by Elizabeth A. Allen
She died on February 16th, 2015 from lung cancer. Goodbye, Lesley Gore. I’ll miss you.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1709674.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Taking as a springboard Mary Cheney’s comparison between drag and blackface, Miz Cracker posts on Slate’s Outward Bound with a discussion of the two subjects. Miz Cracker notes that, at base, Cheney objected to drag because she saw it as a mockery of an oppressed group [women] created by a powerful group [men] for degrading purposes. Miz Cracker wonders if drag is inherently misogynist.
Miz Cracker basically argues that drag is not like blackface because blackface is inherently racist, while drag is not inherently misogynist. The comparison between blackface and drag breaks down because blackface and minstrelsy used to be ubiquitous idioms with great cultural influence, but drag has never achieved such a pervasive high profile. That’s because blackface was performed by the oppressors in positions of power, whereas drag has been performed by oppressed people in positions of marginalization. I’m not sure how this is relevant to the presence or absence of misogyny in drag.
In fact, I think Miz Cracker’s contrast between blackface and drag breaks down because it does not recognize multiple axes of oppression. When she argues that drag has been performed by oppressed people who are marginalized, she’s referring to gay/queer men marginalized by their sexuality. However, though gay men may be marginalized on the axis of sexuality, they do have the privilege of being men in a misogynist society. Therefore, when men do drag, no matter what their sexual orientations, they may also be seen as performers in positions of power [as men] compared to the people that they are portraying [women]. Miz Cracker’s insistence that it’s just a few individually misogynist queens who mess up the whole art form entirely ignores the complex structure of drag and its location at the intersection of mutiple axes of power and oppression.
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At this year’s Toy Fair, Mattel showed off its upcoming collaboration with MegaBloks on the Monster High line. In terms more pertinent to me, this means more highly articulated dolls for dolls, as the MH MegaBloks figures have jointed knees! I find them adorable, in part because the small scale reduces the bobble-headed proportions of regular Monster Highs to something more appealing to my aesthetic interests. I actually do not have any MegaBloks licensed figures in my collection of dolls for dolls, so I don’t know how big they are.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1709103.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Months after acquiring her head, I finally got around to doing something with Thalia this weekend. I took Janvier Jett’s head off the Angelsdoll massive girl body, along with the Dikadoll jointed hands. I plopped Thalia’s head on the Angelsdoll body and put the original hands back on and then dressed her in some stopgap clothes.
Isabel is playing with her dolls, and Muggins wants in on the action.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 5.4: “Attack of the Enormous Cat”
Bwah hah! Lisa Schwartzbaum damns the 50 Shades of Grey movie with faint praise in the linked review. I particularly like the line quoted in the subject.
The general consensus appears to be that this movie is decidedly mediocre: not so bad it’s good, but definitely hampered by the headliners’ limited acting abilities [I’m looking at you, Jamie Dornan!], a sort of generic set dressing and the refusal of the script to let the main characters take off their pants and actually do something significantly sexy.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1708510.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This woman’s parents had her amputated leg buried on its own. "One foot in the grave" indeed. On one hand, I appreciate the gravity with which they treated their child’s loss of limb and resultant change in life. On the other hand, the writer notes that it really weirded her out to attend her own funeral while still alive.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1708256.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I decided to go back to a desktop compooper for my next, instead of a laptop. I decided this mainly because I thought that I would much too easily max out 16 GB of RAM, which appears to be the max for laptops these days. Currently considering the Asus G10AC-US0105, which comes with 8 GB of RAM, expandable to 32 GB, which should last me a while. It has pretty much the same specs as the laptop I was originally considering, except for the greater amount of RAM and no monitor included. It’s like $1200.00 though [plus~$150.00 for a monitor], so Lord knows when I’ll be able to actually get it in my hot little hands.
The computer fund right now has $560.24 in it, which may be augmented by by $59.67 in Amazon gift certificates. The computer fund should have $755.24 in it, but I had to use some of it to pay rent this month, and I don’t yet have enough to replenish the fund. Maybe I can afford a new one by my birthday…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1707926.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I’ve been looking for something like this for a while…
EDIT: And here’s a basic cloth room tutorial.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1707723.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Jareth illustrates the aforementioned finger-in-mouth pose deemed alluring by so many advertisements of digital content. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s very sarcastic. :p
When I look at promo pictures for digital content on the Daz or Renderosity sites, I have to ask myself: What the heck is up with all the women sticking their fingers in or near their mouths? The parted lips, as if their mouths have just drifted open, the partly closed and unfocused eyes, the FINGER IN THE MOUTH AARRRRRGH… I think it’s supposed to evoke blow jobs, but it all combines to create an atmosphere of awkward absentmindedness.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1707038.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
We had a Valentine’s meetup on Saturday. For BJDs, I brought Muggins, Jujube and Submit. Cutey Honey also came along because she had hearts in her outfit. A close examination revealed that her hair is turning brittle and falling out, so I really need to fix that. VTDL members recommended a reroot, but I’m going for a wig. I’m pretty sure I have some bright red faux fur.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1706979.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel plays with her dolls; art imitates life.
Last December I noted that Vermont Teddy Bear had a bear clearly inspired by 50 Shades of Blaugh, which was discontinued [after it sold out] because it was unlicensed. Well, it looks like VTB got the legit license to do Blaugh bears, ’cause here they are. I just know they’re going to sell out, especially in conjunction with the Valentine’s Day release of the Blaugh film adaptation, which is going to be a turd.
The impending release of the movie has people online talking about the books again and their abysmal portrayal of pretty much everything, but bdsm in particular. Now I kinda wanna read it again…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1706455.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel tries to distract herself from thoughts of death by playing with her dolls.Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 5.2: “The Doll Room”
As I have previously mentioned, I love the standalone figures created for Poser and Daz Studio by Nursoda.
As much as I hate to draw attention to stories that portray people with disabilities as sources of inspiration, I’m linking to this story about Paul Smith. For decades, he used a select ten characters from a typewriter to create intricate works of art. I love the bold and yet sketchy lines he makes. Very cool!
Yes, it is relevant to Smith’s art that he had cerebral palsy. His inability to use a more traditional instrument such as a brush or pencil prompted him to employ the typewriter. However, there’s absolutely no need to describe Smith as "suffering from" a "terrible condition" and therefore "remarkable" and "awe-inspiring" because he created art. There’s no indication that Smith perceived himself as suffering, burdened or even awe-inspiring. In a video about his work, he says, "It’s something to do." As far as I can tell, he was enjoying himself as he listened to classical music and meticulously created his masterpieces character by character. I’m not claiming that Smith had a purely joyous existence — for example, he didn’t attend mainstream school, which leads me to speculate that he might have felt painfully lonely in his youth — but I’m not seeing the horrible suffering that this stinky article assumes he felt.
I desperately loathe the trope of disabled person as inspiration to non-disabled people. The OddityCentral article epitomizes the dehumanization implicit in this theme when it concludes, "He died on June 24, 2007, at the Rose Haven Nursing Center in Roseburg, Oregon, but left behind an impressive portfolio of typewriter art, and most importantly the inspiration that you can overcome anything in life, if you put your mind to it." This sentence dismisses the entire content, texture and detail of Smith’s life by depicting him solely as an oppressed person who miraculously overcame his oppression to make art. It assumes that Smith’s disability can be separated from his experience and art, that it’s a barrier between him and a fulfilling life — because there’s obviously no way a person with a disability could ever have a fulfilling, happy life while also having a disability. In short, this sentence dehumanizes Smith by assuming that an inextricable part of his life, his cerebral palsy, can be excised like an early stage of cancer.
But the article isn’t satisfied with chopping up Smith into neat little segments [Person vs. Disability] and comparing him to some non-disabled person’s ridiculous standard of a fulfilling life. No, the conclusion dehumanizes him a second time as well when it dismisses his artistic accomplishments and legacy, claiming that Smith’s status as "inspiration" is more important. Yes, who cares about Smith’s life and art and disability and the relationships among these elements of his experience? Smith was not a significant person who deserved dignity and respect like all other beings. No! He was a superhuman exception to humanity whose primary purpose in this world was to educate the lowly non-disabled people about how we, too, can distance ourselves from the revolting materiality of our weak and mortal flesh and transform ourselves into pure creative mind, ascending to a plane where physical pains and distinctions are irrelevant.
I also hate the Supercrip narrative because of its creaky old Cartesian dualist underpinnings that smack strongly of racism and sexism. Relatedly, Eddie Ndopu discusses just such misogyny and racism inherent in portrayals of Reeva Steenkamp’s killer, athlete and miserable human being Oscar Pistorius. [My other discussions of sexism, ableism and racism at work in Steenkamp’s murder and the portrayal thereof can be found at "Reeva Steenkamp, 29, is dead" and "Reeva Steenkamp still dead; ex still to blame, but declared innocent of murder by courts."]
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1705714.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I have been moving very slowly toward sewing my own doll clothes. I have hemmed and altered existing clothes. I have also crudely constructed simple raw-edged skirts and capes, fastened with hot glue and/or a running stitch. I have not sewn an entire garment, using a pattern, from beginning to end. Taking on such a project seemed to be the logical extension of the modifications that I had already done.
I acquired a pattern for a Tyler doll from Andrea [DollsAhoy] for a collared shirt in October, 2014. I also took advantage of the Halloween season to buy three cotton prints — dancing skeletons, bats and spiderwebs — appropriate for Isabel’s tastes. Then all of the supplies just sat on my desk for about two months.
Earlier this month, the hiatus between Zombieville chapters gave me more time for other projects. My interest in sewing reawakened. I hit Joanne Fabrics for some quilter’s packs of REALLY LOUD fabrics to supplement my Halloween prints. Armed with a high level of enthusiasm and approximately 0.5 of a clue, I set to work.
My first two attempts will not be exhibited here. They were too large and/or sloppy and/or filled with mistakes, which tends to happen when you only have 0.5 of a clue. However, I learned enough about what NOT to do from failures #1 and #2 so that I could apply my new skills to failure #3.
Behold now the glory that is failure #3! Modeled by Isabel [here and in chapter 5 of Zombieville], it’s a snugly fitting collared shirt with long sleeves, intentionally constructed with contrasting prints, fastened with snaps.
Continue reading Third time’s the charm! I made a shirt for Isabel!
Since I last posted about my modifications on Beth, my Takara MicroSister Fyana, her form has changed significantly. I removed her original head because, though delicately detailed, it was much too small in comparison with Death’s. It was also hairless, and I didn’t relish the thought of making her minuscule wigs.
Of the many place names in New England transported here from settlers hearkening back to their connections in Old England, I most like that of Braintree. There’s a Braintree in Massachusetts and one here in Vermont. Both of them take their name from Braintree, Essex in England. As far as I’m concerned, though, that’s less than half the story. The etymology geek in me has a burning desire to know how several locations in the world are named after [according to my overheated imagination] trees growing out of skulls.
Unfortunately, the etymology geek in me will not be adequately satisfied. Wikipedia, font of all knowledge online, deems the origin of the name Braintree "obscure." Despite that, the online encyclopedia discusses several possible sources for the name, most of which support the idea that, somehow, Braintree began life as something like "Brantry" or "Branchetreu," both of which seem to mean "town by the river."
In fact, in the Domesday Book, a 1086 record of land use and taxation covering much of England, records Braintree as "Branchetreu." As far as I can tell, this appears to be the earliest record of the place name in its somewhat recognizable form. Thus it’s worth looking into the sources of Branchetreu.
Branchetreu, like Braintree, breaks down into two syllables with a different origin for each: "Branche-" and "-treu." The speculation that Braintree means "town by the river" leads me to interpret the "Branche-" as equivalent to the French la branche, which is one of those words that means the exact same thing in both language. La branche in French and "branch" in English both refer to those small extensions of a tree growing up and out from the main trunk; both words also carry the same figurative meanings that denote the subsidiary parts of certain things [e.g., governments]. Therefore both words can mean "a separate smaller offshoot of a larger river." "Branche-" clearly equals "river," at least in my mind.
So what about that "-treu?" According to Wikipedia, the suffix "-treu" is equivalent to the modern suffix "-try" or "-tree," which used to mean "farm" and then expanded to mean "settlement" or "town." Apparently this appears in town names around Wales. If that’s so, then "Branche-" = "River-" and "-treu" = "town," making "Branchetreu" = "Rivertown." The shifts changes in spelling and pronunciation we can attribute to the inevitable changes in language as it wends through the landscape of time.
Even though I know Braintree is basically Rivertown, the poetic images of its current iteration — brains and trees — will always teem in my mind. When I think of Braintree, I think of a tree in a cemetery growing out of someone’s skull. More specifically, I think of an old New England family plot, full of effaced and canted stones, and an apple tree rooting in one corner, planted firmly in the pot of a dead person’s skull. Or I think of another feral apple-like tree, once by a house that has long since disappeared. Short and broad, it bears the heavy burden of its fruit: bright ripe brains, swinging from their stems. Or, more metaphorically, I think of the nervous system as the epitome of a brain-tree: with the spinal cord as its trunk, it ramifies in electric branches throughout the body, with the brain at its fruiting crown.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1704798.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel’s not happy about turning into a zombie.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 5.1: “Overwhelmed”
It’s all about words and, more specifically, swears!
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I mocked up a red wig for Timonium this morning. It’s actually a digital hairstyle that I created, Aliza, serving as a computer-generated version of a wig I may want for him. I decided to embrace his resemblance to a small Goblin King. 😀
Continue reading Possible new hair for Timonium
My doll friends on Figurvore are posting their top ten lists of doll-related acquisitions and/or accomplishments for last year, which naturally gets me thinking about my own achievements. Selecting just ten projects and then rating them comparatively seems like too much effort, though, so I’m just going to highlight some of my significant developments in the doll arena during 2014.
I got back into digital art after a long hiatus. I mostly treat my CG art as a source of digital dolls, meaning that I enjoy creating characters, dressing them up, scripting stories, shooting them [called “rendering” in the digital realm] and otherwise exercising my creativity. Digital appeals to me because I can easily generate a wide variety of body shapes with a few spins of the morph dials. Basic prop creation also becomes much easier with the use of primitives such as planes, cubes, cylinders, etc. As much as I find digital appealing, my first love remains actual physical dolls because I can touch them. They feel realer to me.
I mention digital art because it has definitely affected how I play with my dolls. My photostory setup has changed because of my digital efforts. I used to cram lots of text and story into a small number of frames, but now I have larger, simpler frames that permit the focus on more set detail. Less dialog per frame also slows down the story and allows it to develop more expansively. Of course, the narrative moves a lot slower, but I’ll live…
A quintessential project was probably my makeover of a 1:6 scale Angel of Grief paperweight. It started off looking like the crappy kitsch that it was, but, after I spent six hours on it with white and beige acrylic paint, charcoal wash, dried bits of moss and blue, it transformed into a convincing 1:6 scale cemetery centerpiece. A quarter of a day’s work on a small-scale gravestone: yup, that’s me all over!
Doctor Z, a key character in Zombieville, reached her third and final iteration. First she was too purple; then she was too dark brown and healthy looking. Finally I took a Triad Alpha head and Dremelled the heck out of it, then repainted it, to create the haggard look I was going for.
I customized Polly, my 1:6 scale mermaid BJD. I used Aves Apoxie Sculpt to create a headback for the faceplate that I wanted her to have, as I didn’t like the head she came with]. I also gave her a faceup and made her a wig.
I wrapped up Me and My Muses, my serial melodrama about Ellery and the characters in her head, in the winter. Then, in the spring, Zombieville debuted. I’ve currently published a prologue and four chapters. The next installment is slated for later this month [as soon as I get around to scripting it]. The influence of my digital art on my narrative style appears clearly in Zville.
I redid one of my 1:6 scale fairy BJDs, Flower. He began life with a default faceup, which was technically well-done but pretty generic. When I was through with him, he had magenta eyeshadow and a profusion of green freckles. ^_^
I finally put together one of my 1:3 scale BJDs, Yamarrah, who had languished in pieces for months. She has body parts from about five different dollmakers, so she required Aves Apoxie Sculpt, hot glue and application of the Dremel to make her pieces fit together functionally.
I acquired two inexpensive studio umbrella lights on Robing’s recommendation, and the clarity, evenness and general quality of my photos drastically improved. Now I am even closer to achieving the kinds of photos I envision in my head….
For a Figurvore prop challenge, I made a fridge to fill in a shocking gap in my collection of 1:6 set pieces.
At long last, I finished the walker. This project dragged on far too long and caused me no end of frustration, but I finally assembled a 3D printed 1:6 scale model that a friend had sculpted to my specs. After much spray painting, taping, hot gluing, drilling and swearing, I made for Peter a passable simulacrum of his signature mobility aid.
Muggins the cat, everyone’s favorite character, appeared in Zombieville. Readers suggested a Mugginsville spinoff. :p
The doll club that I run, Chittenden County Doll Club, continued to grow, drawing doll lovers from across the region and all kinds of dolls along with them. I eventually changed the name to Vermont Doll Lovers to better reflect the participants.
I got a Mattel Coca Cola Soda Fountain with most of its accessories in good condition for a steal! My fairies had fun with it.
I attended the largest BJD convention ever on the East Coast, Dollism Plus, in September! I’m never making such a drive again, but I did enjoy hanging out with fellow doll nerds and taking plenty of pictures of pretty dolls. Surprisingly, I won a bunch of wigs and a whole doll!
I acquired some Rement Pose Skeletons, which sparked an idea for Zombieville’s photostory within a photostory: Beth and Death, about a woman and a Grim Reaper, a series of comics by Isabel. [I’m still working on Beth.]
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1703827.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
In an attempt to make Beth even shorter, I took some feet from a [really cheap] 1:24 scale model railroad figure that I had lying around.
Continue reading Beth’s bilateral foot transplant
My long-awaited Takara Microsister Fyana arrived today! I plan for her to be the protagonist of Isabel’s doll photostories, a comic series of adventures called Beth [Takara Microsister Fyana] and Death [Rement Pose Skeleton]. I immediately busted Beth out of her box to compare her to my other Takara Microlady, as well as Death.
Continue reading Beth: my smallest body mod to date
Glitter Shaders for Daz Studio
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.Continue reading 3D freebie: Glitter Shaders for DS4.6+
Tacky Too for Wilmap’s G2F Christmas Sweater
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebie: Tacky Too for Wilmap’s Freebie Christmas Sweater
Isabel and Carter discuss their relationship in light of Isabel’s eyeball loss.Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 4.4: “Twins”
I just sprang for a Takara Microsister Fyana [previously lusted over] for a cool $65.00 including s/h. Given that this mini-minifig goes for $100.00 including s/h on Ebay, I consider mine an awesome score. To add to the satisfaction, after I purchased her online at that price, she appeared as sold out at the vendor, which means I got the last one.
Anyway, I have exciting plans for this doll. I have decided that Isabel does photostories of dolls too and that hers center on the comedic relationship between Beth, played by the Microsister, and Death, played by one of my Rement Pose Skeletons. Yes, her series is called Beth & Death. Yes, it’s going to be a blast, an enjoyable change from the rather dramatic Zombieville main plot.
Incidentally, I heard from my supplier of the Pose Skeletons that Rement is coming out with a second accessory pack for them. I particularly like the bicycle set [comes with bicycle pump, but no helmet], the office set [laptop, smart phone, tie, office chair] and the kitchen [counter, burner, fish, knife, cutting board]. I’m seriously contemplating getting the bike…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1702265.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Tacky for Wilmap’s G2F Christmas Sweater DS 4.6+ only
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebie: Tacky for Wilmap’s Freebie G2F Christmas Sweater
Poses for G2F and Book in Oskarsson’s Nook
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: G2F Poses for Oskarsson’s Nook
Smirks 01 for Genesis 2 Female
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Smirks 01 Expressions for G2F Daz Studio 4.6+ only
Loud Fabrics 04 Natural Elements Shaders for Daz Studio
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Loud Fabrics 04 Natural Elements Shaders for DS 4.6+
Bokehground Expansion Seamless Tile Shaders
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.Continue reading 3D freebies: Bokehground Expansion Seamless Tile Shaders DS 4.6+
Isabel’s brother Carter takes her to the emergency room for motives altruistic and ulterior.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 4.3: “Levels of Sarcasm”
Second Seat Morph for petipet’s Airbike
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Second Seat Morph for petipet’s Airbike
Here we have another attempt at The Smirk, which came about primarily to showcase my latest acquisition, Nuances of Perfection Eyelashes morphs and textures by AlFan and smay. I have no idea why this product is entitled that way, as it is the absolute opposite of nuanced. Since I’ve been looking for exaggerated and extended eyelashes for my digital dolls for some time, I’m very pleased.
I tried to put Jareth all in black, but I failed because he strenuously resists monochrome. We compromised on a black and white scheme, mostly because I didn’t want to take all the time to do a shades-of-black makeup scheme, which takes longer than you think it would….
The 1980s called. They want fashion tips. :p
Continue reading Smirk II — now with super extra double enhanced eyelashes!
Yet another attempt at The Smirk, a more subtle version this time.
Continue reading Jareth smirking
Isabel’s brother Carter doesn’t think much of Isabel’s "emergency."
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 4.2: “Isabel’s Brother”
Apparently Vermont Teddy Bear had a 50 Shades of Bear teddy bear that, with its suit, mask and handcuffs, was clearly inspired by the character Christian "50 Shades of Abusive" Grey in the 50 Shades series. Media consensus agreed with Cosmo that it was "quietly unsettling," and yet the item sold out, though it disappeared from the site after Valentine’s because apparently it was not an officially licensed 50 Shades thing. Whoops.
P.S. Why were the bear’s eyes blue? What’s-‘is-face has grey eyes.
P.P.S. Did it come with an Ana doll that tripped over its own feet and had a voice box to say, "Wow!" and "Double crap!"? No? Okay, then I’m not interested. :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1699372.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel, who has lost an eyeball, tries to get her brother on the phone.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 4.1: “Calling Carter”
I’ve decided not to laboriously reproduce my picture-filled posts on this blog when I can just point to the official VTDL blog post in which attendees did entertaining things with their dolls and Xmas props. I think Yamarrah got a little overwhelmed on her first Xmas… :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1699010.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Messy Bessy for Genesis 2 Female
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Created with PhilC’s Hair Designer, this is yet another freebie hairstyle for Genesis 2 Female. The bad hair day goes digital with a bun base and five modular add-ons to make it as messy as you want.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Messy Bessy Modular Hairstyle for G2F
Victoria 2’s AutoFollowing BodySuit
Daz Studio 4.6+ only
Tested only in Daz Studio 4.6+
With this AutoFollowing BodySuit, take advantage of Daz Studio 4.6’s autofollow technology and the low-poly, highly morphable, good ol’ Victoria 2. I made the suit so I could use V2 for low-res background characters and give her something to wear that was equally light on resources.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Victoria 2’s AutoFollowing BodySuit
Rigging Facial Hair in Daz Studio 4.6+ [pdf]
A tutorial by ModernWizard
a.k.a. Elizabeth A. Allen
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
(c) November, 2014
Continue reading 3D freebies: Tutorial: Rigging Facial Hair in Daz Studio 4.6+
I found a Web site from which to get a copy of a favorite book, In the Time of the Bells by Maria Gripe, in the original Swedish!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1697804.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Thalia[‘s head] came yesterday! She matches well with Janvier Jett’s Angelsdoll massive girl body in Volks NS resin, so that’s good. The proportions look good too. And, after all that excitement about the novelty of a doll with two tongues, I actually like her with no tongue and an open mouth best. [I may be saying this in part because it’s really hard to get her licking tongue out of her mouth once it magnetizes in.]
I’m thinking about how I want to do her faceup. I’ve been really interested in duochrome faceups for quite a while now, mostly generated for Jareth with Instant Makeup and Geisha Builder. My attraction to duochrome probably stems from the fact that two colors and gradations thereof are easier to work with than a whole varied palette. So I’m thinking something duochrome for Thalia.
Actually, I’m thinking about grey, multiple soft shades of grey, not as stark as Timonium’s black-and-white job, but something with less definite outlines, shadows suggesting haggardness and depth. In fact, I’m thinking a subtle skullface faceup in gradations of grey, kind of like Jareth did for Halloween. And since there’s no way I could affordably duplicate these lovely bracelet restraint things in 1:3 scale, I’ll try painting some stylized phalanges on the back of an extra set of hands.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1697563.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Today I figured out how to rig conforming facial hair so that it follows a character’s facial expressions, and I also acquired an add-on to my Instant Makeup called Geisha Builder, which should more accurately be termed "Additional Makeup Options Vaguely Inspired by Some Ahistorical, Exoticized Western Concept of Japanese Geishas." Hey, I just bought it for the additional lipstick and eyeshadow options.
Results of both facial hair rigging and Geisha Builder use below. I’ll say it again — if only putting on actual makeup was this easy…sigh… Anyway, here’s Jareth, continuing his long-standing tradition of rockin’ the hell out of whatever I put him in. He could probably make a wet paper bag and some old apple peels look smashing… [Jareth: "BLECH! Put that in the trash!"]
Contents: $350.00
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1697071.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I need to do some research on acquired monocular vision beyond answering the question if one-eyed people can drive. [Yes.]
Artificialeyes.net has a page on Adapting to Monocular Vision that gives a cursory overview of challenges post-enucleation.
Thomas Pollitzer writes an extremely dull, but informative, overview of the types of changes that AMV can create in people’s lives.
Hmmmm…
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The last time I checked, my Daz runtime contained a whopping 45 GB of stuff, so I’m on a mission to reduce that total by 9 MB. I have discovered that the largest files aren’t geometries, but textures. Large, high-resolution textures take up lots of space on the computer. They also require lots of RAM during rendering, so the textures are probably the culprits maxing out my puny amount of RAM.
In an effort to speed processor response time and rendering time, I will perform the following test. I’ll start out with one of my sets as it currently stands — probably the cemetery, as it’s relatively uncluttered. I’ll throw some people and lights in, then time how long a render takes. I will then reduce the size of the texture files for all set elements as much as possible — preferably by at least 75% per file — and then re-render. If things go quicker, I will consider doing this for all my sets, even one of Jareth’s rather messy and overstuffed closets!
I’m also considering redoing the textures for my characters because Lord knows that their body textures hog RAM. There are separate UV maps for limbs, for torso, for face, for eyes, for inner mouth, etc. All except the last two average around 4096x4096px. On top of that, there are bump maps, displacement maps, specularity maps, transparency maps, even SSS [subsurface scattering] maps in some cases. And that’s just on one naked person! Clothing and hair can have multiple, high quality maps as well, easily putting a strain on resources.
Anyway, I’m thinking of leaving all face textures at high resolution, but cutting all other texture file sizes by 50%. That could make a substantial difference in rendering time…I hope.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1696609.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6
64 bit.
Created with PhilC’s Hair Designer,
Abalone LLC’s Hair Shop Pro 1.0 and
a free tiling texture by MSTene,
this is my fourth freebie hairstyle
for Genesis 2 Female. Orszebet is a
layered wedge cut, longer in front
than in back, with a closely cut
nape.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Orszebet Hair for Genesis 2 Female
Isabel is trying to figure out whether losing an eye counts as an emergency.
White Birch Bark by ModernWizard
Here, have 20 high-resolution
digital photos that I took of white
birch tree bark from northern
Vermont. These are non-tiling
textures, only corrected for white
balance.
Continue reading 3D freebies: High Resolution White Birch Bark Photos
On Halloween, while humans dress up as demons, the demons themselves take off from scare duty. They trade their gloomy and ghastly rags for the brightest, most modern duds they can find and kick up their heels, celebrating that one night of the year during which the humans have assumed the monsters’ usual task of freaking people out. [Nobody ever claimed that demons could coordinate their separates, however.] Here Malicia [center] does a jig, accompanied by Desperanda [left] on panpipes and Maxima Culpa "Maxi" [right] on drum.
I challenged myself to make a render for this contest using freebies only and no paid items. Even with a conservative counting scheme [not counting an unseen freebie, counting an entire outfit set as a single freebie], I think I’ve succeeded.
Continue reading Monster Mash final
Now with background and very basic lighting! This picture is very very close to completion. Lights still need some help, though…
I’m currently eyeballing a Toshiba Satellite L75-B7240 laptop, which comes with 8 GB RAM, expandable to 16 GB. I currently have just 8 GB of RAM maxing out my laptop, so that base 8 GB + the 4 GB that I added to my current laptop would be a significant improvement in my ability to RAM things. After poking around, I’ve discovered that 16 GB seems to be the current max for laptop RAM, so I’ll have to content myself with that.
Other specs include a 1600 x 900 px, 17.3" diagonal screen [equal to current], a quad core Intel i5 processor [equal to current], 4 USB ports [+1 from current, thank God] and a 1 TB hard drive. That’s a lot of space, but, as Janna observes, computers tend to slow down when their drives approach 50% capacity, so 1 TB is probably good.
This computer also runs Windows 8.1 hissssssssssss, but at least I can change the UI style back to a "desktop with icons" style instead of the Windows 8.0 "space-hogging tiles" style.
I realize that I can purchase this computer through Amazon and use some Amazon gift cards I’ve been racking up! ^_^
New computer fund contents
Cash: $220.00
Amazon: $17.45
—
Still no closer to my ultimate computer goal of achieving a) a fully functional Commodore 64 with b) a fully functional, full-size joystick and c) an accessible place to put it so that d) Jill and I can play Jumpman together [again]. I mean, I have Jumpman, but not a, b, c or d. Waaah.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1695032.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64
bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Zabby Hair for Genesis 2 Female
I’ve been indexing my Daz et al. content for the past few weeks. In my attempt to comprehensively list all such stuff I own, I have come across a significant minority of items that I either forgot I had or that I haven’t used at all. Compared to some amassers of digital content, I don’t have a great amount, but the rediscovery of a bunch of cool stuff clearly indicated to me that I have too much. Well, there’s an incentive to stop buying new stuff. Also I should be saving for a new computer instead of getting more stuff to make my current one run slowly.
Daz stuff amasses in a slightly different way that physical stuff, I’ve noticed. I can offload physical stuff when I’m done with it, but I can’t get rid of Daz stuff in the same way. Of course, I can uninstall old digital stuff from my runtime, but, if I have purchased it, it will always be available for me to download. Thus I can always edit my runtime, but not my amassment itself. Therefore an index of all my content does not provide an accurate idea of a) what I have actually installed and b) what I make regular use of.
Now that I have an index, I’d really like to edit down my runtime on two levels. First, I want to reduce it to contain only the stuff I actually use. Second, I want to delete as many Poser native files as I can — mostly OBJs and CR2s for clothing and hair — in favor of Daz native files. I very rarely use Poser native files, as I usually convert Poser native stuff to Daz native stuff and resave, so the Poser native files are redundant space hogs. Begone!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1694688.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Not only is my current one cheaply made and of poor quality, but I’m also regularly maxing out my RAM in my pursuit of rendering moderately complex scenes [three people, eight lights, background with as many nodes and geoshells as I can manage]. In fact, my computer has slowed noticeably in rendering speed even in the past two months.
Dammit — and I was hoping that this laptop would hold out till Xmas, but I don’t think it will. I mean, it will, but working on digital art will be excruciatingly slow for the next two months. 🙁
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1694270.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I really, really, really dislike Neil Diamond. All his stuff just sounds to me like a long, soulful whinge, which is attractive to some people, but not me. I could handle the droning whines if it weren’t for songs like Play Me, which contains the immortal words:
Song she sang to me
Song she brang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me
Warmed the night
And what was right
Became me
As far as I’m concerned, this verse illustrates just how creatively bankrupt he is. All his failings are encapsulated in the word "brang." The older I get, the less of a linguistic prescriptivist I am and the more of a laissez-faire descriptivist, but this "brang" deeply irritates me. Using apostrophes for pluralization, deploying "unique" as a synonym of unusual, saying "literally" when one means "figuratively" — all of these grammatical solecisms that it’s fashionable to rant against do not offend me to the core the way that Neil Diamond’s "brang" does.
Why do I have such a problem with "brang?" Well, clearly he’s not using it as part of a character’s particular voice, as it’s the only non-standard past participle in the song, so he’s using it as a songwriter. He obviously knows the correct past participle, as he sings repeatedly in You Got to Me that "You brought me to my knees." Thus the "brang" is a fully intentional artistic choice.
I could accept "brang" as an on-purpose use if it served some sort of coherent aesthetic program, but it doesn’t. It just rhymes with "sang," "rang" and "sprang." "I used it because it rhymes" can be an acceptable justification for certain vocabulary, but only if you really need that word there. This verse does not need "brang" or, indeed, the whole "Song she brang to me" line. The verse could go as follows without a problem:
Song she sang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me
Warmed the night
And what was right
Became me
This verse says the exact same thing as the version up above. The singer receives a song as a gift from a woman. It enters his soul and affects him deeply, calling forth an answering rhyme from him. He feels perfect and right in his union with her.
Unfortunately, Neil Diamond is not taking my lyrical advice. He’d rather inflict us with "brang," which, being narratively unjustified, stands out harshly as a gratuitous mangling of an innocent past participle. He uses "brang" because he likes it and because he’s so unreasonably attached to it that he can’t excise it, even though its loss would improve the whole song. "I like it, and it sounds nice" is not an acceptable justification for retaining wretched prose or lyrics.
Neil Diamond is like the personification of anti-rap. Rap epitomizes a high-flying, experimental spirit of rapid-fire linguistic invention in which endless play with vocabulary, stress and meter often reveals surprising and illuminating connections between phrases and concepts. Someone with some actual talent could rap that whole verse, including "brang," and it wouldn’t be a shitty invented past participle, but an echo of the ringing that touches the speaker so intimately that it changes even the most ordinary words into bell-like sounds. Sadly, however, Neil Diamond does not have that talent. His "brang" depends not on linguistic inventiveness, but on a stale, stagnant affection for a sound he couldn’t let go.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1694134.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Yet again, the New York Times writes about trans male students at women’s colleges like Wellesley. And yet again the article reeks of false attempts at even-handedness that really demonstrate the paper’s absolute cluelessness about writing about trans people.
The headline alone has problems. God forbid the NYT just title the article something straightforward like "Controversy over Trans Male Students at Women’s Colleges." Nope, instead they resort to Ye Olde Binarie Termes that sensationalize the lives of the trans male students as strange voyages across gender and, incidentally, reinforce the supposed male/female dichotomy by not even using the adjective "trans" to describe the students.
As I read the article, in which many present and past students, as well as faculty, decried the presence of trans male students on campus as a detriment to "sisterhood," I got the sense that the NYT sympathized with them. For example, a [cis male] professor, commenting on being asked to make his examples and pronouns more inclusive, is quoted as saying, "“All my life here, … I’ve been compelled to use the female pronoun more generously to get away from the sexist ‘he.’ I think it’s important to evoke the idea that women are part of humanity." Like many antitrans people cited in the story, he perceives equality and respect as a zero-sum game in which he cannot respect trans male students by using inclusive language because that would somehow diminish the "humanity" of the cis female students. The article itself supports this incredulous, contemptuous point of view when it claims that trans students receive "disproportionate attention" on campus. Darn minorities — how dare they agitate for equal rights? They should shut up and go away.
The NYT literally has no clue about how to write about trans people, and it even admits this. The article itself closes by saying, "…[I]t’s difficult to distinguish in the cacophony each of the words shouted atop one another. What is clear is that whatever word each person is hollering is immensely significant as a proclamation of existence, even if it’s hard to make out what anyone else is saying." Despite the acknowledgment that "a proclamation of existence" should be respected, the comparison of this controversy to an unintelligible "cacophony" reminds me of the scornful ways in which U.S. citizens refer to speakers of foreign languages. When one of the most respected and influential news publications in the country basically goes, "What you’re saying is too complicated so LAH LAH LAH I CAN’T HEAR YOOOOOU!!!" we clearly have a problem, and it’s not the "trans question." It’s the "cis question," as in, "Why don’t cis people think of trans people as fellow human beings worthy of dignity and respect?"
P.S. The controversy over trans male students at women’s colleges becomes more problematic when one realizes that trans female students do not figure into this uproar at all. The people interviewed seem ardently convinced that there are no trans woman whatsoever on their campuses. I suspect, however, that they do exist, but they are probably keeping their heads down in fear of being hit by collateral damage from the arguments about the presence of trans male students. The rather disingenuous and transmisogynist erasure of trans female students makes me wonder if the cis resistance here comes largely from reactionary, unexamined transphobia.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1693818.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel, having lost an eyeball, wonders what to do.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 3.2: “Keeping An Eye Out”
Covering a variety of digital art programs, from Daz Studio to Terragen and beyond, GeekAtPlay provides short, easily digestible, project-based intros. Nice!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1693306.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Today I practiced using Sculptris on my base figure, Genesis 2 Female. A day’s work generated a head morph and a full-body morph which, together, create Yelizaveta, the character below. I did the major work on the head morph in Sculptris, then refined it in Daz Studio with Die Trying’s 182 Morphs for G2F. I did the body morph entirely in Daz Studio with D-Formers and refinement with Die Trying’s 182 Morphs for G2F.
With many of our regulars engaged in other commitments, we had a small gathering this afternoon, just me, Lyrajean, vermont chick and a newcomer, Becca. In celebration of Halloween, attendees showed up with costumed dolls, copious pumpkins, a small-scale graveyard and articulated skeletons, so our dolls got festive.
Lyrajean’s dolls:
…who, upon seeing Red Bull energy drinks, immediately thinks of The Last Unicorn?
Am I the only one who felt sorry for King Haggard? Those darn miserable kings, stealing babies and lording it over the protagonists, only to collapse at the end, along with their castles… :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1692469.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I edited my Monster Mash concept from 5 Satyresses down to 3 because I really couldn’t justify the character development needed for all 5. So here, from left to right, are Desperanda the piper, Malicia the dancer and Maxima Culpa "Maxi" the drummer. Still have to make Malicia’s hair look like it’s moving. No lights or set yet.
I bought a tutorial by Winterbrose on morphing G2F with Sculptris, a free program from Pixologic, makers of the more powerful [and more expensive] ZBrush. The tutorial, despite some atrocious spelling errors that could have been easily caught with a spell check, provides the absolute basics necessary to work in the program and begin creating morphs; since I prefer written instructions, which allow me to go at my own pace, over video instructions, I am satisfied with my purchase. Already I see that it will allow me to overcome my hesitation and start experimenting.
Being relatively skilled with the D-Formers available in Daz Studio at this point, I think that I will not require a steep learning curve for Sculptris. I need only acclimate myself to the new layout and features; the principles of digital sculpting remain the same. I look forward to Sculptris’ ability to manipulate mesh on a finer level than I can achieve with D-Formers; I can then achieve more detailed and sophisticated results.
I’ve already decided the types of morphs I would like to create: a diverse range of body types and sizes not covered by existing commercial or free offerings. For example:
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1692125.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This was going to be a lavishly illustrated extravaganza, but I never got around to taking the requisite photos. Hopefully it’ll help anyway…
—
Over in a Figurvore thread on an episode of Zombieville, katydid asked me about making a wig tutorial. Following are my comments on making wigs of faux fur for your dolls. I prefer [prefur? :p ] faux fur because its garish colors suit my signature LOUD style and its lofty pile hides my messy stitching and/or hot gluing. Rest assured, however, that you can still apply these techniques on naturalistic faux furs with neat and tidy results.
…Apparently they put on their little N95 respirators and get out their little airbrushes. ^_^ See photoset by lightlytattered for details. That’s awfully clean and well-lit for a painting table — that’s all I’m saying. :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1691012.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
My Rement Pose Skeletons and sets, which I mentioned earlier, came last week. As usual with Rement, all items contain high-quality sculpting and amazing detail, especially for the price. Even the packaging [which shows one of the skeletons barfing into the toilet after drinking too much sake] cracks me up. I just wish the items had a bit more heft to them; their lightness makes them difficult to pose. That said, Isabel and I are already having lots of fun with them. See below.
For reference, the Pose Skeleton is ~8cm tall. The human figure, a Takara Microlady from the Material Force collection, is ~9cm tall. That single centimeter makes a significant difference at that size!
Continue reading Rement Pose Skeletons and accessories in action
Men Without Hats’ video for Pop Goes the World mostly. Ivan Doroschuk starts out looking kinda tough with his black leather jacket, shredded leggings and stern, angular face. Then the bubble machine starts, and he begins to dance with his usual groovy abandon as the most painfully literal interpretation of the lyrics occurs. [For example, "One two three and four is five / Everybody here is a friend of mine" is accompanied by someone drawing five hatch marks on a chalkboard.] Furthermore, it’s obvious that no one is playing the instruments they’re holding. I think this video was filmed for about $100.00 Canadian, $50.00 of which went to space rental and the other $50.00 of which went to the bubble machine. I love you, Men Without Hats, and I like this song, but this is just a hilariously bad effort.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1690434.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel gets ready for work and falls to pieces.
Extra Morphs for Ravenhair’s Priestess Outfit for Genesis
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Extra Morphs for Ravenhair’s Priestess Outfit for Genesis
Dancer: Malicia. Audience 1: Desperanda. Audience 2: Maxie, short for Maxima Culpa. :p Drummer: Temptatia. Piper: Peccavisti.
Just in case it’s not obvious, their names all allude to concepts of badness, guilt and wrongdoing. Malicia, of course, refers to malice. Desperanda is Latin for "despairing." Maxima Culpa is Latin for "most grievous fault/error." Temptatia refers to temptation, and Peccavisti is Latin for "you have sinned."
The pests! :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1689672.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Test render of the dancer in my planned Monster Mash picture. She looks like kind of a ham. 😀
Figure and texture: Pinin’s freebie Satyress. Body morphs and most non-expression head morphs by me via D-Forms. Dress: English Bob’s V3 Butterfly Dress Short [conforming version], converted for Satyress with a combination of G2F base figure, D-Forms, Transfer Utility and Autofit. Dress texture from my Loud Fabrics 01 Shaders Updated. Hair: Aliza G2F by me.
John Tumblred [Tumbld?] this yesterday about transmisogyny in Rocky Horror, which got me thinking. The original post focuses on the terminology as a source of transmisogyny, but the whole portrayal of Frank as a literally unhinged debasement of stereotypical painted femininity also reeks of transmisogyny. For example, there’s a part in Sword of Damocles where Rocky receives admiration from all the partygoers, which pisses Frank off because Rocky is eluding his control. He chases after Rocky, warbling his name, tripping up in his high heels and kind of running into the wall in melodramatic distress. Even though I didn’t identify this particular instant as transmisogynistic when I first saw it, I remember saying to myself, "He wouldn’t do that — he’s a flamboyant control freak, not a sniveling mess. I’m taking this character seriously — why isn’t the movie?" Well, okay, the response was less coherent than that; it was more like, "Why is he bouncing off the walls? That doesn’t fit." Now, a decade and a half [!] later, I can finally call out some of the rank bigotry at work here. Blarf.
Thinking about RHPS always gets me thinking about Mad Mazzy Mickle Goes Looking for Love, which, I reason, has its own problematic elements that I just haven’t thought up yet. Hmmm, let’s see: racism [two characters of color only], stereotypes about bisexuals [sexually voracious, attracted to everyone], disparagement of traditional femininity [characters not into car-related activities coded butch are looked down upon].
Peter: "It’s a cesspool of noxious stereotypes."
Isabel: "But I love it! It changed my life. I came out to the soundtrack!"
Peter: "Me too. But it’s still a cesspool."
Well, clearly, Isabel and Peter connect over their shared interest in this movie, though Peter examines it much more critically than she does. Wonder if I could work a Mazzy reference — and thus conversation — into their initial meeting, which does, after all, involve a car crash, and Mazzy’s all about souped-up drag racers [har!], so there’s the hook.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1689195.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
…this parody meme amuses me to no end. Babycat does the feline equivalent of this when there’s meat or dairy involved.
Continue reading Considering my recent revulsion for stalking songs…
Below is a quick render of Pinin’s default Satyress on left and one on the right with some of my custom body morphs and scaling. [Pay no attention to her unrealistic lack of body hair.] Much to my surprise, arm poses for Genesis [Body Talk Arms by katfeete in this case] work pretty well on her. I see that I need to make some more face morphs, especially to change the distinctive angular shape of the default’s head.
Holy crap, she’s adorable. [She’s also naked, in case you’re sensitive about that sort of thing.]
Continue reading Two Satyresses: one default, one tall and fat, both really cute!
There are five satyrs planned in my Monster Mash picture: the dancer, audience 1, audience 2, drummer and piper. They are all women.
Dancer: dramatic and ebullient. Tall, fat, white, spiky blond hair [Aliza!]. Flowing outfit shows movement.
Audience 1: short and wiry [more default shape, but with longer arms], dark brown WOC, dreadlock mohawk. Pastels, floral dress, flowers in hair.
Audience 2: neat and formal. Narrow, flat, slim build, Japanese, square glasses, Most tailored outfit of the five.
Drummer: sharp and intense. Small build, muscular upper body, uses manual wheelchair. Athletic wear.
Piper: carried away by the music. Plump but not as fat as dancer, messy ponytail [Wild Tail2]. Slouchy clothes, messy hair.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1688491.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Lee-el started off by releasing some super-jacked 90cm dudes with oddly sculpted breast areas, but I did not find them interesting. Now they’ve finally released a female doll in the same scale, Selena. For some reason, she’s only 85cm, but, despite that, she’s super cool looking! Lee-el decided not to overexaggerate the muscular bulk, so she just looks really solid. The breast area shows an improvement over whatever the heck was going on with the dudes, although the antigrav effect only works with certain tops. She has a lovely, strongly marked face with harmonious cheekbones and jawline, a nifty skijump nose and a slightly open mouth with teefs!!!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1688172.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
While conceptualizing my Monster Mash picture, I struggled with the problem of how to render satyrs using a G2F base and freebies. I found bat wings, horns and a devil tail without difficulty, but the hooved legs — and their particular digitigrade shape — stymied me. Some free hooves for plantigrade human figures exist, but they tend not to create a true digitigrade shape by elongating the feet. But I want anatomically convincing satyrs!
Well, it turns out that Pinin over on Poser Outer Zone offers a Satyress figure for free. She is more cartoony than super realistic [bulky shoulders, four-fingered hands, alarmingly round and symmetrical breasts, thighs out of a James Bond novel, long legs], but she has plausibly shaped digitigrade legs with hooves. Come to think of it, she reminds me of Kim Goossen’s toony Girl, one of my favorite digital models. I decided that the adorable Satyress should be my base for all my Monster Mash satyrs.
I immediately confronted two problems: 1) no morphs and 2) no clothes. Since I’m an advanced beginner at D-Forms, problem 1 proved no match for a half-day’s work, during which I cranked out a variety of partial head and body morphs. I lavished the most energy on bulking the figure up, not with muscle, but with fat, especially since the central figure, the dancer, is a fat woman. I never expected that a mesh originally sculpted to be wiry and muscular would deform so well into pear-shaped fatness, but it did. Pictures later…
Satyress’ empty wardrobe required some more labor. I started off by, first off, converting Satyress from a Poser native [.cr2] figure to a Daz-compatible figure with Daz’ proprietary Triax weight mapping so that Daz tools would work on her. I then began loading up freebie clothes and scaling, translating and D-Forming them until they fit her in zero position, exporting the items as OBJs, then reimporting and using Transfer Utility, with her as the source, to rerig them. Since I was resculpting the clothing meshes pretty crudely, the modified items didn’t fit well.
I then got the genius idea of using the Autofit function and G2F to do most of the sculpting for me. I overlaid Satyress and G2F, making G2F partly transparent. I then translated, scaled and morphed G2F so that her core [torso, arms, hips, upper legs] shape matched Satyress’. Then, when I Autofit clothes to G2F, they ended up resculpting to fit Satyress’ shape with 95% accuracy. After minor tweaks of the clothing wtih D-Forms, I exported the OBJs, reimported and used Transfer Utility to rerig.
Voila! Satyress gained instant access to closets’ worth of clothing. In fact, with the help of Autofit, she could now wear V4, M4 or K4 clothes [Autofit to Genesis, then Autofit a second time to G2F], as well as Genesis clothing, G2F clothing and/or G2M clothing. I have hand-converted some V3 and M3 items for her — short-sleeved V3 dresses seem to reconfigure particularly well, probably because V3’s shape, like Satyress’, features blocky shoulders and hips — but mostly just breezed through a bunch of V4, Genesis and G2F stuff. I don’t bother with pants because I don’t want to deal with Satyress’ hooves, but short-sleeved shirts, long-sleeved shirts, above-the-knee shorts, above-the-knee skirts and above-the-knee dresses convert with [relative] ease. At this rate, I will have outfits for all five of my satyrs, each with unique pieces.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1688023.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I finally got to watch the first ep of season 2 this morning. Overall I feel a sense of relief that all significant characters introduced in the previous season remain in action.
Nicole Beharie as Abby and Tom Mison as Ichabod re-establish their easy, sympathetic chemistry. Their characters each have equal opportunity to rescue and be rescued by each other, a refreshing change from other male/female TV pairs in which the man does all the rescuing of the woman.
Jenny, Abby’s sister, has survived so far, giving Lyndie Greenwood a chance to play an important auxiliary to Abby and Ichabod. Even more unflinching and martial than Abby, Jenny contributes a satisfying level of physical ass-kicking, as well as great affection for Abby. Grounded by her relationship with her sister, Abby escapes the Exceptional Woman trope/trap.
John Cho and John Noble return to bolster the main characters with some stellar supporting performances. Cho’s sniveling, pathetic Andy, who alternates between helping and betraying Abby, decides to do the former in this episode. I hope he recurs, as I find his status as regretful servant of evil, who nevertheless performs good acts, interesting. Noble’s Horseman of War, also Ichabod and Katrina’s son [?!], lurks ominously, threatening people in the plummy tones of a classically trained actor, while picking scenery from between his teeth. I’m having a very, very hard time dissociating Noble from his 5 seasons as Walter in Fringe.
All that said, I do have some reservations. First of all, where was Captain Irving?!?!?!?! How dare you deprive us of Orlando Jones for an episode, especially right after he gave himself up to law enforcement? He’d better show up soon, along with his family too. Sleepy Hollow can’t just not show a whole third of the characters of color like that!
I particularly want to see Irving’s daughter Macey return and get some development. As a wheelchair user since getting into a car crash with her dad and then as a temporary vessel for some demon, she smacked a little too much of the Tragic Tabula Rasa Cripple last season. However, I think her brush with demonic possession could provide a chance for some character development. Maybe she could link up to the demon realm and give Abby and Ichabod some guidance therefrom? Of course, this will probably not happen.
Second of all, Katia Winter as Katrina, Ichabod’s wife, just gets the raw end of things. Despite billing Katrina as a main character, the show grievously underwrites her. For example, her fascinating past as a powerful witch who joined a coven dedicated to protecting the town — this aspect of her character dwindles over the first season as her status as pawn in the struggle between Ichabod and the Headless Horseman grows. Furthermore, where a person with more acting skills, like Nicole Beharie, Lyndie Greenwood or, heck, even Amandla Stenberg [who plays Macey], might add something to the role, Winter can’t even muster that. The stereotyped nature of her character just shows up how untalented she is.
I eagerly await further episodes, however!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1687787.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Here we go!
"On Halloween, while humans dress up as demons, the demons themselves take off from scare duty. They trade their gloomy and ghastly rags for the brightest, most modern duds they can find and kick up their heels, celebrating that one night of the year during which the humans have assumed the monsters’ usual task of freaking people out. [Nobody ever claimed that demons could coordinate their separates, however.]"
Actual picture contains a bunch of demons people circled around a woman. Some audience members are clapping, some talking, some getting their groove on. There are also people playing bodhrans and panpipes. The woman at the center is dancing with eyes closed, an expression of joyful abandon on her face. Everyone wears casual, everyday clothes — T-shirts, shorts, sweatshirts, jeans — but nobody’s clothes match. [This is a job for Loud Fabrics 01, 02 and 03 shaders! ^_^ ]
Base figure is going to be G2F. Paid items are going to be GenX2 [how I get my morphs all onto a single base figure] and V4 for G2F [so I can use Gen4 skins on G2F].
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1687303.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
October’s freebie contest has "Monster Mash" as a theme, meaning that one has to render a scene with at least 10 freebies and no more than 3 paid items of monsters + music. I’m thinking that I might enter this. I’d love to do a bunch of stereotypical demons [satyrs with bat wings] drumming in the woods for one who’s dancing. Go therianthropes!
There are definitely enough free items with which I could constitute most of this scene. I know of plenty of free horns, tails and even hooves, as well as wings [!], that I could use for the demons. Forest elements are also freely available, including backdrops, trees, logs, stumps, etc. I’d love to get a fire too for her to dance in front of…
I have a whole month to work on this. Hmmm…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1687161.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
…why the hell does it have Jeffrey Tambor playing Maura, the main character, instead of, you know, an actual trans woman? >:( Go AWAY, Jeffrey Tambor.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1687022.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I posted a Prop Challenge over at Figurvore for people to make wearable accessories sometime during the month of September. Then I forgot about it and became distracted, so now it’s the last day of September, and I myself have created no wearable accessories. Quick — make a top hat!!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1686716.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Well, Thalia’s head, at any rate. That set me back $230.00, thanks to the free shipping event.
Now to acquire some supplies: rubbery plastic neon snakes for her hair and a squishy "stress ball" for her ball gag.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1686278.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This Meowl figure by Sixus1 cracks me up. Like ryverthorn’s Snuffles, this is a fantasy creature that I have no use or plans for, but which will probably make my way into my runtime because it’s so damn cute.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1686214.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
It started with Chris Cox’ freebie Rococo Gown for V4, but really kicked into high gear when I got Neftis’ Lady de Lioncourt Dress for G2F, which is Rococo + Goth. I spent the first few months of my possession admiring the detailed mesh and classy textures, but also pissing and moaning that the dress did not sit well — i.e., it contained no morphs or other provisions for seated postures and the ways in which they deform and re-drape cloth.
I could not resist two more relatively new releases, despite their collective inability to sit realistically: MEC4D’s Queen of Hearts for G2F and Penny Dreadfull for G2F by MartinJFrost. Even if my characters could only stand around in Queen of Hearts, the elaborate hairstyle could be used with other clothing. And heck — even though the creator of Penny Dreadfull himself said that he had tried all sorts of ways to make the dress sit, but had been unsuccessful, it was one of the most realistic bustle dresses I’d ever seen. I tried to resist it, but I could not.
Eventually my annoyance hit a breaking point. What was the use of all these nifty outfits if I couldn’t pose them in positions that my characters use at least a third of the time? My exasperation thus motivated me to force the gowns to sit myself. Using D-Formers in Daz, I made a morph first for Lady de Lioncourt that tucked it up around the figure’s ass and calves, as it would if being sat on. I achieved something passable and cheered myself on.
Since then, I have been unstoppable!! I made sit morphs for the Rococo Gown, Queen of Hearts and Lady de Lioncourt [try #2, using what I had learned from previous attempts]. My proficiency with D-Formers increased dramatically to the point where I created and released an entire package of morphs for Penny Dreadfull, including morphs to make it sit, to compress parts of the skirt and even to lengthen the whole skirt with a minimum of texture distortion. I’m now packaging up another set of helper morphs for Ravenhair’s Priestess for Genesis because someone liked the work I did on other dresses and requested that I do something similar on a Genesis outfit. I’m also converting the Rococo Gown to Genesis for her.
The compliments and request from a fellow user really make me feel like a digital artist. I’m glad that someone appreciates my work and that I can help others achieve their artistic ends. I’m also glad that I’ve found areas of specialty — such as shaders and sit morphs — at which I can demonstrate rapid improvement and that other people like too. I’ve spent so long feeling socially and artistically lonely that public approbation means a lot to me and my confidence.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1686003.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I got some white skull pony beads for the finials and some cheap toy horses for the ride-ons. I was going to purchase war gaming miniature horse skeletons of white metal, but those were like $10.00 a piece before shipping, and this is not supposed to be an expensive project. I’ll just hack up the mini horses, throw red paint on them and call them zombies. :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1685750.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Extra Morphs for MartinJFrost’s Penny Dreadfull Outfit for G2F
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Sit Morph and More for MartinJFrost’s Penny Dreadfull Outfit
Kim Arnold, who sculpted and did the outfit for my fullset Trinket Box Cookie, tends to do fullsets reminiscent of Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies, but she made an adorable deviation with Raggedy Cookie. Inspired by Raggedy Ann, this Cookie has a wig of fabric strips [kind of like yarn] and a similar skirt. Her faceup simulates stitching [down the center of her face, for example], as well as the red-apple cheeks that form part of Raggedy Ann’s signature look. The large eyes and wide mouth of the sculpt work very well with this style.
After seeing this iteration of Cookie, my ideas about a simulacrum BJD have come up again. The marionette concept wandered off into rag doll territory, as I think this Cookie, plus Aimerai Doll’s Scraps, look really cool simulating fabric. I like Raggedy Cookie because her whole faceup gives the impression of fabric, while Scraps just looks like your standard human character with large squares of fabric decorating her face for some reason. I do, however, like the fact that Scraps’ patches and stitches are sculpted onto her face, giving them more realism.
So clearly what I need here is some sort of rag doll marionette that has jumped its strings. I could probably best achieve this in 1:6 scale, since I have several BJDs in that size in my parts bin. Body would possibly have different pieces dyed different colors. Outfit would be partly fused with body in the form of thin fabric glued directly to the resin with either sculpted stitches made of Aves Apoxie Sculpt or glued-on stitches made of yarn. The other part of the outfit could be Ellery’s patchwork skirt!!! Hair would be yarn.
Loose stringing. Eye hooks [ouch!] screwed into top of head, back of hands and tops of feet.
Head would require some modding. Eyes would be closed and smoothed over with Aves Apoxie Sculpt, then replaced by buttons. Eyebrows would be painted to look like stitches. Mouth would be the most realistic, painted to look like a Glasgow smile, with more sculpted or glued-on stitches where it extended past the lips. Red circles for cheeks.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1685024.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Helene has a Tumblr post up on making eyeballs with polymer clay and clear gloss. Irises can either be painted onto the eyes or printed on computer paper and then glued. I have so much polymer clay, so much paint and so much gloss that I can try this tutorial with supplies I already have. I even have a dedicated toaster for polymer clay projects. [I got it when I thought I was going to sculpt heads.] Why should I buy eyes again?! 😀
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1684865.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Janna’s and my registrations got us bags with the Dollism logo, in which we found some of the stuff below, including badges, advertising postcards, socks from Ruby Red Galleria, etc.
Continue reading Dollism Plus: booty
Journey’s song "Separate Ways [Worlds Apart]" came on one of Janna’s Pandora stations a few days ago. A few lines caught in my head ["If he ever hurts you / True love won’t desert you"], but I didn’t know the source. So I banged out the words into a search engine and came up with the full set of lyrics, which I will now summarize as follows:
I’m so obsessed with you that I’ve been monitoring your activities since our breakup. "You’ll never walk alone" — literally. I’ll be watching through my binoculars — you and your current partner. If he ever hurts you, I’ll be right there to comfort you…also to lay the hurt on him for mistreating you. In summary, I am a dangerous, deeply deluded misogynist who is very likely to kill you and your partner once I’m done wailing about how much I love you.
I would really like to believe that, like Sting’s Every Breath You Take, Separate Ways is actually supposed to be a disturbing evocation of obsessive, abusive behavior, but I can find no evidence.
Gaaaaaaaaack.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1684464.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
After lunch on the 20th, I began at the1:3 scale ramen restaurant set, apparently a smaller version of an actual Toronto, Ontario eatery. Supplied by Doll North, a Canadian doll convention, the ramen shop had legible menus, bowls of ramen and minibar liquor bottles for booze. Sadly, none of my pictures with Timonium in this set came out, but some other doll lovers let me photo their dolls in the restaurant.
Continue reading Dollism Plus, 09/20/2014, after lunch: a little bit more of everything
For my next photography session in the dealer room, I took pictures of some items donated for the charity raffle, proceeds of which benefitted the Humane Society of the United States. The raffle doll I most wanted to see, a fullset Loongsoul Gong Gong God of Water with an impressively long sea serpent tail, hid out safely in his box, so I consoled myself with shots of other interesting options.
Continue reading Dollism Plus, 09/20/2014, before lunch II: raffle dolls, dealers and robots
I really want to attend more doll shows, particularly ones where all types of dolls, including BJDs, action figures and art dolls, are welcome. I have learned my lesson, however, and will NEVER AGAIN drive 7 hours one way to attend any event, no matter how cool it is.
At Dollism, I learned about Doll North, a subconvention occurring annually at Anime North — a huge Canadian convention for lovers of anime, manga, cosplay, et hoc genus omne — in Toronto, Ontario. Doll North includes BJDs [resin and plastic], Obitsus, Pullips, Momokos, Blythes, Monster Highs and the like. This event occurs over a weekend toward the end of May, so any saving would have to start occurring NOW.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1683576.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
If I’m going to get an IOS Infernale head, which I am, then I need to stop calling her Tonsil Hockey Deux and start calling her by an actual name. So it’s official: Tonsil Hockey Deux will hereafter be known as Thalia Hesperus Donaldson. No particular reason why — it just sounded good. Thalia’s name’s origin as that of the Greek muse of comedy is irrelevant.
Thalia needs some significant modification. First and foremost, that nose needs some serious reduction. It, of course, solidifies the sculpt’s beautiful adherence to the conventional stylization of male anime characters, but it’s way too much nose for my tastes. Here’s my proposed deletion:
Continue reading Tonsil Hockey Deux: the concept
Saturday, our only full day at the convention, I hit the registration booth shortly after 9:30 AM [and the opening of the dealer room for the day]. Who should I meet there but fellow Vermont Doll Lovers member Lyrajean [not pictured], who handed me my badge and swag bag?
Continue reading Dollism Plus, 09/20/2014, before lunch I: dealers and dioramas
Janna and I, with Araminthe and Timonium in tow, drove to Buffalo, NY, this past weekend for the BJD convention I’ve been anticipating for months: Dollism. With no expensive BJD projects in the offing, I attended the convention with very little spending money and the goal of taking as many photos as possible.
We arrived at the Hyatt Regency on Friday evening, exhausted, after a desperately tedious drive across the entire Empire State. We missed all the workshops and dealer booths for that day. However, room sales — individual attendees and dealers selling things out of their hotel rooms — were going on, so I grabbed my camera, my business cards and Timonium, then ventured forth to acquire photos. I always asked before snapping away, and everyone graciously consented to have photos of their dolls taken.
Continue reading Dollism Plus, Buffalo, NY, 09/19/2014: photos from room sales
Xandy’s cheap piece of crap merry-go-round music box arrived in the mail today. I got exactly what I paid for, which was a toy made out of wood, glue, [probably lead-based] paint and a music box that sounded like someone torturing a piano sounding board with a cocktail fork.
There are two preorders for THD this fall: the one currently running [August 29th through September 30th] and one toward the end of the year [November 15th through December 15th]. The one going on now offers free shipping, which makes the cost of a head $230.00 instead of $256.00. Quick — to the credit card!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1682354.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I’m at Dollism now [about which more later], but I just hit IOS’ Web site now, and Tonsil Hockey Deux’s head is in stock [or on preorder]?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!? Well, there’s an incentive not to spend any money here….
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1681932.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Sitting Morph for MEC4D’s Queen of Hearts Gown for G2F
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
After a hard day of yelling, "Off with her head!" and playing croquet with flamingoes, the Queen of Hearts needs to take a load off. I have crafted a sitting morph for MEC4D’s Queen of Hearts Gown for G2F so that the Queen can rest her royal feet.
After installation, you will find a leg pose for G2F in My Library > People > Genesis 2 Female > Clothing > Mec4D > Queen_of_Hearts. The morph SkirtForSitting can be found under Parameters > Morphs.
To use the sitting morph, apply !G2FPoseForSitting.duf to G2F, which will adjust the position of her legs only. You can then apply the SkirtForSitting Morph at 100%.
Please note: the sitting morph, which I created entirely in Daz Studio with D-Forms, is strictly an amateur effort and not professional grade at all. However, at least the morph gets the dress in the right position, and [say it with me] you can always fix it in post! ^_^
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Sit morph for Mec4D’s Queen of Hearts Gown for G2F
We’ll be traveling Friday and Sunday, so Saturday is the only full day we’ll have at the convention. Schedule of all Saturday’s events is as follows:
Room Sales: 10:00pm – ? Whenever!
I’ve bolded the events I would like to attend. I really wish I could go to the Soom panel, but that’s the last thing on Sunday, at which time I hope to be well on my way home. I’m really not keen on any other panels or demos, but I am looking forward to hitting the dealer tables and photo backdrops and taking lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of photos…and entering the charity raffle.
I’ve decided that Timonium and Araminthe are coming with me.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1681426.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
So, as people have no doubt heard, the Quad City Times recently reported that Vivian Boyack and Nonie Dubes married recently after 72 years together. The gay rights mainstream’s obsession with marriage equality is problematic, as is the whole concept of romantic love. That being said, I appreciate [hah!] the photo of Boyack and Dubes holding hands in front of the officiant for several reasons.
For one, the photo represents aspects of queer culture that popular media likes to gloss over: a) women who are b) old, c) [visibly] disabled and d) at least somewhat invested in the butch/femme roles. Look! Two women in wheelchairs who are happy! ^_^
For another, the photo shows just how deeply Boyack and Dubes care for each other. Boyack reaches over to Dubes with a sort of protective air, while Dubes keeps Boyack’s hand firmly within hers. They look calmly at the officiant; though this is a significant day for them, they also know that this is also a mere legality that does nothing to change their steadfast devotion to each other. That sort of mutual happiness always makes me want to cry. Sniff sniff.
There are a bunch of therianthropic people who live in the mini universe, but I haven’t named and given personalities to all of them. Here are a few, however:
Continue reading Selected therianthropic denizens of the mini universe
Yesterday Janna and I hauled ass across the state in the rain to attend the Glory Days Festival in White River Junction. Every year, this celebration of trains, both full-size and model, features excursion rides, toy layouts, Amtrak historical exhibits, live music, food and general entertainment.
We arrived much later than expected, about 2 hours before closing, but we did see a supremely nifty miniature steam engine in 1.5" scale [1.5 inches to 1 foot]. The operator sat on top of it, feeding wood pellets into the hopper. It also had a short straightaway of track on which the operator took people for rides. I wondered what my 1:6 scale dolls would look like standing next to it. Pictures below.
Continue reading Glory Days Festival, White River Jct., VT, 09/13/2014
Rococo Dress for Genesis 2 Female
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Chris Cox’s beautiful Rococo Dress, originally created for Victoria 2, Aiko 3, Victoria 3 and Victoria 4, is now available for Genesis 2 Female! With Chris’ permission, I have converted and updated the V4 version to fit G2F. The pink texture from the V3 version accompanies the update.
After installation, you will find the Rococo Dress in My Library > People > Genesis 2 Female > Clothing > RococoDressChrisCox.
I also added something extra. All the morphs that Chris originally put in the V4 version are there, plus one that I created: SkirtForSitting. As the name implies, you can use this morph to position the skirt of the dress so that G2F can sit down while wearing it.
To use the sitting morph, apply !DressPoseForSitting.duf to the dress. Then apply !G2FPoseForSitting.duf to G2F, which will adjust the position of her legs only. You can then apply the SkirtForSitting Morph, which can be found under Morphs.
Please note: the sitting morph, which I created entirely in Daz Studio with D-Forms, is strictly an amateur effort and not professional grade at all. As you can see, the morph causes the hem to ripple, especially in the back center, and collide with the floor a bit. Applying a smoothing modifier and/or converting to SubD does make the result look slightly better. However, at least the morph gets the dress in the right position, and [say it with me] you can always fix it in post! ^_^
To download the original Rococo Dress and related files, please see these links, which go directly to Chris Cox’s Web site:
V4 version: http://www.dragonspace.com/3d/files/RococoDressV4.zip
Pink texture: http://www.dragonspace.com/3d/files/RococoPink.zip
Templates: http://www.dragonspace.com/3d/files/RococoDressTemplates.zip
V3 hair [a nifty pompadour with pearls, feathers and sausage curls!]: http://www.dragonspace.com/3d/files/RococoHair1-V3.zip
V3 shoe props: http://www.dragonspace.com/3d/files/RococoShoes1-V3.zip
If these links do not work for some reason, the Wayback Machine’s page here has links that do:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090402123752/http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=106182
A list of other textures for the dress can be found here:
https://poserdazfreebies.orain.org/wiki/Rococo_outfit
Thank you to the following people who helped out with this freebie:
–Chris Cox, first and foremost, for permitting this update
–SickleYield, whose G2F Dress Rig improved the conversion over Autofits and added skirt handles
–Rob Kelk, who gave me links to the original Rococo Dress files
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Chris Cox’s Rococo Dress updated for G2F
I just realized that the mini-mini fig of Fyana, which I’ve been lusting after since 2009, is actual a Takara Microsister. And I’ve found places with her in stock, so I can get her! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1680363.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
It has come to my attention that the Takara Microladies have smaller relations with even greater articulation. At 9cm, the Microsisters have 36 points of articulation, which is more than every single one of my 1:6ers. I need a Microsister! They were even issued as part of the blank, naked, solid-colored Material Force, but those are apparently extremely rare.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1679955.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Because I have a cemetery-obsessed main character [Isabel] and because I think they’re hilarious, I am ordering 2 Rement Pose Skeletons, the coffin, the toilet, the desk and the IV pole. It would be awesome if they came in time for Halloween!
I’m entertaining the idea of Isabel doing photostories with the skeletons and possibly Jujube. In such a case, Jujube would be the main character, and one of the skeletons would play the Grim Reaper constantly hanging around her.
EDIT: Maybe my Takara Material Force Microladies would be a better choice for the living people in Isabel’s photostories.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1679624.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Yes! I created a sitting morph for Neftis’ Lady de Lioncourt Dress for G2F. I love this Gothy, neo-Rococo dress, but its inability to sit realistically has prevented me from using it.
After grumbling in quiet frustration for several months because I thought my skills were not equal to the task of making the dress sit, I finally decided to attempt the creation of a sitting morph. And I succeeded!
I made the morph entirely in Daz with D-Forms because that’s the method of modeling with which I feel most comfortable. I even minimized distortion of the bat ornaments all over the skirt. Go me! I’m amazing!
Jareth cheers in happiness below.Continue reading I’m a genius! I made a sit morph!
…Just go check out Studio Art Vartanian’s amazing morphs and textures! She specializes in various celebrities, with spot-on likenesses, realistic skins full of depth and matching hairstyles with realistic textures and movement morphs.
Incidentally, I cannot take Tom Cruise seriously in anything. His mere presence ruins everything, from Legend forward. Too bad, as some of the movies he shows up in are interesting.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1679214.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
The judge in the case against murderer Oscar Pistorius just found him not guilty of murder. As I predicted when I first heard about Steenkamp’s death, her killer got away with it because he’s a straight, cis, white, athletic superstar with the added bonus of having a disability, so, as an inspiring example of humanity overcoming wretched odds, he couldn’t possibly do something as vile as killing another human being. Ugh, the stench of white privilege, straight privilege, male privilege and ableism is nauseating.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1679060.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
While I wasn’t paying attention, Rement released something besides licensed stuff that doesn’t interest me. Their Pose Skeleton set features a 1:18 scale articulated skeleton and various sets and accessories. I find this both hilarious and adorable, as the accessories include Grim Reaper supplies, a toilet, explosives and an electric guitar. These would make great dolls for Isabel, if I could just procure two skeletons.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1678826.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I decided to bring Timonium and either Yamarrah or Araminthe to Dollism. First, they represent my major scales, 1:6 scale and 1:3 scale respectively. Second, they have no small movable parts to lose. Timonium’s wig fits snugly; his skirt’s rubber-banded around his waist with clear elastics, his choker is hot glued down, and he doesn’t have detachable ears [like Flower’s] to come loose.
I’m not sure about whether to bring Yamarrah or Araminthe. Yamarrah’s earrings, wig and glasses are all secured to her head with hot glue, so her hair won’t escape [the way that Araminthe’s occasionally does]. However, I really need to extend the orange of her hands up her wrists if I’m going to bring her, as her color mismatches really piss me off. Araminthe has a sturdier, less fiddly body than Yamarrah, but she doesn’t represent my fabulous [har!] skills in faceups and wigmaking the way that Yamarrah does. Araminthe’s faceup is completely default, and I haven’t yet worked up the courage to wipe and redo it.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1678385.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I just used an Amazon gift card to purchase a cheap, shoddy merry-go-round music box for under Xandy’s crinoline. When it comes, I will better be able to figure out what size of horse skeletons to put on the poles instead of the ridiculously blobby default wooden ones.
EDIT: Used the rest of the gift card to drastically reduce purchase price for some little orange and white skeletons dancing on a black field. This cotton print cloth will form some of the layers of Xandy’s skirt. I also ordered 2 yards so that I can eventually make a shirt for Isabel, using the pattern that Andrea so generously gave me. [Now where did I put that?]
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1678256.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I shave my head about once a month, which means that my fine, straight hair cycles between essentially nonexistent and, at max, an inch long. Much to my irritation, I have not been able to find a digital representation of my even-all-over buzz cut.
Enter Age of Armour and DimensionTheory’s Grass Shader for Daz Studio, a recently released procedural shader. The average shader depends on various maps in jpg or png [transparency, bump, specular, normal, etc.], from which it then generates texture effects on a digital model. By contrast, a procedural shader like the AoA/DT Grass Shader relies on a scripting language to calculate its effects. Maps may be used optionally to fine-tune the results of a procedural shader, but they are not necessary.
The Grass Shader works by creating actual 3D grass blades [as opposed to a displacement effect on a flat surface]. Controllable effects include blade thickness, blade length, base color, tip color and clumping. Of course, I read the product description and immediately leapt to the conclusion that the Grass Shader would work equally well as a specialized type of hair shader, specifically for short and spiky ‘dos. At last — a buzz cut maker!
To replicate my favorite hairstyle in digital, I started with a universal skull cap from PhilC’s Hair Designer. I morphed it and tweaked it until it fit the default G2F model. I planned to use the Grass Shader on the skullcap, so I ensured that it fit G2F’s head closely. I wanted to create a realistic semblance of hair growing directly out of her scalp.
I then experimented with the shader settings to approximate my actual hair. I had little trouble determining an appropriate blade length, blade thickness and clumping strength, but I spent hours fiddling with diffuse color and translucency. At first I tried making the base colors brown and the tip colors blond, as this is how my hair appears with light shining through it, but I eventually realized that the translucency strength controls this effect, and there’s no need to make the diffuse channel do the work. I ended up making all base and tip colors the same flat brown that my hair appears when it’s lying on the floor after I’ve shaved it, and that achieved a more realistic result.
I also experienced some difficulty in making the hair cover the model’s head. Yes, I know — a quick glance in the mirror clearly demonstrates that my scalp remains highly visible when my hair is buzzed quite short and, yes, it does look like I’m kind of bald. I wanted the effect of a full head of hair, however, so I made some geoshells of the skullcap and shaded them with the same settings as the original skullcap.
Behold — my digital buzz cut! The first render shows only one layer of shader hair: the skullcap. The second shows the skullcap + a geoshell layer of hair. The third shows the skullcap + 2 geoshell layers of hair.
Continue reading Digital hair: repurposing a procedural grass shader for a buzz cut
This post was going to be a series of photos just showing off my nifty new set piece, a Mattel Coca-Cola Soda Fountain, which I acquired this week for below original retail. It’s surprisingly huge and true to scale, unlike most playline Barbie stuff, which is undersize. I appreciate its solid, high-quality details, like vinyl cushions on the bar stools and the wooden crate of Coke bottles. I particularly like the tabletop jukebox and the straw dispenser!
I was just going to provide some closeups of the accessories and long shots of the set with dolls showing scale. However, my narrative imagination cannot resist adding plot to photo ops. And so here’s a photostory that doesn’t really highlight the soda fountain set. Oh well. :p
Continue reading My Barbie Coca-Cola Soda Fountain and the horrors of customer service
At the end of July, I made a list of hair models that I wanted to create:
The Goblin King’s hair = Aliza, my first digital hair freebie. I did complete a set of Pippi braids, but the bangs kept pissing me off, so I left it alone. I really hate bangs that lie flat. The fantastical pompadour = Zabby, still yet to be released.
I even did my own buzz cut, but I’m saving that for a separate post because it’s not a hair model, but rather a preset for a procedural shader. There are two more hairstyles that I want to accomplish with this shader:
More later…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1677544.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
A dress with ridiculously huge leg-o’-mutton sleeves like Sarah’s in Labyrinth. And I don’t mean standard leg-o’-mutton sleeves — I mean sleeves that equal a panniered skirt in width and make it impossible to go through doors head on.
Jareth: "Why don’t you put some sitting morphs in the Lady de Lioncourt Dress, the Skirt, the Marie Louise 18th Century Gown and that Extravaganza thing? I mean — what’s the use of ridiculously voluminous dresses if you can’t sit in ’em?"
Me: "A) I don’t have the 18th Century Gown anymore; I thought it overlapped too much with Lady de Lioncourt. B) The Skirt already has sit morphs. C) Shush. I’ll get to Lady de Lioncourt and Extravaganza when I have the time."
Jareth: *adds the Victorian Gown for G2F, Penny Dreadfull for G2F and the Marie Louise to my Daz wishlist* "Did you notice that Penny Dreadfull is 50% off?"
Me: "The creator explicitly told me he couldn’t make it sit. The bustle gets in the way."
Jareth: "So take the bustle off."
Me: "I’m going back to work."
Jareth: "Hey!"
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1677136.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
For some reason, in high school French class, we ended up watching a 1982 TV movie adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel, probably because it was nominally set in the French Revolution. Anyway, I found it thrilling for several reasons:
Incidentally, a quick IMDB search on Anthony Andrews reveals that he works steadily, especially in TV, and still looks the same as he did in 1982, only with less hair. Nice smirk!
The name Percival really irritates me for some reason. Really, really, really irritates me.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1676941.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
For those of you not up on the latest hip party game for people in their 20s and 30s, let me introduce you to Cards Against Humanity. Essentially a group form of multiple choice Mad Libs, this game features a bunch of black cards, which contain sentences with key nouns left out, and a bunch of white cards, which contain nouns or noun phrases. Each player draws a hand of 10 white cards, and then everyone gets a chance to read a black card aloud. After a card is read, players choose from their hand the white card that they think best completes the sentence. These cards are distributed to the reader anonymously. The reader reads the selections aloud and selects the one they like best. The player whose white card is chosen wins the black card. All players draw another white card to keep their hand up to 10, and the role of reading black cards passes to the next player.
In concept, Cards Against Humanity is the sort of game I love. There’s no competition and no real winning or losing. The game emphasizes creativity and amusement instead of points and strategy. It’s the type of game that grows exponentially more hilarious with more and more players, and it sparks very interesting side conversations when people ask or joke about each other’s choices.
In practice, however, I find Cards Against Humanity very problematic in terms of content and framing. The black cards, with their framing sentences, feature mostly topical references familiar to people in their 20s and 30s. Examples include: "What does Prince insist on being included in his dressing room?" and "What does Obama do to unwind?" Fine, no big deal.
It’s the white noun cards, though, that drive me up the wall. If they contained only generically amusing phrases such as "murder most foul," "inappropriate yodeling" and "licking things to claim them as your own," I wouldn’t object. But no, those cards are a distinct minority. The white cards focus heavily on topics apparently considered taboo or difficult to discuss by the white, straight, cis, male, bourgeois creator, including people of color ["brown people," "the hard-working Mexican"], people with disabilities ["amputees," "Stephen Hawking talking dirty," "a robust Mongoloid," "a spastic nerd," "the profoundly handicapped"], queer people ["the gays," "praying the gay away"], fat people ["feeding Rosie O’Donnell," "the morbidly obese," "home video of Oprah sobbing into a Lean Cuisine"], gender-nonconforming people ["passable transvestites"], genocide ["inappropriately timed Holocaust jokes," "helplessly giggling at the mention of Hutus and Tutsis"], Muslims ["Allah [praise be unto him!]," "72 virgins"], poor people ["poor people," "homeless people"], old people ["Grandma," "hospice care"], child abuse ["child abuse"], rape ["surprise sex"], paraphilias ["German dungeon porn"] and crap ["fiery poops"]. I could go on, but then I’d be quoting the entire suite of white cards.
Cards Against Humanity glancingly acknowledges the problematic structure of its game by billing its audience as "horrible people." "It’s as despicable and awkward as you and your friends," crows the main page of the game’s Web site. Of course, below this description are various cool publications and people praising the game, so clearly the game’s creators see being "despicable and awkward" as a coveted, desirable status. They quote condemnations from the Chicago Tribune ["absurd"], The Economist ["unforgivable"] and NPR ["bad"] in contrast with praise from INC ["hilarious"] and Boing Boing ["funny"]. Thus they associate criticism with old-fashioned, conservative, humorless media outlets full of old people and appreciation with the young, hip, cool crowd. To be "despicable and awkward," then, is ultimately to be cool.
What does Cards Against Humanity’s concept of coolness — that is, their idea of rebranded despicability qua awesomeness — entail? Basically it means laughing at anyone who’s not a straight, white, cis, bourgeois, hipster dude [like the creator]. Don’t try to tell me that, because the game has white cards like "white privilege," it actually critiques those who are discomfited by the concept. No, it doesn’t, not when the majority of cards make marginalized people who lack privilege into punchline after punchline after punchline.
If you’re still not convinced, let me break it down to you with a single example: the white card that has the phrase "passable transvestites." There is so much wrong with this card that it’s hard to know where to start. Well, to begin with, clearly someone thought this phrase worthy of inclusion into the deck of white cards, meaning that someone perceived it as shocking, racy, funny and potentially ridiculous. So what’s shocking, racy and entertaining about "passable transvestites?" Yeah, a gender nonconforming person who goes out in public en femme so that they avoid being clocked always makes me laugh. The stats on trans and other gender nonconforming people being harassed, assaulted and killed provide comic relief every time I read them. The outdated language on this white card — the vexed concept of "passable," coupled with the no-longer-used, clinical-sounding "transvestite" — signals that the game’s creators are hung up on old-fashioned binaries of gender presentation, the transgression of which they find hilarious and pathetic, instead of a matter of life and death.
I can make the same points about Cards Against Humanity’s treatment of people with disabilities, the prejudice against whom can be summed up in a single white card: "Stephen Hawking talking dirty." Yup, yup, of course, people who are neuroatypical, emotionally atypical and physically atypical to the extent that society doesn’t really know how to accommodate them — they’re comedy gold! I mean, really — can you imagine a man with paralysis talking dirty? First of all, he’d be doing it with the help of his computer, which is inherently hilarious, you know, because he can’t really talk. Second of all, it would imply that he, despite being unable to move parts of his body, has active sexual desires and interests, which is a shock, because no paralyzed person has ever had sexual interests and agency before — ever! They’re just…like… wheelchair-bound automatons. Yeah, "the profoundly handicapped" are a gas all right. Yet again, Cards Against Humanity’s decision to employee the passe and offensive term "handicapped" shows that they’re not interested in mocking prejudice, but in perpetuating it.
EDIT: As rosettanettle points out in a comment on my LJ crosspost, the creator of Cards Against Humanity expressed regret for the "passable transvestites" white card, which is now no longer included in decks. This does not, however, negate any of my points. If anything, it reinforces them, since the creator’s expression of "regret," which came only because he was called on his transphobia, comes across as less a regret of treasuring bigoted tenets and more a regret at getting caught. I also suspect his theatrical Tumblr photoset of him lighting the card on fire of being a self-aggrandizing performance so that he may be showered with praise about what an enlightened ally he is. Why do straight, cis, white, middle-class dudes think they deserve extra special plaudits for meeting minimum standards of decency? "Despicable," indeed.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1676643.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I just changed the name and URL. With regular attendees from outside the county, the name CCDC no longer accurately reflects what we’re about. "Vermont Doll Lovers" sums it up better. Though we welcome people from anywhere, we focus on providing a community for Green Mountain State doll enthusiasts. Now to update everyone…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1676303.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
A minor character in a Monster High ep, Finnegan Wake [har!], is a mer dude who speeds everywhere, mowing people down, and behaves with a mixture of insouciance and recklessness. [He’s referred to as Rider in this wiki, but it’s clearly the same character.] He also uses a manual wheelchair.
Mattel had a chance to create a really cool character who had a visible disability, but was not defined thereby. Instead, what did they do? They defined him by his disability. As the ep Ready, Wheeling and Able shows, the main monsters recognize that he uses a wheelchair and assume that he’s into sedate, sedentary activities. After some platitudes about not jumping to conclusions and letting people do what they want, the main characters realize that Finnegan is much more at home on the track [?]. He assures everyone that, if he needs help with anything, he’ll let people know, and then he asks someone to light his wheels on fire so he can do a trick.
In summary, Finnegan may appear at first glance to be some sort of super awesome stereotype-busting character. However, his adrenaline junkie behavior just acts as a blatant, sweating insistence that he’s INDEPENDENT and AUTONOMOUS and ATHLETIC and FULLY CAPABLE DAMMIT EVEN THOUGH HE’S IN A WHEELCHAIR. As an implicit contrast to wheelchair users as silent, passive, objectified characters, Finnegan hits the other extreme and, because he tries so hard not to end up like the stereotype, he ends up referring all the more pointedly to the stereotype itself. An anti-stereotype, made with the intention of compensating for the failures in the original stereotype, still reinforces the stereotype. We can see this in the description for his episode: "When Rider rolls into Monster High, the ghouls learn there’s more to this wheelchair-bound new student body than meets the eye." Yup, even though Mattel has strained mightily to progressively depict a character in a wheelchair, they still think he’s bound to his chair, forever immobilized.
Finnegan also drives me up the wall because he’s an inconsiderate, dangerous jerk. His ep introduces his character with a Finnegan-cam view of people diving out of his way as swerving and squealing noises occur. In other words, Finnegan barrels down the halls of Monster High at high speed, forcing people to yield the right of way. He seems to forget that he’s not the only one in the universe with a mobility impairment. For just one example, zombies like Ghoulia and Slo-Mo walk with much more difficulty than most people, but apparently Finnegan doesn’t care; he’ll just run them over because going fast is cool! Nah, he’s just an ass…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1676110.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel finally makes it to the kitchen for breakfast. But wait…her landlord intercepts her [sort of]!
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 2.3: “The Invisible Landlord”
I go in and out of Daz’ frequent buyer club, the Platinum Club Plus, depending on my funds and whether I’m in a period of amassing lots of digital content. I had a 3-month subscription [started October 23rd, 2007!!] in my early days as a digital artist, just so I could build up my library. I let it lapse, then got another 3-month subscription [started April 30th, 2014] in time for my birthday as a gift to myself, dropped it for August, then resuscitated it on September 1st to take advantage of this month’s PA [Published Artist] sale and next month’s PC [Platinum Club] sale. I’m also going to extend it through the end of December to get in on end-of-the-year sales.
Aaaaaanyway, I find the discount club very effective, as it offers a flat $1.99 price for a huge back catalog, 2 monthly discount coupons, 5 monthly freebies and discounts that often stack on top of regular promotions. I spent $24.00 for Platinum Plus on September 1st, and it’s already paid for itself, in that I’ve saved well over $24.00 on things I was going to buy anyway.
| Item | Non PC+ Price | PC+ Price | Savings | |
| Parisa for G2F | $11.17 | $7.98 | $3.19 | |
| Leather Factory Shaders | $10.95 | $1.99 | $8.96 | |
| By the Seaside Beach Huts | $14.95 | $0 | $14.95 | |
| Sickle Dress Rig G2F | $14.95 | $10.95 | $4.00 | |
| Spicy Jumpsuit G2F | $14.95 | $5.48 | $9.47 | |
| Succubus Add-Ons | $39.95 | $21.97 | $17.98 |
I picked up Parisa for her "evil puppet" makeup. I got the leather shaders because I was long dissatisfied with the freebie ones I’d been using. The Beach Huts, a PC freebie, I wasn’t going to buy, but they cost me nothing, and I like free buildings, so I acquired them. The Dress Rig will help me make floor-length dresses fit better on my people. The Spicy Jumpsuit, which I’ve been coveting since its debut in March, is, of course, for Jareth. The Succubus Add-Ons contain a set of horns and a devil tail, but, most pertinently for me, some bat wings and a snake section so that I can represent as many therianthropes from the mini universe as possible. Someday I should render all the therianthropic characters that I have so far…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1675710.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
It’s been about a year since the campaign for an articulated Scary Godmother doll, to which I contributed, ended. The last update that we got on the progress of the actual doll was at the end of April, April 23rd, to be exact, when Jill Thompson, creator of the campaign and the character, stated:
"We need to get this right. It might take longer than we all expected, but if that’s the only way she will turn out to be beautiful then that’s what will happen. I have no money to waste. It’s OUR money for OUR dolls. I can’t start at one factory and spend a ton of cash on tooling and then find out it’s not right and then go somewhere else. Or let them use cheap hair or clothing materials because they have it on hand. She has to be exactly how I want her to look before they can move forward because that’s what they say they could do! If it turns out they were fibbing, then we have to find someone else who follows through!
"This is not discouraging news in any way, so do not be disheartened! It just means the doll will be the most excellent!"
Fine. I get it — making a doll to spec, especially on limited funds, requires lots of communication, time and perfectionism. But we contributors have just gone for almost five months, a significant span of time, without any communication from Thompson. I’d be more convinced that we would eventually receive "most excellent" dolls if Thompson kept us updated.
I’m beginning to think I’m never going to get a cute little pointy dolly, which is too bad because I wanted one! 🙁 🙁 🙁 Bad communication pisses me off so much.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1675387.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Bokehground Seamless Tile Shaders
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Created with the help of m-ajinah’s freebie Night
Lights PhotoShop brush set [http://m-
ajinah.deviantart.com/art/Night-Lights-Brush-Set-
106015559], this is a collection of 13 Daz Studio
shaders that provide a bokeh-like look to any surface.
So what are these shaders for?
Continue reading 3D freebies: Bokehground Bokeh Effect Shaders for Daz Studio 4.6+
Mirodoll, a Chinese BJD maker, regularly has stupendous mark-downs on its already inexpensive resin BJDs. These sales, plus Mirodoll’s wide variety of resin colors, make the company attractive to people who want dolls [especially in nifty, non-standard colors], but don’t want to pay an exorbitant amount. Yes, it’s very tempting, but I strongly recommend that people do not deal with Mirodoll. My own experience with them illustrates their poor customer service. Continue reading Do not deal with Mirodoll!
Shown yesterday in a long shot, she appears today in closeup.
Continue reading Closeup of the Mad Doll
…and made her up to look like the Mad Doll of yesterday’s render, she would be a doll based on a digital render of a human model made up to look like a cross between a puppet and a BJD. She would probably implode from meta-references.
Now I kinda want to do a doll in marionette style, with very stylized makeup and a movable mouth and a marionette of her own. It’s turtles all the way down!
Like this, only in 1:3 scale…and more sinister looking.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1674447.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Muggins wants breakfast. Isabel’s brain has other ideas.
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 2.2: “Talking to the Plastic People”
Greer Gilman, master of purple involuted mock-Jacobean epics, muses about one of my favorite themes. The girls who have adventures in labyrinths fare differently compared to the boys. [Also she has a bone to pick with Tehanu’s crabbed domesticity in Ursula Le Guin’s novel of the same name. So do I, Gilman. So do I.]
I like her observation that the girls [Ariadne, Alice, Eilonwy from — yack! — the endlessly irritating Book of Three, Arha/Tehanu, Sarah] find their ways out; they know where they’re going. Meanwhile, the boys [Theseus, the White Knight {?}, Taran, Sparrowhawk/Ged, Jareth] don’t; they get lost and bonk around aimlessly. They’re "clueless," Gilman says, which is to say without a clue…or without a clew, Ariadne’s map-like ball of thread that knows the way through the passages. ["Clue" as a hint of a guide derives from "clew" qua thread. I love etymology!]
So why do we only hear of the boys getting out and through the maze? Why don’t we ever hear of the girls who get to know their labyrinths and walk through the darkness, unafraid of Minotaurs?
Beats me. For some reason, Inanna’s descent to the otherworld ain’t considered as compelling. Why not???
Pfffffft.
Goin’ to read Moonwise again, even though it drives me up the wall.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1673607.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I was playing around this morning with some recent digital acquisitions and came up with this picture. Caption: "I’m pretty sure I made a wrong turn somewhere because this definitely does not look like a shopping district where I can acquire some less skimpy pants."
Continue reading What would a creepy doll be afraid of?
The organization of digital content has always been a challenge for me. Lots of content creators organize their stuff by the broad categories defined by Poser’s old runtime directory structure, but then they stick, say, all their characters under their name. I do this too; with my freebie shaders, for example, I stuck them all in a folder named ModernWizard, which then subdivided into the various shader sets I issued. I dislike having my own runtime organized in this manner, though, because that’s not how I think.
I tend to think more thematically, as illustrated by the following subfolders into which I’ve divided my collection of digital clothing:
Just in case you had any doubts about where my digital fashion interests lie, the most populous category is, of course, FetishSkimpUniforms, followed by GothPunkRomantic, then PantsOutfits.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1673039.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
As all two of my regular readers know, I really like cemeteries, but have trouble finding realistic representations thereof among digital models. Over at the Daz store, for example, Spooky Plots by LaurieS and Lisa’s Botanicals looks more like a digital rendering of Halloween decorations than an actual graveyard, as does Pretty3D’s Lost Cemetery. Sure, you can find some nice individual tombs, but most digital cemetery sets seem to have been created by people who have never even seen a tombstone in their lives.
Imagine, then, my ecstasy when Danie and Marforno’s Tranquility Lane appeared on sale at Renderosity for 60% off! Danie and Marforno specialize in timeworn, vaguely fantastical sets in which one can dramatically pose one’s scantily clad female models. Let’s call them the masters of the Gothic lite pinup.
Occasionally, though, Danie and marforno deviate from Ye Olde Phantaisie Weirdnesse [seriously — why does Cult Diaries have tusks everywhere?] and do something more realistic and evocative. Enter Tranquility Lane, a cemetery set obviously modeled after those in New Orleans — hell, there’s even French on the crypts and signs. Of course, I have no personal experience with crypts clustered as tightly as urban apartment buildings — we don’t stack dead people up here in New England; instead we tend to spread them out. However, even though Tranquility Lane does not reflect my personal schema of a cemetery, I can repurpose elements of the set, such as the monoliths, fences and certain mausoleums, in my ongoing quest to represent digitally the type of graveyard with which I am familiar.
Oh yeah — and I got this for $10.40, 60% off its usual $26.00 price! Whoo hoo!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1672947.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Around these parts, we have Front Porch Forum, a uniquely Vermont Internet development, which provides E-mail lists for every town in the state [sometimes for several neighborhoods within towns, if the towns are large enough]. Like most E-mail lists, it contains classifieds, notices from town government and local services, requests to borrow things, thank you notes and loads of rants. I belong to the Winooski one and one for the neighborhood in Burlington where I work.
A few days ago, someone posted on the Winooski FPF that she didn’t like a sign that Sneakers [restaurant] put up in a little garden in an island near our horrible traffic rotary. It said "Sneakers — Yield to Bacon," which she, as a member of a Muslim household, found insensitive. She added that it was a safety hazard, impeding visibility for drivers and pedestrians, and wished that it was removed.
As Seven Days, our local newsweekly reports, poo flinging ensued. An inevitable backlash of posters castigated the original poster as a coward, a terrorist and the epitome of what was wrong with today’s "politically correct" society. Soon a representative from Sneakers posted, apologizing for upsetting people, explaining the joke behind the sign and adding that the sign would be taken down. The inevitable backlash then apparently subsumed the restaurant in its bitter wash; Seven Days reports that Sneakers has received so much bile on its Facebook page that it took said page down.
For the record, I recognize that the sign was offensive to the original poster, even though it wasn’t intended to be. I disagree with her particular targeting of the Sneakers sign as a danger, however, since other local businesses put up little signs in the sponsored gardens on the rotary islands, and she didn’t seem to have a problem with them. I thought that her original complaint was a reasonable statement and justification of her opinion, and I also appreciate the restaurant’s respectful response. They did include the "Well, we didn’t mean it!" line in their apology for offense, but they did apologize sincerely, and they took down the sign as a gesture of good faith. If only more institutions acted with such sincerity and sensitivity…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1672507.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
…Lloyd Alexander tells only one story: inexperienced and obtuse male hero + trickster-like storyteller/bardic character + unaccountably crabby female love interest + unfunny comic relief non-human animal-like character + irritating verbal tics for practically everyone + epic quests + secret royal heritage + Destiny = profit. I’m reading [or trying to read] The Book of Three right now, and it’s driving me up the wall. All the characters come across as grating and annoying, with the exception of Gwydion, who’s sensible and low-key and who just seems to belong to a different, less slapstick story.
Of Alexander’s extensive YA oeuvre, I remember most fondly the Vesper Holly series. Impossibly smart and improbably gifted, teenage orphan and heiress Vesper bounces from adventure to adventure in 1875 in various fictional countries, death and daring at her heels. She’s a charismatic and indefatigable Mary Sue, but the stories work, in large part because they are told by Brinnie, her comparatively useless guardian. As an old straight white dude, he gets on my nerves to no end, but his combination of befuddlement, admiration and ultimately love for Vesper allows the reader a more accessible peg upon which to hang their sympathies. I really enjoyed these books growing up, and now I’d like to seek them out again…
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Yesterday CCDC welcomed its largest complement of attendees ever! A whole dozen of us attended, including newcomers Pink and their husband [from Maine] and Pink’s friend from Quebec [who doesn’t have any dolls…yet]. We spent the entire extended duration [noon to 4:00 PM] talking dolls, posing and photoing them, in between side conversations about mutual interests such as Monster High, Internet-based cartoons and fursuits. As far as I can tell, everyone enjoyed themselves. 😀
Continue reading Chittenden County Vermont Doll Club meetup: 08/23/2014
I never gave a detailed description of Hattie, the scorpion therianthrope who attended the mini universe’s Xmas party last year. I’m not sure if she’s mostly human, but with a scorpion tail, like Soom Vesuvia, or if she’s half-human, half-scorpion, like Impldoll Colin. If they’re like Impldoll Colin, do they have claws and pincers?
EDIT: Okay, I just checked. Apparently the scorpion therianthropes are more along the lines of Impldoll Colin, although I didn’t specify whether they had pincers and/or claws. If I want to make a digital version of Hattie [which I do], I’ll have to purchase a scorpion and modify it to be a lower body for a therianthrope.
As an aside, I notice that Impldoll’s sculpting has become more refined over the years, but I think their sculptors still struggle to find a signature style. The sculpts and concepts, especially of the Star and Idol lines, smack strongly of Iplehouse to me.
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Her vibrant pink, knotty hair looks like the 1:1 equivalent of my 1:6 scale action figure Anneka’s. As cool as I find the color of Wachowski’s hair, I seriously query her white woman’s appropriation of dreadlocks. >_>
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1670820.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Flipmode just came out with a nifty digital product, Easy Environments: Autumn. It contains a road, bordered by a stone wall, a fence and some turning deciduous trees, surrounded by a 360-degree skybox that makes the set “[gleam] and [gloom] / ‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.” [Thank you, Dante Rossetti, for Silent Noon, which contains the best description ever of such dramatic clouds.] Quick-rendering light sets were also included, promising to duplicate the type of light pictured in the skybox.
When I saw this set, I felt an involuntary pang, as the dappling of shadows across the landscape epitomized for me the melancholy of fall. I bought the set for the lovely panorama, but then couldn’t get over the fact that the mountains contain no trees whatsoever. There should be some fall colors on the distant hills too, right?
I tried to rectify the barrenness of the background with the help of a Wikimedia Commons panoramic photo from the top of Mount Mansfield. I spent hours dividing up the panorama into four pieces [one for each side of the sky box] and blending it with Flipmode’s sky. I even made a texture for the bottom of the skybox, which originally showed more parched, treeless ground. After all that, the result looked like a bad overlay, despite all my hard work. I thus concluded that I could not get a forested skybox out of Easy Environments: Autumn, so I returned it.
Not all is lost, however. I still have the Mount Mansfield overlay panels. I have another idea. I got a great discount on Dreamland Models’ Movie Sets: 81 Blocks last night. Regularly $24.95, it was down to $7.48, so I picked it up. It’s marketed as a huge city environment, but I snagged it because it contains a skydome, low-res forest props and low-res deciduous tree props with several materials. I’m thinking of rendering some panoramic shots in this set and making my own forested skybox.
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Zombieville is back! So is everyone’s favorite character, Muggins the cat!
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 2.1: “Persistent Kitty”
While I was lying in bed earlier this week, I hit on a possible way to construct 1:6 scale forearm crutches without the exorbitant expense of printing something so long. I can bend plastic drinking straws to the appropriate 15-degree angle and then fill them with Aves Apoxie Sculpt so that they stay in that position!!!! I have also recently acquired some dowels that I can cut down to make hand rests for the crutches. I haven’t decided how to make the forearm cuffs, but that’s easy compared to the engineering challenge of making the crutch shafts. Diagram below.
Continue reading 3-D printed 1:6 scale crutches: no longer being 3-D printed
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Hot Toys is making him! I wonder if he’ll be appropriately short… Because Back to the Future was one of the formative movies of my youth and because I used to have a huge crush on Michael J. Fox, I might pick this one up…or at least the head. Probably just the head.
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Estimated to arrive at the end of this year or beginning of next, it’s a little Peter Dinklage with bad hair! I really want him to be Guillaume Doucette, Béatrice and Delphine’s dad.
As one of the closest things to an antagonist that Zombieville has, Guillaume has an unduly grandiose opinion of himself and a VERY LOUD VOICE with which to broadcast this opinion. Back when he was a disability rights activist, he was pompous, sure, but much less irritating. He used his pushy manner and VERY LOUD VOICE to good effect, for example, when heading the campaign to replace the quaint cobblestones on Church Street with even pavement that people wouldn’t trip over. In fact, Béatrice and Delphine have fond memories of helping their dad unleash a can of institutional whup-ass on the UVM campus group that offered "midget bowling" as an event in their spring carnival. That, however, was over a decade ago…
Nowadays, Guillaume has become much more bitter. He hijacks public forums with his jeremiads about how the quality of life in Burlington has declined since he was a boy. He intensely dislikes PWS, who he calls "zombies" for shock value. According to him, PWS are "hogging media attention" and "draining state coffers," thus diverting coverage and funds from people with "legitimate" disabilities. [He actually says "legitimate." No one is quite sure why.] His argle-bargle about "cleaning up this town" eventually coalesces into a campaign for local public office, which, much to the PWS community’s consternation and his daughters’ embarrassment, he wins.
Of course, I could just heavily mod a body from my stash to make him, but no! I wanna little Peter Dinklage in my life!!
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Aliza Hair for Genesis 2 Female
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Created with PhilC’s Hair Designer, this is my first
freebie hairstyle, Aliza, a spiky, layered, morphing
hair prop straight out of the 1980s for Genesis 2
Female. Perfect for when G2F wants to cosplay Jareth
the Goblin King from Labyrinth [the inspiration for
this ‘do]! :p
Aliza, which autoparents to G2F’s head, is based on the
default figure, so you may need to translate and scale
to fit morphed figures. Aliza has a length morph for
the back, plus a simple movement morph for each side,
as well as a single texture. There are a few material
zones for greater customization.
After installation, you will find Aliza in My Library >
People > Genesis 2 Female > Hair > ModernWizard >
Aliza.
Just so you know, this was a fun experiment, my first
with Hair Designer, not a professional-grade endeavor.
It’s somewhat messy, geometry-wise [especially where I
cruedly deleted all those excess polys], but I hope you
can have some fun playing with it nonetheless.
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-
commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own.
Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other
creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me
a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG,
ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you
make. Thank you.
Continue reading 3D freebies: Aliza Hair for Genesis 2 Female
Oh yeah, and some cars too… :p Continue reading Stowe Antique and Classic Car Show, 08/09/2014: hood ornaments and headlights!
This is probably because the BJD community places such a high value on aesthetics, which means that laboriously sanded and delicately layered works receive more approbation than messy, experimental, jerry-rigged ones. I have learned, however, that, in the end, resin BJDs are no different than plastic action figures. Both types of dolls mod very well with an application of hacksaw, rotary tool, Aves Apoxie Sculpt and hot glue. Continue reading I used to think that modding BJDs worked on different principles than modding action figures.
I forgot to mention that I E-mailed IOS recently to ask if they would rerelease Infernale. They said yes — this November. Whoo hoo! Tonsil Hockey come home!
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I finally got the wheels for Peter’s walker in the mail today, ordered from a supplier of remote-control vehicles and supplies, RC Planet. I mounted one wheel on each foot of the walker with a piece of plastic-coated wire hot glued in a hole that I drilled through the side of each leg.
Xandy, having been derooted of her face-obscuring bob, shows off her purple bra, from an unknown source in my collection, and tailcoat from a Phicen Lady Magician figure. No stuffing of cleavage was necessary to make this fit, much to my relief. Continue reading Collecting materials for Xandy’s clothes
Here she is on her cat platform, using the windowsill as a pillow. Fat kitty!
Continue reading Babycat can sleep pretty much anywhere.
We went to the Stowe Antique and Classic Car Show today, held in, of all places, Nichols Fields in Stowe, VT. This is its 57th year, and it’s the largest car show in the state.
Continue reading Stowe Antique and Classic Car Show, 08/09/2014: flea market items
That’s the name of one of the default poses bundled with the Genesis figure. This amuses me greatly.
I ripped out enough of Xandy’s original purple bob so that the cropped remains would not show from under her lofty new wig. Since I had such fun designing my digital pompadour, Zabby, I decided to give Xandy an actual manifestation of the same style, with a few differences.
Continue reading Prepping Xandy for her pompadour
Right here! I could do this! Lord knows I have enough fur. Maybe I could decorate her hair with little spiderwebs and bats…and a bird skull, if I can find one. 😀
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She thinks the stand upon which she is currently suspended may not be rigid enough to support her. I’m inclined to agree, especially as it’s made for a doll with legs that touch the ground, which Xandy obviously does not have. I should probably just have a hemispherical crinoline out of wire, open in the front, to serve as her stand and carousel surround, but I’m not there yet.Continue reading Xandy has concerns about structural stability.
Definitely worth a trip! Contains dolls, dollhouses, trains, planes, cars, trucks, games, etc.
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Well, Phicen just recently released a Lady Magician figure with a tailcoat, so I went to my preferred retailer for such things, SMcG Customs, and snapped up the parted-out tailcoat, as well as a set of white gloved hands. The Lady Magician figure has large, globular breasts, so I may have to pad Xandy’s bra or something…
I have also discovered a cheap wooden merry-go-round music box. It’s so cheap that I feel no qualms whatsoever about purchasing it and customizing it. I would repaint it black, white and purple and remove those crude wooden horses. I wonder if some horse skeletons from gaming miniatures would be the correct size for ride-ons instead?
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1665714.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Poor Xandy. I was so excited about getting her, but she has just lain around in pieces since arriving in January. I decided back then to make her into a merry-go-round mecha mannequin, but I never got farther than removing her legs, setting aside her purple cape for part of her outfit and purchasing some stars to attach chain clasps to.
However, now that I have pretty much finished up Polly and need to wait for cooler weather to hack up Yamarrah’s torso, my thoughts now turn to the neglected Xandy. At first, I thought she would be a magician/ringmaster merry-go-round mecha mannequin with a circus theme. Then I wandered off into thoughts of automatons, brass winding keys and top hats. I now entertain the idea of Xandy as the ringmaster of a creepy carnival, probably because my last creepy doll, the dead version of Isabel, came out so well.
As ringmaster of the creepy carnival, Xandy now veers more in the direction of Halloween. I still like the idea of her having a tailcoat, white gloves and a wand to represent her magicianship, but I also want to make dark, voluminous, sparkly skirts out of my purple sequined fabric and black velvet. I can make her a pointy hat and give her a bit of a repaint for a stitched-up Glasgow smile.
The greatest challenge would be the procurement of a Halloweeny carousel for underneath her skirts. Department 56, manufacturers of miniature themed villages, used to make a Ghostly Carousel that would be perfect, but it’s out of print and probably ridiculously expensive. As an alternative, Lemax makes a Scary-Go-Round [har!] for its Spooky Town line, and that item is new this year, so sure to be in print. Unfortunately, it just appears to be a regular carousel with costumed kids on it. Boooo. I want Halloweeny animals to ride!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1665455.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Coooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1665190.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Polly tests out one of my Barbie wheelchairs, for which her tail is too long. I still haven’t decided how I want to customize her chair. Polly has stated, however, that she would rather have this green checked shirt than the I BELIEVE IN CHAMP shirt. Well, one less thing I have to make. :pContinue reading Don’t run over your tail, Polly!
I worked more on both of my digital hairstyles in progress: Aliza and Zabby. Aliza is inspired by the Goblin King’s ‘do in Labyrinth, while Zabby is inspired by the stuoendous hair sculptures of late eighteenth century western Europe.
I improved Aliza by crudely deleting unnecessary polygons in an attempt to make a smaller, less unwieldy mesh. I also redid the movement morphs. Here’s the updated hairstyle demonstrating the effects of LeftSideXTranslate and RightSideXTranslate morphs.
Continue reading Digital hair: from Aliza to Zabby [and everything in between]!
I decorated Walker 3.0 with lots of black electrical tape and some black craft foam for the seat cushion. Besides breaking up the glaring expanses of fluoro orange, the electrical tape suggests joints or sockets, adding to the impression of a piece of equipment constructed from various bars. The black also stands out vividly on the orange field, attracting the eye and thus drawing attention away from the uneven texture.
To make the walker even more useful, I added a basket and a purse-like bag so that Peter can hold stuff. Now that it looks less like a horrible failure and more like a mobility aid customized by one of my favorite Zville denizens, I feel more well disposed toward the walker. Still needs wheels though…
Continue reading Finally I’m resenting the walker less.
Five months ago, I received the 1:6 scale walker pieces that Batchix printed out for me. However, I was so bitter about my earlier failures that I just glared resentfully at the pieces for the next five months. I did not look forward to the assembly — what with removing flash, drilling, pinning and gluing, I anticipated another messy failure and even greater bitterness.
I overcame my grudge last night to begin work on Walker 3.0. Batchix helpfully provided blueprints, some of which are shown below, to aid me in assembly:
Continue reading Walker 3.0: now we’re finally getting somewhere!
The 1980s called. They’re in awe. :p
Continue reading Digital hair: Aliza done!
I decided to give my first [eventual] freebie hair model a name beginning with A. Here is Aliza [not named Jareth because Jareth, no matter what I’d like to think, is not a variant of my name :p ] so far:
We all have to start somewhere, right? Behold my first custom hair prop, Orszebet for Genesis 2 Female.
Continue reading My first hair model: Orszebet
Wow, Slate actually has an interesting article for once! On Outward ["expanding the LGBTQ conversation," whatever the hell that means], Miz Cracker writes a post on "Getting into Drag: The Many Meanings of Being a Queen." To answer the question of what drag is, the author interviews other drag performers. In bullet form, her findings are as follows:
In my estimation, Miz Cracker neglects some important aspects of drag. For one thing, she doesn’t really interrogate drag queening’s history as an art practiced by men, frequently in comic contexts. Thus it has an ambiguous relationship to the concepts of femininity and womanhood. In its exaggerated style, does drag reflect a loving tribute to women and femininity? Is it rather an over-the-top misogynist mockery? Drag is not inherently fabulous and therefore unproblematic, and I think a truly substantive inquiry into its nature should address its messy history.
For another thing, how does race play into dragging? Toward the end of her article, Miz Cracker refers to Kizha Carr’s treatment of racism in one of her routines. She also adds that drag "is the only forum where [she] can speak candidly…about the issues shaping [her] life," one of which includes racism. Right, so drag queens of color may take race as a subject for commentary, but how does race more generally inflect queens’ initial decisions to go into drag queening and then the development of their art in general? Drag queens from different racial and ethnic backgrounds probably have different reasons and philosophies, depending on their cultures of origin, that help them interpret their work, and we can’t have a full discussion about the meanings and goals of drag without that information.
Finally, how does socioeconomic class contribute to the discourse on drag? All the queens in Miz Cracker’s article, including the author herself, talk about performing in bars, dealing with sexual harassment from audience members, etc. In other words, the queens spend much of their time playing small venues and not earning tons of money. They work hard and depend on an uncertain income. Even though Bob TheDragQueen appears in the article with bling that says RICH clamped between her teeth, she and her sisters probably really aren’t.
What’s going on here? Aspirations to upward mobility? A proclamation of self-worth through looking richly caparisoned? I dunno, but I’d sure like to find out.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1663229.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Well, I mean that I have finished her wig and faceup. I still need to make her "I BELIEVE [in Champ]" shirt and her customized wheelchair. Maybe I should take some inspiration from one of my digital models and give her a steampunk power chair!!
Continue reading Polly my little mermaid is done!
…check out the E-mail that landed in my box yesterday. For context, Daz produces digital models and ancillary content; one of their most popular characters is Aiko, a model with manga-inspired proportions and appearance [who, I might add, grows less manga-like and more realistic with each iteration 🙁 ]. The latest version, Aiko 6, debuted recently, and so has new content for her. Daz also recently released Lee 6, "an Asian-inspired character for Genesis 2 Male(s)" [their words, not mine], so content for this character has been appearing as well.
Continue reading Just in case you doubted the racism and sexism driving the world of 3D content…
I really need to finish it and do something about her hair.
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I finally sprang for PhilC’s Hair Designer, which is basically a hair construction kit, containing morphable straight and curly units of hair in various lengths, with which one can assemble one’s own digital styles, either props or conforming figures. The resultant products may be redistributed as freebies, if I ever feel like it.
I’m so very excited! I have many ideas for digital wigs to create, thereby filling grievous voids in the universe of 3D content. For example:
I’m also excited just to play around with the hair units to see what sort of hair sculptures I can make. Amazing hair experiments appear, for example, both on high fashion runways and on the heads of creative women of color, giving me many ideas. The integration of props adds whole new avenues of possibility. I love the way, for example, that Neftis’ Wiccanya Hair Pack includes trees and horns. Hmmm…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1662094.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
At the suggestion of a Figurvore member, I added a local menu to the fridge. [I found it online and reduced it to 16.67%, then printed it out.] I also added a LOVERMONT sticker, since Vermonters really like to proclaim their attachment to their state.
…is already the most popular character in Zombieville. >^-_-^< Maybe I should take up Janna’s suggestion to do some Mugginsville side stories…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1661602.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This month’s Figurvore prop challenge was to construct something kitchen-related and to provide photos of dolls using the item. Originally I planned to make a popcorn popper, though I had no use for it, but I turned my mind instead to one of the gaps in my set collection that has long frustrated me: the lack of a 1:6 scale refrigerator. Sure, I’ve got a stove, a sink, a microwave, a coffee maker, a table and chairs, a toaster, a blender, cooking utensils, silverware, plates, bowls, a hutch, crockery, a colander, etc., etc., etc., but I wanted a fridge dammit!
If all goes according to plan and I purchase PhilC’s Hair Designer and start generating my own digital hairstyles, I have decided that they will all be called by permutations of my name.
I don’t know if I still have it, but, in my youth, I collected variants of my name. I got well north of 60, I think, before I moved on to other pursuits. Some of my favorites include the following:
Special mention goes to Zibber, my brother’s name for me when he couldn’t pronounce Elizabeth. This once irritated me to no end, but now I find it hilarious.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1660918.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Thanks to melopoeia who sent me this link, I just now learned about Kaylene Kau’s prosthetic arm designed for people who have amputations below the elbow. Its tentacle-like design simplifies the usually complex design of manual prosthetics, resulting in an appendage that requires fewer parts and motors than most arms of its type. Though Kau conceptualized this prosthesis at least as far back as 2010, it’s news to me.
This is so cool! I definitely need to make one of these in 1:6 scale so that someone in Zombieville can use one!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1657964.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
In one of Weird Al’s recent parodies, Word Crimes, about a prescriptivist’s rant against supposed language misuse, he sings:
Saw your blog post
It’s really fantastic
That was sarcastic
‘Cause you write like a spastic
When I heard this part of the song, my esteem for him immediately plummeted, as "spastic" is, in my world, a derogatory, dismissive term for a very energetic and/or clumsy and/or forgetful and/or fidgety and/or unintelligent person. It derives from "spastic" as a description for people, particularly those with cerebral palsy, because of their muscle spasms. Said spasms, which cause uncontrollable contractions and may cause involuntary movements, may cause a person’s limbs, head or core to shake. Speech may also be interrupted. People who didn’t know any better interpreted these spasm-induced movements as signs that disabled people were overly excitable, clumsy, forgetful, fidgety, uncoordinated, etc. It became a shorthand insult, which then itself was shortened to "spaz," a term most prevalent in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Let me tell you about muscle spasms, at least from my secondhand experience. My sister Jill, who has cerebral palsy, regularly experiences them. My ex-wife, who also had cerebral palsy, had them. Janna regularly has them as well. In all their cases, their muscle spasms manifest as uncontrollable twitching and jerking in the affected body parts. In all cases, the spasms cause them pain and sometimes keep them up at night. In none of their cases do their muscle spasms have any connection with their overall levels of energy, coordination, excitability, forgetfulness and/or fidgetiness. In none of their cases do their muscle spasms limit their brain functions. To take an adjective for disruptive, excruciating pain and transform it into a dismissive term for a silly person is a prime example of rank ableism.
This is why I object to Language Log’s discussion of Weird Al’s use of "spastic" and subsequent apology. Ben Zimmer, author of a post discussing the term, claims that "spaz" and "spastic" have "become innocuous playground slang in the U.S. but a grave insult in the U.K." He asserts that Weird Al apologized for using "spastic" primarily because it offended British listeners.
NO! You are wrong wrong wrongity wrong, Ben Zimmer. "Spaz" and "spastic" have always been derogatory and insulting because they transfer terms for disability into the realm of insult, thereby turning disabilities into insults. Weird Al should not have apologized because "spaz" is an insult over in the UK. He should have apologized because ableism is nasty and harmful in general the world over.
Anyway, even though he apologized for his ableism in Word Crimes, Weird Al’s ableism remains on display in his song Lame Claim to Fame. STOP USING "LAME" TO MEAN "PATHETIC" PEOPLE!
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As the next ep of Zombieville will be set in Isabel’s bedroom, I needed to complete the interior decoration thereof. Isabel, because she dislikes her grey hair, shaves it short and wears a variety of meretricious wigs. In a natural extension of her interest in dolls, she has customized her wig stands by repainting them, renaming them and giving them personalities.
I just found a cool new podcast, 99% Invisible, and kicked off my listening with the ep "Feet of Engineering," all about high-heeled shoes.
Isabel sees herself in the cemetery of her dreams.
Well, I didn’t really discover it. I’ve always admired Robing over at Roville for her meticulously crafted interiors and her mastery of clear, even lighting. So finally I asked her what her lighting techniques were. She reported that she used overhead light + 2 inexpensive studio umbrella lights. Clearly I need to acquire some of these, even though I have very little studio space. I’ve been putting up with crappy lighting for as long as I’ve had a camera, and I’m really sick of uneven, washy-outty, dim, supersaturated, etc., etc., etc. shots.
Here is a complete two-light set that’s relatively cheap. I’m considering its purchase.
This tutorial on portrait lighting gives tips on best positions for the umbrella lights.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1656634.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I’m deeply saddened that I find this noteworthy, but I have to say that, in my albeit limited survey of Queen’s music, I have found remarkably little in the way of condescension, objectification and misogyny directed toward women in their songs. I’m still waiting in dread for the inevitable sexist stereotypes to crop up and drop my opinion of them, but so far they seem on a level with Men Without Hats. That is, they care less about slagging more than half the population and more about doing what they love: making music!
Take, for example, Queen’s Killer Queen. It’s a character sketch of a rich, powerful woman who has expensive tastes and an indomitable will. After an enumeration of her expensive preferences in company and cuisine, the lyrics describe her as "Dynamite with a laser beam / Guaranteed to blow your mind / Anytime" — i.e., she’s attractive and sexually powerful, but she doesn’t threaten, piss off or annoy the speaker. He calls her "dynamite," in the sense of "highly skilled at what she does," "sexy" and "explosively awesome." He wants her to blow his mind!
Even the verse in which she’s compared to a cat comes across as laudatory. While woman:cat similes tend to connote peevish competitiveness [cattiness] and sexual objectification [qua pussy cat], the simile here calls the woman "playful as a pussy cat." The verse describes how she pursues the speaker avidly, then suddenly stops, "temporarily out of gas." The speaker recognizes that she’s playing a game — "all out to get you" — but doesn’t think she’s a cocktease or playing hard to get. No, he goes along, happy to play with the woman. The song ends with an acknowledgment of the woman’s irresistible effect on the speaker ["Recommended at any price"], as well as listeners ["Wanna try? / You wanna try…"]. It’s very obvious that the song Killer Queen is sung as a tribute by a dude who desires, respects and perhaps even loves a woman for traits that other people would probably deride.
…People like, for example, the Rolling Stones. The Stones’ analogue to Killer Queen would have to be Stupid Girl, in which the singer sketches a character similar to the Killer Queen. The woman in Stupid Girl dresses expensively, values material goods ["…she digs for gold"], pursues men aggressively ["…she grabs and holds"], etc. The singer even trots out a feline simile: "She purrs like a pussy cat / Then turns round and hisses back." Heck, the Killer Queen and the Stupid Girl are probably the same person, just described from different points of view.
While the speaker in Killer Queen thinks that the woman is the best partner he’s had, the speaker in Stupid Girl absolutely loathes the woman. It’s right there in the title of the song! Finally, the comparison of the woman to "a lady-in-waiting to a virgin queen" implies that she’s close to power, but actually lacking it, really just a glorified servant. Furthermore, the virginity of the queen in the simile passes by association onto the woman, connoting sexual inexperience, coldness and inaccessibility. The speaker clearly can’t stand the fact that he desires this woman, so he projects all his hostility onto her and vilifies her for being interested in people other than himself. [Gee, I wonder why? He’s such a catch! :p ]
In my imagination, this is how the story goes: There’s a young woman — let’s say her name is Regina 😉 — born into wealth and power. She’s neither particularly good nor particularly bad, neither particularly selfish nor unselfish, just a person of average character. She really enjoys her material privileges, though. She knows that her wealth and attractiveness give her a certain license, so she exploits this in her active, assertive search for romantic and sexual partners. She always has the flashiest and latest and best and most expensive of everything, and she carefully, deliberately cultivates her status as trendsetter. She holds meetings with her staff, for example, where they go over long-range ramifications of, say, choosing vegetarianism. For another example, she has a panel of people who critique every outfit she wears, looking not only for high quality, coordination, fashionability, originality and daring, but also for rip-offs, appropriation, offensiveness, copyright infringement, etc. Regina has a reputation for being somewhat mysterious and reclusive, but this is mostly because she spends so much time analyzing every more in private before she makes it in public.
Regina’s work pays off. People wear what she wears, eat what she eats, travel where she travels, support the causes she supports, While not an actor or singer or model or fashion designer or hereditary titled person, Regina hangs out with all the coolest of all these groups, or, more precisely, they seem to hang out with her because they want her awesomeness by association. In short, she has become one of the most powerful people in the country. As a style icon, she has enormous influence to shape the most basic aspects of people’s lives, from the contents of their closets to their moral considerations. Regina shamelessly enjoys this power.
There are two people — let’s call them Freddie and Mick 😉 — who represent the divergent opinions that the public has about Regina. Freddie recognizes Regina’s achievements. He understands that people in Regina’s position are neither inherently sexy nor glamorous and that Regina has carefully crafted the role of style icon for herself. He realizes that the creation and maintenance of such a status requires a lot of time, money and energy, and he’s impressed by her ambition, acumen, intelligence and hard work. He notes that, while she does not have a traditionally defined profession, she has turned "style icon" into her own demanding, full-time job. And, of course, like many people, Freddie feels the effects of Regina’s glamour. Her quick movement through dating/bed partners just proves to him that she’s admirably lusty, playful, fun-loving, probably "dynamite" 😀 in the sack and exhausting to anyone she moves on from. He lusts after her; he has a huge crush on her; he thinks she’s amazing and really enjoys their friends with benefits hook-ups. If anything, he has a little hero worship going on that keeps him from seeing Regina as an imperfect person, like him.
On the other hand, Mick contemns Regina as an airhead heiress who does nothing and is famous for being famous. In his eyes, she wastes her fortune on trivial tokens of femininity, like clothes and cosmetics. Her assertive pursuit of sexual and romantic partners makes him think that she’s a slutty whore…and also a frigid b***h because she declined to date him after having sex one night. He hates her because she’s a woman who has the temerity to be happy without him in her life. It goes without saying that Mick is, of course, a miserable, wretched excuse for a human being. :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1656518.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Freddie Mercury and Queen doing Another One Bites the Dust. I love Freddie Mercury. He has just such an amazing amount of irrepressible JOY in his performances. He moves with such grace and poise and control — everything he does on stage is dancing!
Goofin’ off with We Are the Champions. So caught up that he starts air guitaring with the mike stand again. ^_^
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That song always gives me chills, forever and ever, and it gives me further chills to hear Nirvana cover it.
And here’s DB himself, covering it acoustically, probably during the Earthling years [aka The Time of the Nasty Nasty Soul Spot].
He covered it live at the Beeb a few years later in 2000 [the Neo-Scrawny Years] with that unforgettable Bowie smile.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1655823.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I had a few inquiries on MWD about the cemetery set for the latest episode of Zombieville, so below I’ve collected some notes and photos that I created during its creation.
The clothes, not the rude behaviors. 😀
See here.
All of those outfits are RAD!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1655402.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Again, in no particular order.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1655235.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
The topic of recast BJDs continues to provoke heated discussion; witness the entire Tumblr devoted to pro- and anti-recast people slagging each other under the cloak of anonymity. The creativity with which pro-recast persons justify their unfair and illegal actions boggles the mind.
Zombieville is back with Chapter 1.1!!!
Continue reading Zombieville Chapter 1.1: “The Cemetery of Her Dreams”
Years after attempting my first octopus therianthrope in Daz, I have made another one. Meet Lauren, a minor character in the mini universe. She last showed up conducting the orchestra at the Christmas party. I don’t know very much about her except that she’s a cheerful extrovert, very sweet-tempered and outgoing. Pretty sure she’s trans too.
Continue reading Lauren the octopus therianthrope
[Remember those?] Anyway, they never capture the subtleties of human face-making the way that indiscriminate use of animated GIFs can. Today, for your viewing delectation, here’s a completely decontextualized GIF of Frank giving exactly zero craps about your big song and dance number:
"I think I left my curling iron on…"
THAT MOUTH!!!!!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1654229.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Because it’s been too hot to go outside and do her torso/abdomen mods, I have stayed inside and brightened Yamarrah’s faceup. What’s shown below is pretty much done; I just need to even out the color on her tongue and regloss it.
I’m pretty sure she’s trying to decide her favorite creemee flavor: either vanilla/chocolate swirl or black raspberry. ^_^
Melface mentioned at the last CCDC meetup that she was getting an IOS 80cm body with a custom head on it. This news perked up my ears because IOS is the maker of Infernale, aka Tonsil Hockey Part Two, aka Put A Sock In It [Or Maybe A Ball Gag], a wonderful vampiric headsculpt with squinty eyes, open mouth and not one, but two [yes two!!!] tongues.
With Melface’s incoming IOS hybrid in mind, as well as my current open-mouthed, tongue-showing doll, Yamarrah, being modded, I naturally turn my thoughts to Tonsil Hockey Deux. I still want that headsculpt, and I really, really, really want to make a kinky vampire with a ball gag in her mouth. In fact, my desire has rekindled to the point where I put up a Wanted to Buy thread on DOA, hoping that someone will sell me an Infernale head. Well, I can dream, right? :p
I really like dolls with closed eyes, open mouths, protruding tongues and pointy teefs. My ideal BJD headsculpt would therefore be a vampire with closed eyes, magnetic swappable tongues and a big, lopsided, smirky grin.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1653536.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Stripey for Dawn’s Glam Ponytail
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Based on my experiments with putting stripes in hair, this is a trio of material presets for the Glam Ponytail for HiveWire3D’s Dawn figure.
After installation, you will find Stripey material settings in My Library > People > Dawn > Hair > Glam Ponytail > Materials > ModernWizard > Stripey.
This freebie uses a modified seamless hair texture tile, created by MSTene, available at Renderosity.
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1660517.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
After languishing in pieces for over half a year, Yamarrah now has a functional upper torso!!! Today I took her new torso [specially cast by Mirodoll to match her Iplehouse realskin head] and modded it to accept her original Domuya arms. I filled in the large shoulder sockets with some Aves Apoxie Sculpt so that they would more snugly accommodate her shoulder balls, which were on the small side. I managed a snug fit by layering Aves Apoxie Sculpt on the inside of each socket and then, after letting it stiffen for about 45 minutes, rolling the shoulder ball around in the Apoxie Sculpt to create a new socket, perfectly shaped for her shoulder ball.Continue reading Yamarrah now has a functional upper torso!
Flower came to work a few weeks ago to take advantage of the wonderful natural light there. Here he is in the window. I tried to frame shots so that they could include him, as well as the flourishing trees and Lake Champlain, but he wanted the camera to focus on him alone.
Continue reading Flower in the window
In no particular order:
Just to illustrate my stupendous accomplishments, here’s Jareth, being a gleeful dork as usual. ^_^Continue reading Recent significant developments in the digital realm!
The ones I currently use [because they’re free] don’t have any texture, bump or displacement maps. I also think they’re too shiny. I’d really like a set that includes polished and unpolished, new and creased, rawhide, etc., etc.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1652564.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Loud Fabrics 01 Shaders Updated with Bump Maps and Tiling Utils for Daz Studio
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
Loud Fabrics 01 gets better! In this update, there are 16 shader presets for seamless, tiled, boldly printed fabrics with eye-catching patterns: Bluish Blooms 01, Bluish Blooms 02, Broadway Dots 01, Broadway Dots 02, Bubble Yum 01, Bubble Yum 02, Electric Blue Honeycomb, Flaming Hearts 01, Flaming Hearts 02, Green Circles on Yellow, Green Circles Inverted, Little Red Bows, Magenta and Lime Dots 01, magenta and Lime Dots 02, Pink and Purple and Pink Pinwheels. Most patterns are replicated from Loud Fabrics 01, but there are a few new ones and variations.
Unlike the original Loud Fabrics 01, these shaders feature bump maps. To make these shaders even easier to play with, I have included a vast array of tiling presets, all the way from 0.25×0.25 to 50.0×50.0. These presets only affect horizontal and vertical tiling, so you can use them on any DS shaders, not just the Loud Fabrics series.
An improvement on Loud Fabrics 01 [the original], Loud Fabrics 01 Updated features bump maps!
These patterns were all generated and tweaked in PatternCooler, Harvey Rayner’s awesome free Web-based pattern-generating Web site:
http://www.patterncooler.com/index.php
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1660407.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
This truncated set of 6 eps provided no particular closure, no interesting character development and nothing particularly interesting. The overall flaccidity of the 6 eps just highlighted the show’s problematic aspects even more excruciatingly.
In no particular order, the problems were:
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1652430.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Usually I’m not a fan of green in faceups, preferring pink, magenta, red, orange, yellow and black, but I must say that Flower is rockin’ the green here. Since the last picture earlier this evening, I progressed the freckles further down his torso and also onto the tops of his shoulders. I also started sealing his mouth with high-gloss varnish and added the style of eye makeup that’s been my signature since the very first faceup I ever did on Sardonix 1.0. Of the BJDs who bug me, Sardonix, Mellifer, Timonium, Yamarrah and now Flower have the upswept eyeliner and the down-slanting eyebrows.
Anyway, behold Flower the Unsubtle! What a change! I always knew he was fabulous…
Flower has languished, paintless, since he finished playing Mackenzie in Me and My Muses, but I have finally been giving him a new faceup recently. Continue reading Flower and the unexpected freckles!
Nine people and God knows how many dolls attended last Saturday’s get-together. For the very first time, other types of dolls outnumbered the BJDs! Monster Highs represented very well, thanks to Shannon. Continue reading Chittenden County Vermont Doll Club meetup: 06/14/2014
In no particular order.
Maybe more later…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1651318.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Vanishing Point recently released a standalone therianthropic figure, SquidMan, clearly influenced by Davy Jones from Priates of the Caribbean 5000. I just love it when people take standard ideas and head them off into little-used aesthetic regions.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1651025.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
In no particular order.
More later.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1650783.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Just for entertainment, here’s a list of some of the digital models and resources that I regularly rely on in my art:
Tune in later when I start figuring out the fun stuff, like what clothes I use most often.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1650457.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I’ve finally approximated something close to Jareth’s usual expression, which is about one-third playful, one-third fabulous and one-third off-the-wall. Hey, I even threw some lights in there! You don’t know how much of an accomplishment it is to finally have him able to stick out his tongue.
Continue reading Jareth the goof, or, Sometimes the best things in life are free!
…with Barbie and all her friends because, for the most part, it manages to balance light humor at no one’s expense with slapstick and clever in-jokes. Midge as snorting, safety-obsessed introvert who talks like the 1950s also cracks me up — and she’s so cute when she appears in Smidge of Midge in greyscale!
I also really like Ken, who ultimately ends up being portrayed as just another character who happens to be Barbie’s boyfriend, rather than the major plot motor and deus ex machina of the series. He’s goofy and utterly devoted to Barbie [“Barbie sense…tingling…”] and supremely confident enough in his masculinity to invent a super-sophisticated closet for all his girlfriend’s clothes. In other words, rather than having gay panic over activities often coded as queer, Ken does IT, back-end programming for the Super Style Squad [actually saying, “Beep boop bop,” with Skipper as they hit buttons ^_^ ]. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see a cartoon where all the characters, male and female, take fashion, style, clothing, etc., etc., etc., seriously, and no one shits on it for being trivially feminine. That’s actually kind of revolutionary.
Life in the Dreamhouse would be even better if it ditched its racism and ableism. For example:
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1649981.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel finally learns her interlocutor’s name and his problem with the world.
Continue reading Zombieville Prologue 5: “Isabel and the King of Toxic Waste”
Loud Fabrics 03 Shaders for Daz Studio
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
This is a set of 40 shader presets featuring seamless, tiled, boldly printed fabrics with eye-catching patterns: Blue Bubbles, Blue Maze, Cool Discs 01, Cool Discs 02, Cubes&Curves 01, Cubes&Curves 02, Cubes&Curves 03, Green Bubbles, Green Diamonds, Magenta Tropics, Pastel Diamonds, Pastel Squares, Pink Maze, Pink Swirlies 01, Pink Swirlies 02, Purple Bubbles, Purple Maze, Purple Squares 01, Purple Squares 02 and Purple Tropics. There are 20 different patterns, each in large and small tiling versions, for a total of 40 brain-breakingly brain shades!
An improvement on Loud Fabrics 01, Loud Fabrics 03 features bump maps!
These patterns were all generated and tweaked in PatternCooler, Harvey Rayner’s awesome free Web-based pattern-generating Web site:
http://www.patterncooler.com/index.php
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1660149.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel learns that it’s a difficult proposition to find brains to eat, especially if you have to beg. Continue reading Zombieville Prologue 4: “Will Work for Brains”
…then I’d be about as happy as Jareth is now.
Continue reading If only putting on real makeup were this easy…
Loud Fabrics 02 Shaders for Daz Studio
Daz Studio only
Tested only in Daz Studio Pro 4.6 64 bit.
This is a set of 30 shader presets featuring seamless, tiled, boldly printed fabrics with eye-catching patterns: Cool Daisies, Cool DNA, Modern Art 01, Modern Art 02, Modern Art 03, Orange Vortices, Pink Vortices, Primary Daisies, Purple Cubes, Purple Targets, Purple TVs, Trippy Triangles 01, Trippy Triangles 02, Warm DNA, Yellow Confetti and Yellow Vortices. There are 15 different patterns, each in large and small tiling versions, for a total of 30 brain-breakingly brain shades!
An improvement on Loud Fabrics 01, Loud Fabrics 02 features bump maps!
These patterns were all generated and tweaked in PatternCooler, Harvey Rayner’s awesome free Web-based pattern-generating Web site:
http://www.patterncooler.com/index.php
Use for whatever purposes you like, commercial or non-commercial. Just don’t repackage and call your own. Have fun!
You can see my digital artwork, as well as my other creative pursuits, at my blog:
http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org
If you do use any of my freebies in your work, drop me a line [ModernWizard at the Daz boards and ShareCG, ModernWiz on Renderosity], as I’d love to see what you make. Thank you.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1659738.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Exnem over at Renderosity makes the most realistic and versatile digital food I’ve seen. Witness the Amazing Super Burger Pack, which, with a 55% off [!] sale + my Render Rewards, set me back a whopping $3.53. Cleverly done and beautifully sculpted and textured, this is a wonderful product. And now I want a burger.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1648992.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Every day I learn how to do something new in Daz Studio, but no thanks to the rudimentary documentation supplied on the Web site. Daz Studio Pro 4.6 contains some very useful and powerful tools and little to no instruction on how to use them. Thus most of the cool features are hiding, unused, in the menus.
Today, for example, I learned that Daz can convert textures between UV sets. In plain English, this means that textures made for one character model can be converted to another character model. This is great ’cause I still use Victoria 4 textures for my main characters, even though my base figure for everybody is G2F [Genesis 2 Female, who is 2 generations newer than V4]. I also have some M4 [Michael 4] and K4 [Kids 4] textures that cooperated automatically with G1 [Genesis 1, 1 generation removed from V4 and friends], but which will not automatically cooperate with G2F. I should be able to convert them over to either G2F UVs or V5 UVs, which G2F can read automatically.
I also need to see if I can convert Jareth’s texture from V4 to V5 so I can use draagonstorm’s Instant Rainbow of Makeup, which is a hell of a lot easier than making makeup in Elements and manually applying it.
Funny how my desire to accurately render Jareth drives my adoption of new technology in the doll and digital worlds… :p
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1648837.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Isabel Forrest meets a homeless zombie PWS.
Continue reading Zombieville Prologue 3: “The Goth and the Zombie”
I’ve been listening to Classic Queen on heavy rotation for the past few days. After grossing out about my favorite songs with stalking in them, I am pleased to note that, at least on this album, Queen avoids that trope. In fact, their lyrics even bend the gendered norms in some cases, describing romantic experiences of one gender in terms usually reserved for another.
Example 1: One Year of Love. The singer says, “It’s always a rainy day without you / I’m a prisoner of love inside you / I’m falling apart all around you / And all I can do is surrender to your love.” Assuming that this is a man singing to a woman [hooray for heteronormativity -_- ], this is very unusual language for the masculine narrator. The typical masculine experience of love involves pursuit, penetration and conquering. The singer, however, describes imprisonment, dissolution and submission — traits much more commonly associated with the feminine experience of love.
Example 2: Tie Your Mother Down. At the end of the song, after urging the listener to get her family members out of the way so that she and the singer can screw, the singer says, “Give me all your love tonight / Give me every inch of your love.” In the vast majority of rock songs sung by dudes, if there’s “love” with any dimensions associated, it just means “penis.” [See Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly: “My love’s penis is bigger than a Cadillac / I try to show it, but you drive me back.” Just stop stalking her already!] Therefore the attribution of a quantified love to the singer’s addressee [presumed female] is unusual. The feminine action of loving is described in more masculine terms. I have no grand conclusion, especially not based on these two examples, but they sure make me like Queen even more!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1648248.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I realize that a bunch of songs by my favorite artists are about stalking. For example, Love Is Strong by the Rolling Stones. "A glimpse of you / Is all it took / A stranger’s glance / It got me hooked…" Mick Jagger sings, then detailing how he follows the woman for vast distances. For another example, Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran. "Burn through the ground / Break from the crowd / I’m on the hunt; I’m after you…" Duran Duran sings. In the second example, the man is literally chasing the woman, trying to run her down. She’s trying to escape, probably in fear for her life, if not her safety, and it’s a poppy, upbeat New Wave hit!
Stalking songs disturb me differently than domestic violence songs [e.g., the Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb or There She Goes by the Velvet Underground]. In the domestic violence songs I listen to, the abuse is framed as part of a dysfunctional relationship. Somehow this lets me critique it more effectively. In stalking songs, though, the abuse appears as an acceptable behavior in the context of a two-way, loving relationship. This is false on two counts because a) it’s an unacceptable behavior in any context and b) there’s no two-way, much less loving, relationship in the stalking songs. It’s an entirely imaginary relationship based on misogynist objectification. The singers of stalking songs seem so wrapped up in their own little worlds that they are more impervious to critique.
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1647926.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Here’s Jareth. On the left, usual wear. On the right, draggin’ it up. Same person, same pose. All that differs, beyond outfit, hair and makeup, is the expression. But what a difference!
Continue reading One expression changes everything.
Isabel Forrest, warrior against bigotry and inaccuracy everywhere, takes on anti-zombie media and passersby.
Continue reading Zombieville Prologue 2: “The Goth vs. the Public”
I downloaded Hivewire3D’s Dawn because she was free and I wanted her odd bouffant/ponytail hair. I didn’t play much with the figure and quickly left her for G1 and eventually G2F, now my preferred base. For BlackRain and SixthSense’s new RuntimeDNA release, B.L.U. XR-512, however, I would either reinstall Dawn or just invest in EvilInnocence’s CrossDresser to convert it to V4 and then autofit to G2F. I think I should just spring for CrossDresser — free base program, $9.97 license to convert from any supported figure to V4 — because it might crunch some clothes better than Wardrobe Wizard.
I probably need a tag for "robots" at this point…
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1647129.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
I just signed up to attend a free orientation at Blu-Bin tomorrow, which will give me the necessary information about their policies, parameters and products! After reading a mediocre Meetup.com review, I’m not expecting miracles, but at least I should come away knowing what file types Blu-Bin accepts, the different properties of their printed plastic, how they scale models correctly and the general cost of items.
I just got a few more ideas for things to make besides forearm crutches:
I would really like to create one of the old-fashioned below-the-elbow prostheses with a functional forked hook, but that would require finding a hook. A below-the-knee prosthesis would probably be easier, since it wouldn’t be articulated at the end.
The possibilities are exciting!
This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1646914.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.
Decided last night to take the colors from Flower’s skirt and use them as a palette for his new faceup. Pink! Magenta! Possibly some reddish purple! With accents in lime green [color of his eyes]! I find the pink/purple/lime combination a wonderful one. I may add some swirly viny lines too…
Also decided last night that Polly’s faceup will feature predominantly turquoise, with accents in white and navy blue. There will also be a lot of dots, for example, forming her eyebrows and maybe coming up and out like bubbles from the outer edges of her eyes.
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The new Dragon Keeper for V4 outfit hits all my aesthetic buttons. Well, except for pinkness and sparklitude, but I can add those. The feathered cape looks like the larger sibling of AprilYSH’s Calais Ruff, seen below looking fabulous on my standard model:
Continue reading Leg-o’-mutton sleeves! Feathered cape! Dramatic swoopy skirts!
I decided to make forearm crutches for Brandeis because her cane ain’t the appropriate height. Also, as it’s very lightweight, it falls over and does not bear weight.
First, I acquired a protractor from Wikipedia. I then acquired a representative photo of a forearm crutch in profile. Then I overlaid the protractor on the picture of the crutch to determine the major angles involved in its construction.
Continue reading 3-D printed 1:6 scale crutches: measuring angles
Andrea linked me to an auction that included a pair of Power Team forearm crutches. I thought I might bid on it, but it turns out that the shipping alone would be $20.00. :p I really want more 1:6 scale mobility aids, but that price is a little steep.
This morning I realized that I have a knowledge of what actual crutches look like, a 3-D modeling program and a local 3-D printing shop, Blu-Bin. I can make my own crutches!
Here’s my plan: I’ll use the modeling app to create the crutches themselves, with their specific -15 degree bends at the top and their handrests at the appropriate position. The crutches will be longer at both ends than necessary so that I can cut them to fit the various heights of my dolls. The forearm cuffs I will make separately out of wire, ribbon or some flexible material and then glue on later.
This project requires no precise, symmetrical bending of wire or steel rods, as my early iterations of the walker did. I only need to do basic 3-D modeling with some cylinder primitives, then hack and glue. I’m an expert manipulator of primitives, rotary tools and glue guns, so I think that this project will probably be simpler than the walker.
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This weekend I added a death’s head to Isabel’s bag, which becomes a plot point later in the prologue. I just printed out this design [a vector of a design element, used with permission from Gravestone Artwear] on a color printer, glued it to another sheet of paper to give it more rigidity, then used Mod Podge to attach it to the flap of the bag. Not bad for an eminently lazy execution.
Continue reading Little updates on little people: Isabel, Polly and Muggins
…Soom comes out with Saule, a Faery Legend who’s part willow tree. His ear attachments look like twigs, while his lower legs look like roots. His wings have the appearance of weeping willow branches. Too bad those wings are so heavy and unwieldy that I find them impractical to use.
Contemplating the purchase of Saule, I realize that I need to give Flower another faceup, since he’s done being Mackenzie. I also need to finish Polly. And Yamarrah’s also in pieces.
EDIT: Saule would be a superb base for the dryad concept I had exactly a year ago.
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I think I have enough skillz now to render the three main characters from my fictional cult classic film, if not their highly specialized vehicles. Now if I could just find the poster I drew a few years ago….
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Earlier today I mentioned Jareth in the same entry as various theatrically costumed rock stars from the mid-1970s. I think David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and probably Adam Ant [though not from the 1970s] would approve of the get-up below.
Continue reading Smashing!: Jareth’s latest outfit
Okay, so she’s in her underwear on a skateboard with no protective gear. That’s awkward. Other than that, though, this is a wonderful shot with an amazing-looking model who is clearly having fun. What’s not to love?
I don’t know why Shutterstock labels this as “Funny Overweight Woman Skateboarding.” Why is this photo amusing? Because she’s in her underwear? Because she’s having fun? Because she’s fat? And why do the keywords include “fatty,” “funny people,” “crazy” and “humor?”
Oh those hilarious fat people, thinking they can enjoy themselves! They should know that they’re supposed to be miserably ashamed of their disgusting flab and that they should go around completely covered in heavy, shapeless drapery all the time so that no one else has to see their grossness. Seriously…any fatty who thinks that anyone wants to see them in their underwear clearly has a mental illness.
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Janna surprised me a few days ago with a hardcover reissue of A.C.H. Smith’s novelization of Labyrinth, [re]published at the end of April. This version contains the same novelization text as the original 1986 paperback, but omits the insert of color stills. It does, however, contain previously unpublished goblin drawings by Brian Froud, as well as pages from Jim Henson’s journals, in which he jotted notes about his original conception for Labyrinth in 1983.
I care nothing for the novelization, as it’s indifferently written, but the supplemental material intrigues me. I’m most interested in Jim Henson’s notes, which I haven’t cracked yet, except for a brief glance, during which I caught the phrase "Goblin King = death?" That made me think back to the afterword of the 20th anniversary edition of Brian Froud’s book of conceptual drawings, Goblins of Labyrinth, in which he envisions Jareth "with the worms of death eating through his armor." I haven’t been able to forget that image, so I’m curious to see how Henson wanted to develop it. I also wonder exactly which fairy tale Froud’s referring to.
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…with flame fringe on the kirtle sleeves and bellbottoms, not to mention the neckline that plunges somewhere into the region of the crotch. That certain type of person is Freddie Mercury.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for someone to wear a striped vinyl jumpsuit with integrated platform shoes and a similar neckline, you’re looking for David Bowie.
And if you’re looking for someone whose idea of smashing constitutes a purple Rococo pompadour, a feathered ruff, skin-tight pants and thigh-high ballet boots, just hang in there — I’m rendering him tonight. :p
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Now watching Queen’s Legendary concert from 1975, I see Freddie Mercury playing air guitar with his mike stand, just like he was 10 years later, during Live Aid. Even rock stars can’t resist the power of the air guitar ’cause it’s so damn cool! 😀
Fabulous costumes!!!!!!!!
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While watching the music video for We Will Rock You, I can’t help but notice the difference between Freddie Mercury’s moves and those of the rest of the band. Though the guitarist does get his groove on during the solo at the end, most of the band just stand there stiffly, moving no more than necessary. Meanwhile Freddie Mercury is performing in inimitable Freddie Mercury fashion.
I was going to compare him to my usual referents — you know, Ivan Doroschuk, Mick Jagger, Tim Curry — but I really can’t because he’s in a league of his own. Ivan Doroschuk moves, but he does more flailing and bouncing. Mick Jagger and Tim Curry make faces, but I don’t think of them as so completely self-possessed as Freddie Mercury. He demonstrates absolute control in every expression and motion of his limbs: a combination of fluid precision and sheer joy of motion. Kind of like Shirley Bassey or Lesley Gore. And his voice is incredible. The more I think about it, the more apt a comparison is between Freddie Mercury and Shirley Bassey — both fabulous performers with stunningly powerful voices and charismatic stage presences whose love for what they do so clearly shines through in every word they sing.
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Peter Dinklage sums up Game of Thrones in 45 seconds with an Eddie Izzard-like silliness. This just makes him even hotter!
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