation among mortals as a magical menace. Also new vampires appeared who had no idea of Materyllis’ past as a helpful conjure woman; without Susie and the Chocolatiers to vouch for her any more [since she was keeping so remote from them], Materyllis appeared like a crabby, probably dangerous hermit to newer generations of vampires. People did continue to make their way to her, mostly to die in peace, so her vocation became less of healing the living and more of healing those about to die. It’s like Mikael in In the Time of the Bells, where Maria Gripe writes something like, “He had few friends among the living, but, among the dead, he had many.” Painfully enough, her decision to cut herself off after Affie’s death cut herself off also from the practice of conjure healing the living [or at least the undead] which gave her the most satisfaction.

This is where we find her now. Scratch what I said earlier about her being an author of sentimental doggerel. She may indeed be related to Phillis Wheatley, but that’s not very relevant to her character. She doesn’t get out much among the other vampires, although she does visit La Biblio to get some conjure supplies for Mark. Mark?! Of course…Mark has the power of connections; he’s the ultimate middleman. The other people who actually see her in person are Susie and the Chocolatiers. Her reputation lives more actively than she does at this point. I’m sure there are a few mortals who remember being frightened by tales of the conjure witch on Yerxa Road when they were misbehaving….

Of course, this puts her in the perfect position for a super-secret plot development that will shoot the series in an exciting new direction….

The discussion amongst the Chocolatiers and Materyllis regarding Affie’s fate was a bitter one. You see, it is a general principle across all metro Boston vamp clans that the penalty for any crime that endangers vampires as a whole is death. There are several categories of activity that merit the death penalty:

1. Harming a mortal under the age of consent merits death.

2. Killing other vampires for no reason [see below for explanation] merits death.

3. Any activity that threatens the safety and security of vampires as a whole merits death. For example, if a vampire turned informant for a Harvard professor of folklore and began telling the professor about actual vamp clans and culture, the vampire would be quickly found out and put to death.

The vampire code of laws, such as they exist, also has no tolerance for second chances. A criminal offense means death. Vampires do not want to risk the chance that a criminal will live forever and commit crimes forever, so they immediately eliminate criminals. Vampire ethics arise basically from strong survival instincts.

Vampire clans mostly police themselves or their jurisdictions; they don’t encroach on each other’s territory. Clans don’t aggressively pursue vamp criminals, though, instead waiting until they make themselves known, which explains how sickos like Joe Coldstone can abide for centuries. Frankly, if someone is getting away with offensive acts, vampires are less concerned with the discreet criminal because the discreet criminal is not threatening the integrity of the community as a whole.

At the same time, it is perfectly acceptable for a victim of a discreet criminal to take matters into his or her own hands and kill the discreet criminal, as Materyllis did to Joe. Vampires view this as acceptable vigilante justice that preserves the integrity of the vampire community in general.

How does this relate to Materyllis and Affie? Well clearly Affie had broken 2 of vampire culture’s major prohibitions: she had harmed a child and endangered vampire security in general. Strictly speaking, she merited death for these facts alone. At the same time, Materyllis and the Chocolatiers agreed that Affie was not willfully malicious, but rather insane. They debated whether they should suspend punishment because of her mental state.

The Chocolatiers, seeing how much Materyllis loved Affie, argued that they could create some sort of indefinite house arrest for Affie. Materyllis was the one who pointed out that house arrest hadn’t worked. She pointed out that, beyond questions of responsibility and mental capacity, the especially horrific nature of Affie’s baby killings put the community in great jeopardy. Affie’s unintentional endangerment of the community was the biggest concern. No matter how much she herself cared for Affie, Materyllis said, she had to die.

Affie calmed down and regained some of her intelligence, enough for Materyllis to get out of her the story of how Affie was changed by Joe. Affie had called on Joe after the birth of her first child, who had come out premature and sickly. Even though Affie brought Joe in, her baby died. Joe seized the day and vamped Affie. The loss of her child and her own life formed formed a particularly strong black hole into which much of Affie’s mental stability got sucked.

With Materyllis’ help, Affie flourished. She grew back up mentally in slow but perceptible progression until she hit about 10, at which point she seemed to stop. Materyllis developed a routine that both she and Affie liked. At this point, other vamps were coming to Materyllis for check-ups or counseling, so she saw them in her house, unless she had to see a very sick person or someone who wanted last rites. [Materyllis gained a reputation among the Boston metro clans for being the person to go to if you wanted to die humanely and painlessly.] When she had to leave the house, Susie or one of her loyal customers watched Affie. Materyllis watched over Affie closely, though, entrusting her with some chores and letting her bake lots of cookies and play the piano [her two favorite things to do]. Affie occasionally had nightmares about Joe and her child dying, in which case she would attack Materyllis who was trying to calm her down, but these nightmares occurred so rarely that they were pretty easy to ignore. In Materyllis’ opinion, Affie had been broken into pieces like an old piece of pottery, but Materyllis had fixed her and refashioned her, not to be the same as before, but still good. Materyllis viewed Affie as a “slow child” that she would be responsible for for the rest of her life.

Then the [human] family next door, the Dixons, had a kid! Because Materyllis and Affie were good friends with the Dixons, they went over to see the baby. Materyllis enjoyed the busyness and elation of the newly expanded family, but Affie always grew agitated. She seemed as if she wanted to run away from the baby, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it. Sometimes the Dixon baby cried all through the night [colicky], and Materyllis found Affie pacing and howling in unison.

Regretfully Materyllis decided that she and Affie had to move away from babies and children and mortals in general. Susie enjoined them to head down to Dorchester and join the Chocolatiers. Materyllis didn’t want to, but thought it would be best for Affie.

Then…right before the move…one night everything was quiet. How come the Dixon baby wasn’t crying? Materyllis found out soon enough when she went into Affie’s room and discovered Affie rocking the baby, its throat torn out, licking blood from its wound.

Materyllis felt numb. She loved the Dixons and she loved Affie, but she couldn’t escape the screamingly obvious conclusion that Affie had killed the Dixon baby. She couldn’t very well punish Affie, who seemed to have gone unhinged again, and she couldn’t explain to her friends, “My ward killed your child, but she didn’t mean to.” She fled Yerxa Road in humiliation and despair.

Materyllis assumed that, surrounded by other vampires and no vulnerable human children, Affie would regain her composure again. All willing Chocolatiers developed a strict watch so that Affie would stay supervised, calm and non-murderous at all times.

Less than two months after moving to Dorchester, Affie kidnapped another human baby and fed from it. When Materyllis and the other Chocolatiers intervened, they had to put the baby to death before Affie turned it.

The Chocolatiers held a council about what to do about Affie.

It makes the most sense for Joe Coldstone,  Materyllis’ rapist and transmittor of vampirism, was a practitioner of hoodoo, but I’m not going to use that word because it sounds like voodoo, which has enough misconceptions around it already. So I’ll say he was a conjure man, practicing a syncretic form of healing/rootwork/matural magic that borrows from various West and Central African religious and healing traditions and throws some New Testament Christianity into the mix.

So her name is Amaryllis Whatley, but no one calls her that. She’s so notorious that she goes by just Materyllis, mater being Latin for “mother.”

I modeled her and made her up last night, and she is one natty, smokin’ hot :p babe. I didn’t expect her to be so damn hot. I expect she died just a few years older than Will, at around 35.

Anyway, I haven’t detailed her backstory yet, but I do have a rough idea of how she became a vampire.

I see more of David Bowie than Fess Parker in Tonner’s upcoming Davy Crockett doll, but then, Tonner isn’t known for accurate likenesses.

While I’m commenting, the entire Agnes Dreary line makes me crack up. The costumes remind me strongly of the production and costume design for the Series of Unfortunate Events movie. I especially like Agnes’ Dreary Dinner Party Dress because I am a sucker for poofy sleeves. I also like Sister Dreary’s default outfit, a magnificently impractical hobble dress. Though Agnes Dreary is supposed to be a little Gothy girl, she and her fellow products remind me less of Gothy dudes and more of people in Victorian photographs when they had to sit very still for long periods of time to be rendered in black-and-white. It’s an attractive aesthetic.

So I picked up a bunch of local history books at the library recently. One is In Our Own Words: Stories of North Cambridge, Massachusetts 1900-1960. The most memorable person in the book is Ruth Jones (1895-1996), an African-American townie. She comes across as a take-no-shit person who tells you what to do because she’s experienced and smart and wise, and she knows it. She’s also incredibly smart and stubborn, in an admirable, ambitious way. In the book, she gives all these great details about cadging food from the gardens of the rich white folks and being the first black girl to graduate from Somerville High (1915) and dealing with racism when she went to Boston University in the late 1910s. In the interview, she obviously loves to tell stories and to preach.

Anyway, after I read about her and decided she was completely awesome, I wanted to work her into the story somehow. I decided I should have a vampire based on Ruth Jones in the general details of experience and character.

All right, I’m late to the party here, but I would just like to say that the third in the Gemma Doyle trilogy, The Far Sweet Thing, is out! I got hooked on the first book primarily because of the sexy cover. [All three books feature young women wearing intricate Victorian corsets, photoed from the back so you can admire the lacing.] I also find the content interesting too, since the author portrays the Victorian era as uncomplicatedly evil, horrible and repressive and her heroines as anachronistically punchy, mouthy, modern and rebellious. The fact that she actually seems to know about the trappings of the time period makes her anachronisms all the more jarring. Anyway, I’ve gotta skip over to the bookstore and read me a copy.

Heard about Tales of Beedle the Bard? It’s a limited-edition, handbound, handwritten book by Rowling containing five fairy tales that fit in the Harry Potter universe. There are 7 extant, of which Amazon got one on auction for 2 million pounds [no, really]. The proceeds are going to Rowling’s pet charity, the Children’s Voice Campaign.

I am pretty ambivalent about this stunt. It earns money for a good cause, yay hooray, but it also escalates the general feeding frenzy surrounding anything related to Harry Potter. It is a physically beautiful item, bound like a grimoire with moonstone-eyed skulls, but that’s kind of irrelevant because it’s so rare that it will probably be guarded, rather than displayed for enjoyment. 

I think what I object to most of all is that Rowling is wielding her immense business savvy in service of a project that, to me at least, seems to be the diametrical opposite of what books represent philosophically. Yes, books represent a convenient storage medium for information, and, like all books, The Tales of Beedle the Bard stores information well enough. Books are also a tool to distribute information, however, which means that they are made for wide audiences. They are designed to be possessed, passed along and used. The Tales of Beedle the Bard is, by the fact of its small edition size, designed so that most people cannot afford it or keep it, which is to say that is is designed NOT to be possessed [at least by you, me or any of the other rabble]. Because the book is riding a wave of Rowling mania, it is an object created to capitalize upon said mania by encouraging people to gawk at it, rather than pass it along. Essentially, books say, “I am a book. Use me. Spread the word!” The Tales of Beedle the Bard says, “Oh, I’m technically a book, insofar as I’m constructed to look and theoretically function exactly like one. In principle, however, I’m not a book because YOU CAN’T READ ME HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”

I am sure that the content of the stories will somehow escape their limited-edition confines and become available to the general mass of readers, but that doesn’t obviate my point. My point is that this project comes across as rather unfriendly, self-involved and, to my gut instincts, unfair because Rowling trumpets that she had written some new stories, but the audience to which she trumpets can’t read them because they’re not worth[y] enough. I’m torn now because I really want to read The Tales of Beedle the Bard because I’m always on the lookout for new fairy tales. At the same time, Rowling’s deployment of the ultra-limited edition seems less about raising money for a good cause and more about the glorification of her own product empire.

The tone of the Amazon.com review — which is quite possibly the most truckling, cowering, cringeing, fawning, kowtowing, toadying, sycophantic, grovelling, apple-polishing, brown-nosing, servile piece of flattering lickspittle up-suckery that I have ever read — does not increase my goodwill either. [Did you like that phrase? Over the years, I have amassed quite a collection of words related to obsequious behavior. “Lickspittle” is my favorite because it implies someone who is willing to abase him/herself so low as to slurp up the saliva of someone else off a dirty floor.]

http://www.ladyfyre-graphics.com/freebies.htm

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=77844 

Questia is an online library where you can mark up books, create citations, take notes, etc. Here’s a sampling of some of the available material, centering, of course, on my own interests. The second book in the list wins the award for Best Scholarly Book Title Ever. Off to abuse a 72-hour free trial subscription now….

Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=61723639#

Sex in Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massachusetts County, 1649-1699 http://www.questia.com/read/98444963

Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset http://www.questia.com/read/103800495

Over the past 4 years [ack, has it been that long?], Will has been one of the most physically instable characters of mine. He started off as a default Sideshow Toy general edition Spike 12″ doll. Then I put a custom resin sculpt of James Marsters on the same body. Then I went to a Dragon body with CG ankle cups so he could wear high heels. Then I tried to make him a skinny hybrid body, and he was on a weird early Medicom body for a while. Then I got him a modern, shorter Medicom body. Plus I resculpted his hair about 4 times during that period; it went from the default greasy comb-back, to a poofy comb-back, to a meringue-like sort of mess, to a modified bowl cut. I also repainted him about 5 times, each time making his skin paler and his makeup darker.

After the 1:6 modern Medicom body broke, I put the 1:6 Will in storage. Then I got my 1:3 Will.

Then he went digital in October, 2007. Since then, he’s gone through 4 reconstructions from scratch and countless textures [or paint jobs]. I need to do a slideshow of him through time in the same way that I collected a bunch of photos of my Frank doll[s].

Ergo, I cannot resist. Tinybear over on DOA is now selling her own line of mini BJDs, the latest additions being Coco and Bon Bon. They are 6″ high with mature bodies, as opposed to the childlike bodies of most tinies. Their figures are truly Reubenesque, which is more than I can say for most scrawny or overly muscled BJDs. I have my eye set on
Bon Bon, shown at right in this photo. Coco may be more conventionally pretty, but Bon Bon has such a great rubbery little face and a Pre-Raphaelite mouth. She looks like Drew Barrymore, only better. I want one!! Watch this space because I will probably have one soon enough.

Right here! It also looks like a possibility for Will…

Why are my comics coming out crappy when I use the [supposedly] non-crappy program? After experimenting with Comic Life, I appreciate its flexibility in panel design, but that’s about it. 

Here’s what I DON’T appreciate:

Angel Blade outfit for Aiko 3 makes me laugh. But I will be downloading it for exploitation in my neverending search for the perfect trashy outfit for Will. 

Can it still be called a skirt? I dunno. Ask Will. Here he is in the Gothic Doll top mentioned earlier with a modified triple-tier skirt. I would tell him to put some pants on, but he might hit me with his coffin box. This outfit reminds me of a lot of what is available for BJDs.

For G Style, I’m especially enamored of the subtle puffs and flares on the jacket sleeves. Very smart.

For Goth Dress, I like the oversized cuffs, and I’m a sucker for short layered skirts.

I’m drawn to Gothic Velvet because of the dynamic and detailed presentation, not to mention the shoes that have straps AND buckles AND spikes AND kitten heels AND shiny shiny patent leather. Also this outfit comes with a set of pornographically gravity-defying ponytails.

For Gothic Doll, I like the more subtle work of the patterns and black and white, but what I really have a crush on is that coffin purse. Will needs it…preferably in hot pink vinyl with black trim.

For Magical Girl, I like the repeating petal motif plus bats. Bats are always in style.

Why yes, those are curly-toed shoes…and bellbottom pants slit halfway up the legs…and a pimp hat with feathers in it…along with a host of body straps and a pink vinyl vest…not to mention the ubiquitous corset. You can’t tell this from my dolls of Will, but Will almost always wears a corset, a fact that I finally get to represent. It’s not merely decorative; it actually squishes, but he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to breathe. If I were more accurate, I would show him with an actual very narrow waist, much more dandy-like, but I’m too lazy right now, so look at this instead.

I finally figured out where Will’s fashion inspiration comes from. He’s a vampire, so he’s marginalized from the dominant culture and its conceptions of clothes as utlilitarian objects that should conform to certain rules. Ever since he was a dandy before his death, he has always been interested in clothes more as social currency, body language and extravagant decoration. As he mentions elsewhere, one of his idols in this regard was, of course, Oscar Wilde. Therefore, he continues in the same tradition of dandyism now, but not in a classical, fashionable, well-tailored sense. He’s playing. He should stop worrying about his writer’s block and realize that he has other forms of artistic creativity.

Oh, by the way, this is probably what his hair would look like if he would stop combing it back like some 75-year-old balding guy. I think he looks much cuter with his hair down and ragged; it softens his skeletal face and adds to his androgyny.

I got a beautiful digital Chinese dragon today, and I was going to throw together a quick comic of Chow and Baozha remarking over it, but I got lazy, so here’s the picture.

Guess what I just learned about rabbits’ digestive and excretory systems today?

 …primarily to bother other artists when new eps of LHF come out. I refuse to put pictures over there because they have some mushy TOS that could possibly construed as them saying they have the rights to stuff you put on the site. Anyway, this is me if you want to bookmark me or track me or do whatever the hell it is deviants do over there.

 Butterfly Dress http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dlbutterfly.html

Basketball shoes http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Victoria.3/1.aspx

Pedal pushers http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Victoria.3/12.aspx

Chelsea G2 Sydney http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/G2.Female/9219/Chelsea.aspx

Bubbles A3 http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Aiko.3/9206/Bubbles.for.Aiko.3.aspx

Romantic dress V2 http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Victoria.1.2/9787/Romantic.Era.Dress.aspx

Coat with polo neck V2 http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Victoria.1.2/9751/Coat.with.polo.neck.for.Victoria.2.aspx

Morning coat M3 http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/Michael.3/10571/Morning.coat.for.Michael.3.aspx

Trouser suit P4 fem http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/P4.Female/9544/Pleat.suit.aspx

Disco outfit P4 man http://www.poserworld.com/Downloads/P4.Male/9256/Disco.dude.aspx

Here’s the result of many fruitful hours with my new best friend Wardrobe Wizard 2. Will now wears the clothes I always wanted him to wear. I love those platform heels…

Summer Days Jacket http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=131&section_id=19

Pinky Dress http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=371&section_id=19

Gauntlets http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=381&section_id=19

Off-The-Shoulder and Platform Boots http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=391&section_id=19

Chained Piercings [convert] http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/filelib/index.php?Start=441&section_id=19

Fairy Tales and Lassie of the Seas http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=29204

Sci Fi Suit http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/index.php?user_id=379674

Maya Doll clothes http://www.3digitalcrafts.net/studiomaya/1download/mdb/index.html

install and convert Aiko Gothic

I’ve been a member of Ebay for about 9 and a half  years. When in college, I used it to buy lesbian pulp fiction. Later on, I got lots of 1:6 goodies there. Most recently, I’ve used it as a source for DVDs and BJD stuff. With the recent policy change, though, I’m through. I haven’t been using the site in months, and I certainly don’t want to buy or sell on an auction site that won’t allow me as a seller to leave negative feedback for buyers! I, and many other members of the Ebay community, find this insulting and detrimental, and we’re leaving. I’m never using the auction part of the site again, although I’ve never had problems with half.com, so I’m keeping my account there.

I’ve been trying for years to dress my representations of Will appropriately.

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=226 Whisper outfit for Aiko

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=205 Aphrodite outfit for V3

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=183 Imagination for David [skirt!] 

Turn shadows on on main light. Select “raytraced.” Soften by 10%. Something good should happen. 

It looks like CB Model Pro operates on the same relatively easy system that Poser magnets  and DAZ D-Forms do, only with more sophistication. Perhaps this is the free modeling app that I’ve been looking for — one that allows me to make organic and industrial shapes relatively quickly?

Plasq finally made a Windows version of its sexy comic creation software, Comic Life. I’ll have to inspect the trial version. If it’s better than my limited Comic Book Creator, I’ll go for it….

EDIT: Comic Life allows you to customize your own page templates, a feature that Comic Book Creator does not have. It also has a greater variety of vectorized speech balloons, including thought bubbles… This looks promising.

So far my renders for LHF are coming out great, except for one thing…I can’t get the characters to cast shadows. It’s fine for the ones who are vampires, but the humans aren’t casting shadows either. Hmmmm… 

 These are my ideas so far for publicizing LHF. Does anyone have any more?

biz cards
updates here
updates at Daz boards
upload to Renderosity
Deviant Art account and updates there
LJ feed
announce at Men With Dolls :p
lovehasfangs.com domain
Vampires do it in cold blood T-shirts
transcripts at ohnorobot.com
ads on other Web comics [hmmmmm…]
those goddamned comics rating sites
get interviewed for Web sites
tables at Arisia and Anime Boston [scary!]

So I put my favorite LHF characters into toon form and arranged them all together for a group shot. Their poses and facial expressions, as well as who they are watching, give you clues as to their characters….

Avenues to Adulthood: Origins of the High School and Social Mobility in an American Suburb (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1987) by Reed Ueda. It talks about Somerville High School during the period when Will would have gone. Apparently a bitch to get a hold of used….

Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman. Because I need some more information about precolonial and colonial life.

If so, fire away. This is about my BJDs only. Questions about the characters’ personalities, dolls’ construction and decoration, expenses, etc. welcomed. My BJDs are…

Okay, I just wrestled my aforementioned Daz scene into a state of more submissive submission. There are still 2 characters in the scene, Anneka and Will, with high-res textures on their bodies, clothes and hair. But I have reduced the number of props in the scene to 30 [from 60 — mostly I got rid of a lot of individual books]. Also I slashed the size of most of these texture files to about 20% of original size and dropped posability information from  the props that didn’t need it. [The stuffed animals don’t need to be posable; they just need to sit there and look cute.]

As a result, now a render of the entire scene [OpenGL, 8 passes per light] takes 40 seconds, rather than over 60.

Hiding everything except what will appear in the frame gets the rendering time down to 18 seconds. I’d like to have it render instantaneously, a la digital camera, but that won’t happen unless I get a more powerful processor or start reducing the resolution of the characters themselves, which I refuse to do.

Here’s a meme I stole from Batchix…

TELL ME…

1. your name: William Philomel Ashby Cox.

Well, Will finally has appropriate [?] winter clothes. The peanut gallery at right makes typically snarky comments.

I have got to start writing about these characters again…They are BUGGING me.

Yeah, this most closely resembles my mental idea of Anneka: tall, buxom, androgynous and intimidating, definitely a dom. Custom second skin outfit from Zew Clother, corset and sleeves [Devilicious] from Runtime DNA freebies. I think I might actually be getting the hang of this Daz stuff…

Ergh, now that my aches have subsided, it’s bed time.

 Here.

I’m lazy, so I am not modeling one from scratch. I will just take the Bushy Tail 2.0 that I downloaded for all my therianthropic purposes, make it spiral and hang like a scarf, export as OBJ, then import and use a custom shader on it to make it look fuzzy. Totally tubular. Why reinvent the wheel when I can modify someone else’s wheel? 

By the way, I’m now coveting Wardrobe Wizard. It does what CrossDresser does — translate clothes from one figure to another — but it does so with more sophistication. CrossDresser’s translated clothes only fit the basic shape of the target figure, not skinny ones, fat ones, transgendered ones, etc. WW2 allows you much more control to translate clothes so they fit fit, skinny, transgendered and otherwise altered figures. Since my mostly highly used character is a transgendered Victoria 3 [=Will] who wears lots of women’s clothes but doesn’t have boobs, WW2 should be very useful.

I would buy it right now if it weren’t $75.00. Fidget, fidget.

I have downloaded Wings3D, a free modeling app, and am following the tutorial in the user’s manual on how to model a [very elaborate] doghouse. I have no need for a doghouse, but the tutorial does get me familiar with the program. So far everything seems pretty intuitive, responsive and user-friendly, although I can’t figure out how to easily view my model from the bottom…or how to rotate it un-automatically.

You hate getting any colder. Will explains.

Will is freezing in part because he has no scarf. I can’t find a decent scarf anywhere, so I’m so annoyed that I have to model one by my own damn self…

Jacket is  actually part of a Chinese set that I bought specifically for Chow, but it goes along with Will’s atrocious sartorial sense.

I made a digital model of me last night, primarily so I could enter LHF and bitch out the characters. Here I am lording it over Will. I am not a nice author. :p I have no hair because I could not find any haircuts with bangs that were buzzed up the sides. Also, I have been bald in the past, so it is not technically out of character.

The latest version of Anneka, not shown, is based on the following digital version of me.

The best Xmas prezint I received was the knowledge of a beloved children’s author’s kinky side. I did not know that Shel Silverstein, known to generations of kids as the author and illustrator of such classics as Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Missing Piece, The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic, wrote and sang pervy songs like The Freakers’ Ball. See excerpt below:

White ones, black ones, yellow ones, red ones
Necrophiliacs looking for dead ones
The greatest of the sadists and the masochists too
Screaming, “Please hit me, and I’ll hit you!!”

I have listened to other songs by this man, and they are equally cock-eyed [nur hur hur hur] and amusing. I must get me a copy of his greatest hits.

 At Sailor Zeo’s instigation, I experimented with the Apollo Maximus fig last night. 

In answer to your question about my 3-D modeling tools, Zeo, I use Daz because it’s free and because Poser looked a little too complex and daunting for my basic purposes. Be warned that any 3-D modeling program requires lots of practice; just as a beginning kitbasher won’t instantly create repaints worthy of the Japanese customizers and outfits worthy of an42, so the beginning modeler needs to learn the basics, like morphing characters and sticking clothes on them, before moving on to more exciting things like making custom textures [skins] and props. After two months, I’ve finally hit an intermediate skill level with Daz, but that’s because I’ve spent almost all my free time on it.

In terms of models, I use primarily Victoria 3 and Michael 3, both made by Daz. Frankly, they are not particularly cheap — I’d say $100 to get the base figures and morphs — but, on the plus side, they are the most widely supported, so free clothing and textures [skins] can be acquired widely. They’re not the latest and greatest, but they work very well for my purposes.

To be honest, I haven’t investigated Apollo Maximus. By the time I heard about him, I was already ensconced with V3 and M3. I thought that Apollo was solely a male character, and models that cannot represent the full complement of human shapes do not interest me. However, I notice that Apollo’s morphs include parameters for female body parts, so you can probably harass him into yielding a female fig. In any case, I would highly recommend him for free experimentation since he has a good base package and great customizability. [I also note that the linked page contains a free James Marsters/Spike morph for Apollo, if you’re interested in that sort of thing… :p]

Incidentally, it seems as if you are already familiar with 3-D modeling of a sense through the Sims. Depending on what you want to do with custom 3-D characters and sets, the Sims may be sufficient for your interests. From what I can tell, the Sims automates lots of tedious and frustrating things [lighting, animation, expressions] that one does by hand in Daz and Poser. Of course, if you like pushing your characters’ mouths around for hours, attempting to achieve the perfect smirk, Daz may be the alternative for you….

After my enjoyable experience with Boopsie, I tried recreating the same tooniness last night in realistic Will, using only M3’s standard morphs. So, basically, inspired by my love for “The Girl” and the toony morphs of Boopsie, I tried to get a toony Will out of a realistic character and his realistic morphs.  Trying to get a toony character out of standard morphs made Will look like an origami lemur. I failed so badly and disappointingly that I’m not going to even show the results.

Fortunately, the creator of Boopsie also has similar custom morph packages for other characters. So I got Rayne, a set of toony morphs for V3. [V3 is the main female base I use for characters. Dolly nerds can think of her as a CG 1.5.] I will now be redoing all my characters, male and female, young and old, child and adult, on V3 bases with Rayne morphs…or on other bodies with V3/Rayne heads swapped on, if I can ever figure out how to work a head swap. Blllllaaaagh.

Poking around on the BoingBoing post about Plushie, I found that someone linked to another program also worked on by Takeo Igarashi. This program, called Teddy, is freeware allowing creating of digital 3-D models via freeform strokes. And — here’s the exciting thing for people who are interesting in 3-D modeling stuff — YOU CAN EXPORT YOUR CREATIONS AS OBJS! The OBJ format is a pretty-much-universal format for 3-D models — for example, the models that I’ve been using for my LHF digital characters are in OBJ format. Perhaps this program could aid in prop creation for LHF??

Watch this video demonstrating a new app. The app, titled Plushie, allows users to cut, shape and otherwise deform a virtual 3-D plush blob. As the blob is deformed, the righthand window shows a constantly updated version of the pattern pieces needed to created the blob out of fabric. It may be difficult to understand the narrator, a Japanese woman who speaks English as a second language, but the pictures explain everything clearly. Now if only the same principles could somehow be applied to doll sculpting….

I just saw some Spike porn [photomanipulations], and they were done with such obvious wanking love for the character [yay!] and such amateurish pasting, scaling and PSP brush effects [boo!] that my gorge couldn’t decide whether to rise or fall, so it’s still bubbling up and down somewhere around my trachea. I am going to run far, far away from the site and play with my agreeably scaled, posed, pasted and lit dolls and models. For all that I talk about sex, think about sex and run my characters around the subject of sex, I much prefer suggestion, double entendre and innuendo than explicit depictions.

I’m getting more mileage out of “The Girl” with a new morph pack, Boopsie, which I got with my $25 Daz gift certificate. [Tutorials that are accepted and published on the Web site are recompensed with store credit in the Web shop!!] Tonight I fucked off and made a Will “The Girl.” He looks, unsurprisingly enough, disgustingly cute as a toon. I’m sure other flamboyant LHF characters, such as Anneka, Velvette, Rori, Dom and Baozha, would also flourish fabulously in a toony style, but the other 50%, including Mark, Alexandra, Max, Minerva, Leonora, Chow, etc., deserve a more subdued and realistic rendering style. Forthwith, the fabulous, flirty and fun Will toon!!

My favorite icon in this set is “awake,” in which Spike is saying, “Who lit the bloody fire under my arse?!”  Doo nah, doo nah, I love James Marsters, which probably explains why I now never watch BTVS — because I love him so much.

“They just threw all the black and blue paint in my eyes and ran!” Since I successfully downloaded the merchant resource Gothifully Yours, I’ve been reveling in the pursuit of hyperbolic makeup. See Will below in a black and blue theme. Maybe I’ll make a whole black-and-blue texture set for a freebie… Please note that Will does not usually wear cool colors or drippy styles, but the result is pretty awesome, in an amusing sort of way.

Three layers of glittery eyeshadow, magenta lipstick and blush!!!!! I’ve been applying virtual makeup for the last few hours. My artistic vision is becoming reality. Who knew my artistic vision was so goddamned TACKY? :p

I’m drawing again…only, in the terminology of 3-D modeling, they call it “texturing.” But yeah, I’m drawing people’s faces. Last night and this morning I used a variety of free texture resources, Photoshop brushes, digital makeup kits [yeah, they exist] and some merchant resources [digital makeup you pay for], threw it all in the blender of my creative mind and came out with this… It’s a head texture in progress for Will. I thnk it could use more eyeshadow…or sparkles…or sparkly eyeshadow. But it still represents the elaborate and overdone style of makeup that is the pinnacle of attractiveness according to my drag-queeny imagination. [His head is a different color from his body because I’m only working on the head now.]

 http://www.sharecg.com/v/18206/poser/Paper-coffee-cup

http://www.sharecg.com/v/17602/texture/Makeup-Kit-for-Preteen-Vicky

http://www.sharecg.com/v/13356/texture/V4-Lip-Colors?division_id=6

Gothfully Yours sampler on Renderosity

5 seamless skin tiles on Renderosity

Mega lip guides by SnowSultan on Renderosity

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=1098&cat=57 V3 seam guides here

http://www.file-upload.net/member/download-3486/Face-intems2007.zip.html

making custom brushes in PSP http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=1643

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?print=606 making a full mat pose using Mat Pose Editor

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?print=60 another on making a full mat pose

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/tutorial?id=1142 making a partial mat pose 

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=37454&highlight=partial+mat+poses Daz equivalent of mat poses

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/archive_list.php

http://www.thebluesdragon.com/ftp/Tutorial-Skin.pdf Sarsa’s tutorial

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=66730&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=54 some supplements to Sarsa’s tutorial

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2123 DAZ-hosted tutorial

And apparently there are some raw high-res JPEGS on Renderotica for texturing…

I should make my own base for people…dammit!!!
 

Wow! Finally, after months of tinkering with 3-D modeling, I finally rendered one of the basic units of an LHF comic: a fully stocked interior scene with a character. Below Chow sits in his study, reflecting. [Please note his poster of the Chinatown gate on the wall! I took that picture.] I overcame my difficulties with lighting by cheating. I stole some lights from a daytime exterior set. They were set not to cast shadows, so I added a spotlight over Chow’s table and set it to cast raytraced shadows. Oh yeah, I also removed the ceiling from Chow’s study so I could actually shine lights in because my skills are not sophisticated enough to illuminate a room with a roof.

There’s also a view of the full set below. Yes, I’m aware that Chow’s boot is running into the mat. But that’s never showing up in the final pictures, so I’m ignoring that comment.

 So E.R. is the serious medical drama show, and Scrubs is the comedic, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, clowning cousin — same subject, different tone. Likewise, while Supernatural is the serious, heavy-handed, philosophical and emotionally weighty show about monster hunters, Reaper, which I just watched [listened to, rather, at work] a few eps of, is the silly soufflee version. It concerns a doofus 20-something who is a bounty hunter for the Devil, returning escaped souls to Hell with the help of his doofus friends and the doofus person he wants to be his girlfriend. 

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=42376&highlight=transferring+morphs Morph Loader?

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=54215&highlight=export+obj+daz settings for OBJ export?

Streaming! Right here!

From left to right, Geordie, Baozha and Little Will demonstrate variations on my favorite clothing package, the Storytime dress and pantaloons. Geordie has the Clematis style dress and shoes. Baozha has a customized blouse and harem pants based on the bodice and pantaloons, and Little Will has the Rose style dress, pantaloons and shoes. Yup, it’s a versatile and pretty awesome clothing set.

 …is in the same hysterically anti-porn camp as Andrea Dworkin and Catharine Mackinnon, whose detailed diatribes against porn are, well, pornographic. See observations here. Well, he may be a pornographic anti-porn person, but I still think his points about masculinity, porn and anxiety are valid.

With wider cheekbones than take 3.

I tried to recreate Little Will’s features using only the Preteen Vickie built-in morphs. Good Lord, he looks like his parents are about to be murdered before his eyes. Don’t worry, sweetheart. That won’t happen till you’re 30.

…I am purchasing a 3-month subscription to PoserWorld and downloading like crazy…. At $30.00 for 3 months of unlimited downloads, it offers a staggering array of clothing for all figs, including lots of historical stuff…. The proportions of content offered are, interestingly enough, very similar to my own interests. About 50% of the stuff is fantasy fetish wear, and the other 50% of it is historical, casual, utilitarian sort of stuff. Just like 50% of my characters are meretricious, and the other 50% are historical and/or sober!

Hmmm, I see that my Preteen Vicky model has all facial and body morphs fully loaded into her, so I might try recreating little Will’s head with Preteen Vicky’s, especially since I can’t get my current version of Little Will soft enough in the face. The lines of his chin are still too harsh…. 

Here’s a picture of my latest draft of little Will in his little dress. I made little Will by using a Millennium Girls Preteen Vicky body and neck, then erasing the body of my Michael 3 Will and resizing and shaping it so that it looked young and the appropriate size for the preteen body. As a result, I realized that Will looks extremely cute, but also very anxious. You would be too if your mom raised you on gory tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses!!

He’s really a very cute little kid. Littlle does little Will know that he will grow up to become a dead guy with gender confusion and no fashion sense.

Please pay attention to the beauty of his dress!!

After many long hours looking for specific items of clothing [corsets for men, dresses for men, chunky platform heels for anyone, baggy T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts, winter coats, etc.] and NOT FINDING IT, I actually FOUND SOMETHING PERFECT today. Behold — a dress and pantaloons for the Millennium Girls and Preschoolers!!! 

With minor tiddlywinking, I will be able to use this outfit as a dress for a preteen girl or non-breeched boy from the 19th century. Translated by my good friend CrossDresser, it might make a good long summer dress for modern Will too, although it’s a bit conservative for his tastes.

In case you can’t tell, I installed my kid models this morning and just started to experiment with them. I have Millennium Kids Preschoolers, Millennium Girls and Millennium Kids Young Teens. I’m most partial to the Preschoolers, who, besides being really cute, come with very expressive poses such as Monster Time, Cannonball!, Bored, Defiance, and [the highlight, well-known to anyone who deals with the under 5 set] I Want That! Unfortunately there is no Tantrum pose with clenched fists and stamping foot…

Anyway, I don’t have the morphs for any of these characters, so I’ll probably just splice Victoria and Michael heads onto them, as I’m doing with little Will. Speaking of which, I think his chin needs to be softer….

Now I can do flashback scenes with Will and his mom and with little Anneka and her parents, even with her and Mamie and Minerva too!!!!!

This is a test; this is only a test.  The person on the left is Will between the age of 8 and 12. He has a second skin wetsuit only because I lack clothes for my new kid models. He should be wearing one of those dresses that boys in the 19th century were sometimes kept in until they were 6 or 8 or even [really REALLY pushing it] 10. [Most of them went to short pants by 8, though.] Also his hair is supposed to be in ringlets, but that is the closest I could find.

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to scale down my adult models to make child models, but I ended up not doing that. I scaled down a copy of my Will model and morphed its head to make young Will’s head, then erased the rest of the small Will model’s body, then stuck the small Will’s head onto a Millennium Kids Young Teens Mike body because the neck area of the small Will model did not look appropriately smooth and fat for a child.

Chinatown Gateway Coalition http://www.chinatowngateway.org/ A grassroots org to preserve and accentuate Chinatown’s geographic, historical and cultural heritage through strategic development of the Chinatown Gate area.

The Chinatown Blog http://bostonchinatowngateway.com/ A relatively new blog written by younger residents of Chinatown. 

Chinatown Main Street http://www.chinatownmainstreet.org/ A business directory.

South Bay Planning Study Documents http://southbayplanningstudy.org/documents.asp Documents about development plans for Chinatown, Fort Point Channel and the Leather District, including the Chinatown Masterplan 2000 [which is not, as the name implies, some sort of blender], Chinatown Community Plan 1990, etc.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center http://www.bcnc.net/index.php Providing social services to residents of Chinatown, the South End and South Cove.

Nightly patrols reduce crime in Chinatown http://www.baystatebanner.com/issues/2007/08/23/news/local08230713.htm An article about the volunteer Chinatown Crime Watch.

http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/186609 A firsthand account of the Chinatown Crime Watch delivering the smackdown on some fighting idiots.

 Instead of loading completely new kid figures into Daz, I should just be able to rescale my two main models, Victoria 3 and Michael 3, so that they have kid-like or teen-like proportions. As a matter of fact, I have been messing around with proportions a lot recently. I successfully created two teen girls, one in her early teens [Magdelena] and one in her mid-teens [Baozha]. 

I also created my craziest morph yet by tweaking and shrinking Victoria 3 so that I could get a fashion doll model. [And it really looks like a fashion doll, which is somehow extremely disturbing, despite my great experience with fashion dolls.] If I can make Victoria 3 into a 1:6 bobblehead with pointy little feets and gazongas bigger than her head, surely I can make her into an acceptable kidsy.

I’m nearing the point where the time I spend setting up a digital scene is equal to the time I spend setting up a scene with dolls. While working yesterday on 2 sets, Chow’s study and Will’s room, I spent about 13 hours, which actually is probably less than the amount of time needed to produce the same scenes in real format. [Digital format allows for much quicker deployment and customization of props!] After all that labor, both sets look very close to how I want them…

…Except for the shadows. I’m having a problem with them. Note to self: Find out how to make everything create shadows. Help may be here: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/0/-/?

I’m also very comfortable and fairly skilled with Daz. How can I tell? Well, when I didn’t have any posters or poster frames for aforesaid sets, I instantly created some basic ones using the primitive shapes available in Daz. I didn’t balk at the thought of extending my existing skills; I just constructed something simply and quickly so that I could go back to the greater fun of scattering digital stuff all over Will’s digital floor. [I never knew he had so many shoes!]

Pictures later. It will be interesting to see how long a render takes with all the stuff in these scenes.

Finally, finally, finally, I got a decent French maid set from a temperamental Japanese Web site. Result below with strategic posture to conceal crotchlessness of underwear. Sometimes I spend so much time on details that never appear in the final version…

Photos or drawings converted into vector graphics look really cool. However, manually converting a rasterized file to a vectorized file takes a really long time. If you’d like to automate the vectorizing process, however, visit VectorMagic, a Web site hosted by Stanford where you can vectorize anything. No guarantee on how awesome the results will be, but, if you choose a rasterized image with a low number of artifacts and a relatively narrow palette, you should get stupendous and scalable results.

Below is an example. It is a picture of Will, made on “logo without artifacts,” “medium palette,” “medium quality” settings. I like the harsher, more chiseled look that vectorization supplies. The original picture is right here.

I am disturbed, amused and still carnivorous after checking out Suicide Food, an illustrated survey of self-sacrificing animal illos.

Will is one of them. He also looks good in second-skin fishnet. Also, as you can see, he has a new, much paler complexion, more character-appropriate makeup and reflections in his eyes. The reflections make him look more alive, which is ironic because he’s dead. :p

Frustration 1. It’s hard to make tight clothes look good on dolls. That’s because the dolls are not 1:1 scale, but the clothing is, so the clothing does not look appropriately form-fitting. It looks too bulky. Plus it usually limits the dolls’ movement. 

Frustration 2. Poke-through on 3-D models. This is when the position of your 3-D digital person is such that the person’s body part penetrates the clothes unrealistically. If someone’s arms are bent acutely, you may see, for example, elbow poke-through in the shirt. It’s not realistic, and it limits model poses.

Frustration 3. Memory hogging. 3-D modeling programs put a huge drain on computers. Every piece of clothing has its own construction, design, morph and texture information, which can get really complicated if you have a scene with 3 people, each with 1 hair, 3 items of clothing, 1 accessory, not to mention the set made up of 6 props. Memory hogging makes loading the files, saving them and rendering them really slow.

A partial solution is second skin clothing.

Here’s a picture of Rori wearing second skin fishnets. They are painted on her body mat:

Anyway, I’d like to make second skin clothes for my characters, so I’ve discovered some software that can help me. Zew’s Clother and Clothim give you men’s and women’s clothing that you can easily apply on any body mat to create custom second skins. They’re the same program, differing only in the base wardrobe supplied. Second skins will be very helpful for certain characters [Anneka, Will, Velvette, Dom, Pippilotta, etc.] who wear tight clothes. It will also be good for putting underwear on everyone so I don’t have to see their [lack of] genitalia.

Hee hee, check out the Clothim add-ons. Do you or do you not see a distinctly FABULOUS sensibility at work here? I mean, seriously…tank tops for men that don’t cover the nipples?  And over here in the downloads…underwear with a question mark on it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any guy wear clothes like this, except for at pride parades…WHICH MAKES IT PERFECT for my fashionless vampires! PERFECT I SAY!

Especially when they color-coordinate their horns, clothes, tattoos, lipstick, etc. This was done off a Will base, but I’m not sure that it’s him any more. Knowing him, it probably is….

On my lunch break, I inspected many offerings of 3-D content from Sixus1. They have a lot of therianthropic creatures with an emphasis on dragons, dinosaurs, werewolves, etc., all of them studded with teeth, spikes, claws and optional impractical [but imposing] armor. Like the Raptorian female with armor. I can just picture the designers saying, “What’s cooler than dinosaurs? Oh, I know…DINOSAURS WITH ARMOR! Hell yeah!”  Somebody loooooves the monsters over there. 

Then I went over to Meshbox, which is apparently staffed by highly literate horror nerds. They have thematically arranged sets of intricate design, including the admirable City of Vampires, which looks about as bleak and ominous as a Gothic cathedral in bad weather. My favorite element is the Old Library, where the vampires enter by flying in and out of a portal in the ceiling! It also has the only commercially available set of stacks that I’ve seen so far.

Anyway, it’s really too bad that my vampires are just dead, ground-based, non-transforming queers with no fashion sense who live in an actual city in the modern day where the monsters are stupidity, jealousy, rage, depression and homophobia. If only they were Gothic and fantastic, they could have some real cool shit goin’ on…

For almost a month, I’ve been moving the cameras around in DAZ with only the right mouse button, wondering why the heck I can’t get the camera to orbit around a figure. Apparently I can press down the OTHER mouse button and get more effects. Maybe that will keep me from cursing at the computer so much….

The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny by Sarban

Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker

…by the greater modeling community. This is because I specialize in making rotund people, scrawny people, ancient people and — my forte — guys in drag. In contrast, all of the people I have seen in the greater modeling community are lean, tight, voluptuous and between the ages of 18 and 25. They are all wearing clothes designed for their sex.

Anyway, here is Mamie Sinquell. She is not Anneka’s dying grandmother; she is Anneka’s dying grandmother’s long-term partner. She was a mannish lesbian before people even came up with the term. She’s still as intimidating in her 90s as she was when she was the hard-ass headmistress of Endless Lake Boarding School. Since she was either skiing or hiking or running around taking photos in the Adirondacks, she has poor skin that’s probably on the verge of precancerous melanoma. I love her. She, on the other hand, is not impressed with YOU, but you knew that already from the picture.

This morning, I decided to write a re-intro to LHF, checking up on where Anneka and Will are now. Oh boy did I ever find out. They were yelling at each other, as is frequently the case, and they managed to throw almost every important detail of their histories in each other’s faces without sounding too much like they were reading from exposition cards. In chronological order, they hit the following touchstones, neatly sketching out the major players, their relationships to each other and their preoccupations:

Hot topics: lesbovamps.com, mermaids, La Biblio, Mark, Velvette, Janet, de Sade, Ovid, Minerva, Alzheimer’s, Mamie, Adirondacks, Maximilian, colonial New England, Alexandra, counseling, Leonora, fairy tales, Chow, the Hun, the MeMo, Chinatown, Boston, Wintermere, gender dysphoria, invalidism, bisexuality, cross-dressing.

About the only things that didn’t get in there were Viktor, Sibley, Pippilotta and Mark’s cacti! I do wish that I could wedge Viktor and Sibley in there, but this season focuses less on them and more on Anneka, Will and their families.

The inimitable Chow, redesigned, with better mesh and more appropriate clothes.

…because she’s awesome.

Janet Planet, semi-mad scientist, sister to Velvette Crush and creator of Viktor, shown in a heavily cropped portrait shot because I haven’t found appropriately baggy and formless clothes for her yet.

As much as I like messing around with cross-dressing and humorous sexual situations, that’s not my main reason for getting Daz. With tight angles and minute adjustments in posing, this Daz test represents the sort of things I always wanted to do with my dolls and my camera, but could never accomplish.

Viktor’s back!! This scene, which has two characters, a Cyclorama background, two props and an unknown number of clothing items, took about 60 seconds to render.

Now working with the Daz Cyclorama… Scrawny Will definitely looks better with his arms covered up.

Here’s Rori, barkeep at the Nightcrawler, out of her element in some strange forest. I’m using this as a background because it’s one of the premade ones included with Daz. Rori is so damn cute….

I started on Viktor and did Rori earlier today, but then went back to Will. I used another of those dark, shadowy and atmospheric backgrounds by Tony Hayes, whose work is deliciously melancholy and creepy. [He did the abandoned asylum too.] Anyway, I learned about lights for this picture, adding two spotlights, one over Will and one pointing toward his face, all with the hope that the lighting on him would be equivalent to the light in the background. I made this one extra big so you could admire the background!

…as I gore your arm with this harpoon in order to surgically drain you for my next meal.

Yeah, I know he’s really pale, and you can see the places where his skin textures are a wee bit too small, and he looks severely malnourished with a disturbing resemblance to Richard O’Brien, and he’s even faggier than before, with even more of a predilection for violent pink, and the lighting is probably off for this scene, and he’s not really holding the syringe, and his hands look like they are flexed unnaturally, but I don’t want to hear about it. I am proud of myself beyond measure because I finally figured out how to make someone use a prop that wasn’t hair-related and easy to stick on someone’s head. Now if I could just figure out a way to move props easily into position, I’d be all set.

I’d probably develop a hankerin’ for violently pink makeup too if I’d been dead and out of the sun for 130+ years. I’m not sure about the alarming fingernails, though. I didn’t know he had those until…well, they happened. I think nail polish is one of the world’s stupidest inventions, but apparently my characters disagree. At least it matches his outfit.

I need to fix the size of the body textures. Dolls don’t have seam lines like that….

GOOD magazine provides a comic view at the death industry. My favorite part is that all the employees of the death industries are shown as ancient Egyptian jackal-headed gods of the underworld Anubis.

…Dollhouse, an upcoming Fox series created and produced by Joss Whedon, starring Eliza Dushku and somehow involving Tim Minear [who was involved with Angel, Firefly and the rockin’ awesome Pushing Daisies], will go down in flames, despite a hyperactive cult following, only to be released on DVD in a year and a half with unaired episodes. I’m also not sure that the sexy but rather flat Eliza Dushku is the appropriate choice for a main character who is basically a Method actor bot. I don’t think she has enough range. It is amusing to note, however, that, in the linked interview, she’s very happy that the Red Sox Losers won the World Series.

I’m having some problems with the M3 mesh, so this is the only angle from which he doesn’t have strange lumps on his arms poking through. It’s also a characteristic posture. I would like everyone to know that I successfully subdued the V3 Ultimate Changing Ponytail and made Chow’s hair. He’s supposed to be dressed in a subdued and somewhat antiquated manner, befitting his personality.

With her short hair and straight eyebrows, she looks much more like me than the 1:6 version. She sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake….

http://netherworks-studios.com/shoppe/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=10&products_id=20 a download that will finally get me to fit V3’s Ultimate Changing Ponytail to Chow’s head!!!

Here’s Will again as he dresses for the Harvard Square midnight showings of Rocky Horror, which, he would like you to know, he attends very rarely, and he only played Riff that one time because he had promised the girl who usually played him that he would do it, and besides, he never would have done it if he wasn’t drunk, and the only thing he is going to say about the Short Skirts showing is that “madness takes its toll [50 cents please!].”

Renderosity:

AVA Gothica

U3 White Dragon

Valarie V3

V3 Angel

Elisa [Pippilotta?]

Raven V3

http://www.3digitalcrafts.net/studiomaya/1download/index.html Free hair and clothes, including an underbust corset

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=112 Dial Cleaner

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=81 Stakes and crosses

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=36 Squirt guns [change color]

http://free.daz3d.com/free_weekly/detail.php?free_id=27 Ancient book

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=2238&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 not free, but a corset for M3?

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=8829&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust corset

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=5044&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 short short skirt, spike platform heels, underbust corset thingy

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=7251&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 underbust and lots of fishnet pieces

http://poserpros.daz3d.com/store/viewitem.php?selitem=158&start=0&selcat=0&selsub=0 overbust

Find Glorious Goth for The Girl???

 http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=35878&Start=31&vendor=_samildanach_ the best corset thingy for M3 I’ve ever seen, plus arm sleeves

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=2083  Dumbbell tutorial

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=69557&highlight=using+primitives Merging primitives

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=52807&highlight=primitives How to play with planes

http://www.wings3d.com Wings3D

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showforum.php?forum_id=12445 an active W3D forum

Instead of buying some tombstone models that don’t look like the ones in the Old Burying Ground, I could use Blender to make them my very own self!!! 

Dear blender
Oh won’t you help a first offender
Oh, toaster
Don’t you put the burn on me
Refrigerator, why are we always sooner or later
Bitchin’ in the kitchen or crying in the bedroom all night

No thanks to you, Shock Treatment.

 As I’ve mentioned before, I’m keeping a running list [part I here, part II here] of BJD companies that I do not deal with because of dishonest, dubious and/or illegal business practices. Now I’ve got a new one for the list: Dollkot. In advertising a custom sculpting service, Dollkot committed a pile of egregious offenses. Instead of showcasing their own sculptors’ talents and results, they used photos from DIM’s MiniMee project to illustrate their concept. 

Okay, that’s dishonest, but it gets worse. Said photos from the MiniMee project were actually directly scanned from a magazine article in Haute Doll where MiniMee owners contributed their personal photos and comments about their MiniMee dolls. So, not only did Dollkot misrepresent its services, but it did so by doubly stealing: once from Haute Doll, which gave no permission for the article to be reused, and also from the MiniMee owners, whose photos and comments were reproduced on Dollkot’s Web site without permission. 

To add insult to injury, their inanely cheerful response to Armeleia, one of the MiniMee owners whose photos and quotes were illegally used, implies that they thought they could get away with it. They removed the pictures, but why were they even up in the first place?