Drama Dolls Dramatic Opening

Warning: Nekos on the beach!

The cat - or should I say the Dolls - are out of the closet. Those of us who have been involved in this project have looked forward to this day for a long time. Indeed, there are some who could not wait and did not refrain from breaking and entry to be the first to report the news:-)

Warning: Drama from the future!

I can hardly blame them. As I said in my previous post, I fell in love the moment I saw them, and looking back at what I got then the Art of Honour has only improved with time.

What are Drama Dolls? To quote Honour herselves:

Have you been dissed in SecondLife? Had a lover cheat on you? Or maybe a perfect stranger held you up to public ridicule by posting your photo on a blog and making fun of your hair/skin/shape or clothes?

Well now you have an alternative to stalking behaviour or public scenes. You can have your pain acknowledged by the perpetrator and, most importantly, get a heartfelt apology.

Words are our basic form of communication. And while our emotions often define how we are, our words tend to define how we want to be.

And they are our means to get there.

The dolls actually respond to your words. OK, you know it’s just a simple computer program, but you can accept that attention of any form helps you feel better when formulating your sentences.

They help you identify the doll with the person hurting you by both taking his/her name and character (we have a large variety of dolls, you should be able to find one that reminds you of the actual person).

You get an apology to acknowledge your hurt.

Lastly, you will watch the doll meet its end. It’s a bit dramaticJ

This is not about revenge, although I am sure some will get a certain satisfaction watching it happen. No, just like the punishments that you may get in a court of law in the outside word, the important thing is getting an acknowledgement. In RL, the society acknowledges your hurt by judging the one responsible. When using Drama Dolls, you get to witness justice be done.

Warning: Elves about to make out on your lawn!

But SL is luckily not all about drama. There is love and friendship in abundance. So of course we have the DollCozies!

I'm here to hug you!

A bit simpler but oh so cute creations you can trust with your message to someone you care about. When clicked they will say your message while it plays some animations to let the recipient know how you feel.

When animating these dolls I first had a vision of making them really look alive, something akin to an AO that makes you shift your weight from leg to leg, turn your head and do other things that may or may not be natural in the situation*. But after some experiments, it really did not feel right, because they are dolls, not avatars. And it would distract from their purpose: To make you attentive to your own emotions, inspire you to formulate them into words, and have an ocean of time to listen attentively to you. So, apart from when they are responding to you, there are only tiny movements


When the dolls are done delivering their apology, they "disappear - quite dramatically! :)" (to quote Honor's specs to me). Actually, they go through quite an ordeal:-) These sequences was fun to make, I am rather excited slash nervous to hear how you like them!

I was very conscious not to animate the dolls as though they where going through agony and pain. You want to use them to move on, not to nurture feelings of revenge. Its more in line with comics: Cat chases mouse, mouse drops a grand piano on the cat, cat shakes it's head and they both start running again.

Because SL, even with all its drama, should be a fun place to be! So take the cab to Drama Dolls and find your favorite!


* Update 08.07.2009: This posting contained a link to the most touching and revealing blog about the joys and perils of living in SL that I know of. Nightflower left SL almost 6 months ago, and now her blog is gone too. I delete it from my blogroll with great sorrow. Take care, Night!

Empty workbench

Honour has been too kind in her story of our project work together, but the facts are about right so I won't recap. Suffice to say I loved it at first sight, perhaps not first and foremost the idea, but the actual products she showed me. Don't get me wrong, the ideas are breathtaking, but for me the visual was the first love.

Anyone acquainted with Honours products (trees, flowers and the like, not to mention SIM design!) knows about her sense of beauty and her obsession with detail. This is carried forward at a full level, making me really want to put in my best effort to at least try to match the vivid colors, the incredibly detailed textures and the varied builds of these products.

What you may not know is that her attention is not limited to prims and textures, but extends well into the realm of avatars and humans. She is a joy to work with because she is open to ideas, she is enthusiastic, and eager to praise what she likes. And at the same time being honest about what she wants to change, so that efforts are driven to unimaginarily heights.

I have enjoyed this project immensely, learned a lot and had the great satisfaction to laugh at the results of my scripting as they have played out in graphic details on my screen. A HUGE thanks to Honour for having faith in me all the way.

If I look at this as a pure project, the most amazing thing we have done is to launch the whole product line with 10 languages from the start. It has meant that all texts and interfaces had to be prepared before the scripting was done, to get them all translated and sorted out. Lots of thinking went into that bit, and it forced us to specify the product in rather great detail. I believe this is fairly unique in SL, and I hope it will make it more fun for non-english natives to use the product.

So, my workbench in my small hideaway skybox is mostly empty, it's almost as SL feels a bit empty as well. To my friends that feel I have been rather distant these last weeks: I will soon be back:-). Thanks for supporting me in this endeavor.

Hope to see a lot of you in Tailor Bay at July 1st. Bring your friends, spread the news, and I hope you will enjoy these creations as much as I have enjoyed working with them.

Day of Constitution

I normally don't do much out of my FL country of residency in SL, but since today is our day of Constitution, I had to raise the flag!

The Norwegian Constitution was signed May 17th, 1814, but we did not get our real independence until 1905. However, May 17th is the day we celebrate with child parades, brass orchestras and outdoor gatherings of all sorts.

How I do wish for a virtual world where we actually would have the rights our constitution gives us: Freedom to select our leaders and form our society as we want it, like a true democracy. Not as it is today, when our world really is governed by the whims of a commercial company. OK, OSGris is today the closest we get, but since its still sort of an alpha world its a bit too limited to count. But it might get there!

In Norway, we waited almost 100 years before we got our freedom. In SL, we don't even have a constitution for a virtual world. Lots of steps are still ahead of us!

Have a happy day all of you!

Me at Capitol Hill

Since we Europeans are a bit ahead of our American friends, we get to wait a bit longer into the day before we can participate in the celebration of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. In the meantime I took the trip to Capitol Hill to pick up my invitation to the Inaugural Ball.

It's a nice SIM well worth the visit. Even if no-one bothers to hear your speech:-)

Update: After watching President Obama speak I do understand why no-one was there to listen. Everyone was of course on the real Capitol to listen to a real speaker. The real me cried of joy listening to that speech, the core of which I find in the following quote:

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake"

Finally the world has a leader who wave the flags of right over wrong, demanding that we follow our faith lest we sink to the level of the ones wanting to destroy beauty and joy. I find it hard to believe I am saying this, but now it comes from the heart:

God bless America!

In memory of Brooks Wharf

Ayam Merlin had a great place with lots of galleries and exciting artists. His own photo exhibition was also well worth a visit. I had a lot of nice moments when I rented a gallery space there a year ago; working with photos, meeting people that has since become close friends.

Now the place is all gone; there is a shop selling glasses instead. Ayam (a very nice guy btw) says in his pics that he has plans to rebuild the place in another sim; I hope he succeeds in whatever he is doing.



So long, and thanks for all the fish!