Goodbye Mertopia

I got a notice today that Mertopia (Blake sim) is going away, and the sim will become rental property. Mertopia was the home of the Secrets of Atlantis group: although not very active, I hope they find another home soon.

Tails To Be Sold Told

It's been a while since I've added any products, but I finally finished (if any of my projects can ever be said to be "finished") a new line of mer tails and put them in a vendor in my shops and on Xstreet. Called Nereid, they come in a variety of colors and include hip and dorsal fins. I've got 12 different color schemes (so far). Apparently, I seem to have hit some kind of limit on the number of images Blogger will let me upload for this post, so I can only show the first five:

Black/Blue
Black/Gold
Black/Red
Black/Green
Blue/Aqua

Blue/Gold

Blue/Green

Green/Gold

Lavender/Gold

Purple/Gold

Red/Gold

Silver/Gold

Free Market

At the advice of a friend, I finally got around to doing something I should have done a long time ago: put my Mermaid's Dream products up for sale on Xstreet (formerly SlExchange). You can find my things by going to Marketplace in Xstreet and viewing Merchants, then digging down to Mare Novi.

I have the "Dream Mer" tails, the latest version of the Mermaid's Dream AO, and some of the gadgets from my vendors. I should make pages for the other things just laying around the store, like the "mernature" and the poseballs. Maybe they'll get more customers online then just waiting for people to wander into the store.

Today Arianti, tomorrow Second Life®

With the acquisition of some land on the west side of Mermaid's Dream, I can expand. I don't really need the space right now, but the added prim allowance is nice, and I have these delusions dreams of building a merfolk multinational corporation someday...

Flip this Shop

I have some ideas for more products to sell in my shop, Mermaid's Dream. So I spend most of the day yesterday making additions and modifications, mostly to add a bit of floor space. I decided that the "boat dock" at the front wasn't very useful, so I widened it and moved the couples dance balls there. I also added another floor area at the back of the store, which meant relocating the waterfall. Pick and shovel time*.


There has been a Grotto below the store almost since the beginning, but it didn't have much in it except for coral. I decided to move the entrance into the shop proper, which meant rearranging the "breakwater" -- another dirty job, even if I work mostly underwater. This also allowed space for another section of shop floor above the Grotto entrance for future expansion. I have plans for the Grotto -- it will be a place for visitors to relax and meet. And it's also where I will put the more "mature" mer items, when (if) I invent them ;-)



Now I need to figure out how to save a few prims. I'm nowhere near my limit, but if I need to keep my options open for the future.

A mermaid's work is never done...


----------------------------------
* Have you ever seen a mermaid try to use a shovel?

They Paved Paradise And They Put Up A Parking Lot

This used to be the site of Merlantis. So what happened? I have no idea. All I know is that I checked the map, and all of Eyeles sim, except for the mall in the center, was grey. And so was the sim itself; filled in with what appears to be about one million cubic meters of concrete.

A Bit of a Poser

It was suggested by Morris Aabye that I need some poses/animations for mers in shallow water. I decided that some of them would also work on dry land (should anyone ever find themselves out of the water). So here's the first. It's a 15-second animation, with what I think is a nice tail flip.

The Tale Of The Tails

I finally got done putting together vendors for my line of simple mermaid tails, and a mer AO.

The tails come in a variety of colors, but any of them can be tinted however the owner wants. Personally, I like the basic silver one the best: the problem with adding a shading color is that the color changes with lighting.

The AO is based on the ZHAO II, with three buttons added for Go to Surface, Hold Depth (which doesn't work while moving), and Dive to Bottom. The Surface button in particular is handy, saving me having to creep up on the surface without erupting out of the water.

I've been running across the "artifact" problem in Windlight, even at the store. It seems to get worse the longer you're signed on. I've reported it to LL, who assigned it the ID [rt.lindenlab.com #1028625]. Nobody else seems to be reporting this bug, so I'm wondering if it has something to do with my particular graphics card (ATI Radeon 9550 AGP). It's bad enough that I don't stay in Windlight for long; unfortunately, because I love the new water.

A Whole New World

So LL has released Winlight in a beta viewer after several months of Banging On Things. All I can say is: Wow. Just... Wow. Go download it now; especially if you're a mer. The water is amazing!


I ran into one bug that I've already reported: some graphics artifacts show up at Mertopia (Blake sim). I suspect it may have something to do with all of the sculpties they have there, but I don't have the problem at the new Mermaid's Dream location*, which has a couple of sculptie rocks, and which is backed by the neighbor's huge wall made up of sculpties. So maybe it's something else particular to Mertopia. Hopefully they'll figure it out without too much trouble.


* Notice how I managed to slip in a plug for the store...

Moving Up

I talked Minto into biting the tier bullet and buying some more land in Arianti; I supplied the Lindens for a 1024 plot, so he wasn't too hard to persuade. So I've moved Mermaid's Dream there, and am enjoying the luxury of the enlarged space and prims. I think I can make the shop look much more attractive and professional now.


Now I need to get ambitious and finish up the new products that I've been toying with for so long. I've come to prefer the tail(s) I designed, and pretty much wear one exclusively when I decide to put on fins.


Then there's the AO; based on the ZHAO II with a few value-added features. I would want the AO available to go along with the tails; for convenience, seeing how the tail outfits will be aimed mainly at new mers. And there is still a big market for mer dances and other animations, so that's another thing on my to-do list.

Hanging Out With the Finny Set

I put a bit of effort into finding the right mermaid outfit. There are only a few shops that cater to merfolk: Merwings in Silver Lake and Emerald Evers' Shop By the Sea being the most notable that I have found. Nora Wayne's Mermaid Hangout has a huge tank with fish and a number of poseballs for you to swim in, as well as merfolk product vendors.

I wanted something that looked fairly realistic, if that term can be applied to something like a mermaid. But I didn't like the shape of the tail fins on most of the selections. The one that I liked was the "Mer Luminous - Fleshy" at Merwings, which I bought, along with an AO and a shell top to keep a PG rating.


It's amazing what you can find on the bottom. Although there are vast expanses of empty seabed, there are a few places with underwater landscaping. And there is the occasional surprise, such as houses I've come across sitting on the bottom in several places. You have to wonder...


The animations that came with the Franimation AO that I got were all right, but I decided to design my own, thinking that I might be able to do a better job. I wanted a slow as well as a fast swim, and a heads-down diving anim instead of just dropping tail-first when you hit the PAGE DOWN button. With the dive anim, you can jump up out of the water and then dive right back in to surprise the sailors on that boat you snuck up on.

I found out that the positions of the shins and feet are critical when making a mermaid animation, at least with the tail I have. If your ankles are too close together or too far apart, the tail skirt and "boots" don't match up correctly. Even the animations I purchased have some matching problems that way. I need to experiment to see if the "boots" can't be eliminated somehow and the "skirt" made longer. I assume there is a reason it's designed the way it is.

I'm still in the process of refining the animations. I'd like to make a fairly complete set, including a variety of sitting poses and maybe a couple of different swimming styles. When I get it like I want it, I'll put it up for sale. So if you're a homo piscipeni, keep tuned to this blog.

How to begin?

It's been over a month since I was "born" into Second Life, the offshot of an avatar who wanted to explore the wild and fantastic sides of Second Life, but who also wanted to keep a "clean" public image in the process. Rather silly, and a bit cowardly, if you ask me. Still, I owe my existence to that hypocracy, so I won't complain. If my Primary wants to blow US$9.95 to bring me to life, I'm all for it.

I was given the name "Mare" because of my fascination with becoming a mermaid: Mare being Latin for "sea". By the way, the correct pronouncation is "MAH-ray", like "Mary" with a softer "a" sound. Not "Mair", please. Any resemblence to a female horse is purely coincidental, and a bit resented by yours truely.

Besides being a merperson, I also have outfits as an angel (both light and dark). I recently bought a set of scripted wings at Material Squirrel Wings. They flap, droop and stiffen, and have Excite compatabilidy (although I wouldn't know what to do with that, of course...). I'm a little disappointed that they don't extend fully, but I imagine there are technical limitations preventing that. I also have a lot of freebie fairy butterfly wings for when the fae mood takes me.

Besides enjoying assuming the aspects of the finned and winged creatures of fantasy, I have to confess that I also am drawn to the Darker Side at times. I'm talking about ropes, chains, cages, and frightening spiky devices. This isn't something that my Primary here or in RL wants to admit publicly. So you may find me occasionally hanging around, as it were, in places like Heaven & Hell (the biggest dungeon complex I know of in SL). I'll be in cuffs, maybe a bit of letther, and not much else (that narrows it down LOL).

So on with the blog. I have a month's worth of things to talk about, so the forcast is for a flurry of posts over the next few days, followed by scattered rantings and periods of quiet neglect. Stay tuned for the fun.