The Apartment

Today Mr. LJ Ametza was given his new apartment in second life. Dale asked us to create signs with our name on them and put them outside our apartments.

Here is the sign I created:

Building in second life

Today Dale started us off with a small tutorial on how to create basic objects in second life. We created a planet. This is how mine came out:



My next project was a retro sci-fi gun, here is a picture mid way through the project:



People even prayed to it:



Here is a few shots of the finished product:

A Start

Today was our first day with Dale. He showed us the basics and we had a little explore. The first place my avatar LJ Ametza visited was the freebie warehouse, where he quickly found a van, a flying van.


The second place I visited was called Prim by Prim where my avatar was able to earn some prizes by just sitting and relaxing with other class mates.


The third place I visited was the Victoria University island. There I had a look around the main building, the apartment and some of the other creations people had made.

The world of my machinima. Basic Breakdown

Today we talked about worlds and what the constraints of our own world were. We then took some time walk around Melbourne and look carefully at our own world as it happens. We then wrote a basic breakdown of the world our machinima would be based in.

The breakdown is as follows:


Physical:
Beings:
• The dominant species is Human.
• On average they live for between 80 and 100 years in age.
• On average they are between 4 and 6 feet tall.

Movement:
• Short distance humans can walk, run, swim.
• Gravity pulls everything to the earth, humans can not fly.

Survival:
• Humans must eat and drink to survive. They need this to have the energy to fuel their bodies.
• Humans do not need equipment to survive, however some equipment helps them make this process easier.

Time:
• Time progresses in an absolute fashion.
• Time is crucial to humanity, as it runs on a social clock.


Transport
• Long distance movement within the world comes mostly from machines, cars, trains, aircraft and boats.
• The transport within the world costs money, and is a luxury.

Landforms:
• Terrestrial and liveable.

Colours and Sense:
• The world is shadowy with selective shafts of light. Colour lingers, but is a non-focal point.

Technical:
• Humans commonly carry money, used for paying for others services.

Social:
Class or Caste
• There is a social class system within the world. Money generally dictating status.
• These class boundaries are firmly secure within the world.

Communication:
• The inhabitants communicate in various languages. Within the machinima; English.
• Everyone has the ability to communicate.
Type of Government:
• Democracy.

Built Environment:
• Various cities scattered throughout the world. Usually near natural resources.
• Rural areas between cities.
• Cities densely populated.

Social Fabric:
• Many social rules developed over centuries.
• People have power over their own existence, not over consequences of it.

Belief:
• Varied beliefs within the world.

Play:
• Inhabitants all have their own idea of fun. Sport, relaxation, art.

Life Pattern:
• Set pattern of living. Study > Job > Work > Retire.

Fashion:
• Fashion dictated by region and economic class.

Personal:
Appearance:
• Drake Corvin (main character) typically wears jeans and a formal shirt.
• Short hair, well kempt.

Social Standing:
• Drake is a middle class citizen.
• Surrounded by equally middle class people.

Aim in life:
• Drakes mission in life is to be free of the social bonds. Have room for his creative self to relax/create.

Place in the world:
• Firmly grounded in the world, neither winner nor loser.

Strength and weaknesses:
• Creativity is both Drakes strength and weakness.

Communication:
• Plain English. Some wiriting.

This week in IST we came in with our scripts we had worked on and talked a little about characters. I then recruited another student, and we read the script I had written out loud. It was helpful to hear it out loud and to see where another person had trouble with the language. It will allow me to make a few tweaks give it more flow.

To finish off the class we watched the making of Golem from the Lord of the Rings movies. It had interesting insight into the making of a character for film. It also showed how much thought and experimentation it takes to create a realistic and believable virtual actor.

This week we had a flexible week. This means we could work freely at home on our scripts and story structure for the machinima. I wrote my script over two days and I'm happy with the results. I think some aspects could do with a little refinement, but as a whole it's better than I expected.

I had a little trouble giving the story a believable resolution. The main character Drake needed something from a newspaper that inspired him to write the story he needed. This wasn't an easy thing to find however I came across this quote:

Only a mediocre writer is always at his best' - W. Somerset Maugham

This gave me the perfect way to inspire Drake to get the story written, and me to finish the script.

A little hardship

I have had a lot of trouble over the past week developing a story that I like - and that I think will work for the subject. I spent a good portion of the weekend trying to develop an idea and write a story from it, but nothing seemed to come from it. Writers block. This is the first time that I have not been able to write something like this easily, and consequently just lead to anger. With this trouble with the story I identified that it was partly to do with my lack of knowledge of Second Life, and what exactly the requirements and limitations of the brief were.

Today is my second class of Interactive Storytelling and later Visual Design 2. I brought up my troubles with the brief with Stefan and Ben. They were receptive to my feedback and made me feel more human for my dilemma.