It’s been a satisfying weekend getting back into the swing of things.

I’ve worked on several variations of hats, getting them loaded with textures. These 2 batches are texture change, one based on “acid burnt chiffon velvet” textures, and one based on some jewel-tone wools and crushed velvets from a different texture purchase. Both hats will have texture change hatbands, and slightly different cockade decorations. Some of the hatband textures are Art Nouveau fragments that I was playing with last spring, and some are some basic suede or exotic leather-like ones. What had partly bogged me down was how to show all the combinations, or how best to show the variety of textures for body and band.

It’s funny, I’ve been wearing one of several variations of these hats for almost a year, it’s high time I finally put them up on the Marketplace, and start working on something really, truly new again. But the thought of doing the marketing images for hats with different textures made me want to play solitaire again (for the thousandth time).

I didn’t want to slog through a bunch of layer files, so I hit on the idea first of stacking some prims up and photographing them inworld. Then I remembered these funny little texture organizers by Solo Mornington that I’ve been using as project texture dumps. Actually, they’re these standard cube prims that you lay out in an array, and you put this script into the root, and WHAM, a simple rezzer-like organizer that can display in either texture or sculpty mode. I realized I could put the textures into them and arrange it so that I could display against my backdrop. Then later I decided I might have better luck against a plain white backdrop, because there are shadow and other issues (partly because I’m using placeholders to separate body from band textures).

 

For the actual Marketplace ads I’ll still have to choose from some of the hat photos I’ve already taken, just to show a few of the possible combinations. Then I’ll have to add the usual text and they’re done. The first one is from the wools/velvets, the next is a chiffon velvet that I added a plasma rainbow base color on, and the last one is a sort of brownish fractal flame velvet that’s going to be part of the “acid burnt chiffon” hat, although I switched out the cockade after taking this photo.

So that’s coming along, I think I’ll be putting those up in the Marketplace tomorrow, they’re done except for the marketing textures, which then have to be uploaded for my hats vendors.

Besides all that boring detail, yesterday I had the whole day to tinker with the new Dinkie kitty hair, and then I went off to the Tunaverse to get odd, and then I went to the Opening Ball for the Consulate of Europa Wulfenbach Game Day (whew, that’s a lot of capitalization). All as the little Arabian Nights kitty, wearing a resized hair and one of my “explorer” pith helmets (those are next on my list to get on the Marketplace). And then after that… I skipped some game day events, but decided to head over for an exciting treasure hunt, because ERMAGERD, ZERMBERS! There was a zombie hunt in a cursed Egyptian tomb, which had been rezzed in the sky in the next parcel over from me in St Helens. There’s a lot of joint membership between the Steelhead group and the Consulate, so it was convenient for Zanya, the game builder, to set up her tomb experience here. She runs DJ events overhead in the Charity Way airship weekly.

Let’s see… then today seemed to be a day to reconnect with old friends, so I started with a quiet hour over at the Anglican Cathedral, before encountering more blasts from the past than you can shake a prim stick at.

One other thing that I did on Thursday that I didn’t mention: I dropped by Carntaigh Green to listen to Audite Nova!, the monthly early music program on Radio Riel hosted by Diamanda Gustafson.

It was a lovely garden setting, perfect for listening quietly while working on something (the typist got caught up on a web page she administers).

And the day or two before THAT, Miss Bug went to class with the fabulous Toady Nakamura and made a thing. It only remains for Dhughan, the slacker, to get on the stick and make a new stick.

So the last few days have been pretty productive, and fun, and satisfying. And I ran across so many old friends – Cady Enoch, Mistletoe Ethaniel, Lukas Mensing, and more. Ert’s GERD ter ber BERK!