The senior artist for Linden Lab, the lab that is responsible for Second Life worked with others to film a short “Second Life” movie called Bells and Spurs, based on a poem set in the old American West. The details of how the film was made, down to the costume designers for the avatars, are described here. I think the potential for virtual worlds is really only limited by people’s imaginations.
I was shocked though to read this article about skin colour of avatars - the links at the end of this article also talk about things like the difficulties of designing the African American skin colour, and other people’s experiences related to racial issues. I think there’s a fair bit of literature about race in cyberspace but nowehere near the sort of level of other identity markers such as gender, or sexuality.
In other news, I’ve been trying to spend a couple of hours a week hanging out at Second Life to learn how things work. This evening I met Rogue who took me scuba diving then showed me how to play with some of the features such as camera angles and so on.
I have to do my Second Life exploring from my work computer so its always at the end of a long working day. That means I usually don’t have enough time to really hang about and chat because I’m always dying to get out of the office. But this evening I talked to several people and met computer programmers and even a rocket scientist (it’s true!) - people who are exploring the potential of Second Life (3D modelling, new technology creations etc…) for their own professional use. There are also real businesses buying islands on Second Life to use commercially, like this fashion design business called Mischief. It’s all very exciting.
Although I really should fix my avatar up - I customised it with some clothes I was given and some makeup and jewellery I found in the junk yard, but looking at it from a distance it is a rather odd shape *grin*