Tag I'm it!

OK, so Luna, my dear friend finally got tagged and tagged me, here are the rules:

The Rules
1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Noel's eight facts, habits, kernals of wisdom and otherwise silly stuff:

1. I've been stuck with some form of needle over 73,000 times. 25 years of diabetes will do that to you. Breakdowns? OK.
Traditional insulin shots = 365*25*3=27,375 insulin shots
Blood sugar pricks = 365*25*5=45,625 blood sugar pricks
Blood drawn at Dr's office visits= 25*4= 100

2. On my 30th birthday I went blind. True story, I was thrown this amazing surprise birthday party with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. We were playing pinochole and by the end of the 3 hour game I couldn't tell the difference between the face cards. Since then I've had 7 eye surgeries. 4 laser treatements in which they burned 3819 spots into my retinas to stop the bleeding, 2 reattachments of seperated retinas caused by scaring from the lasers, and one cataract surgery to fix my left eye after that. Prognosis is good, I will never see as well as I did but at least I can see. I'm trying really hard to be glass half full about the whole thing.

3. I hate exercise.... I'm an active person, but I hate to exercise for the sake of exercise. I go hiking, love martial arts, biking, swimming, being outdoors. But going to the gym or a class drives me nuts.

4. I love to read. I average about a book a day, and I'm talking 300-600 page novels. My favorite genre is sci-fi/fantasy but I'll read anything. My mom used to have to take the cereal box away from the table in the morning or I would read every edge of it. It's an addiction I have my Great-grandmother hooked me on at the age of 2. Yes, 2. My first book was "Rabbit and the Four Seasons." My second book was "The Giving Tree." My last book was "Confessor" by Terry Goodkind.

5. I'm a nerd.... classic sense.... I like comic books, japanese cartoons, esoteric facts and figures, debating Star Wars versus Star Trek and loving both, TI-86 graphing calculators (still have mine from high school) and computers. My first computer was the Apple ][ and the one I have now is a custom built that I'm putting in this case. My Dad is the one I have to thank for being technically astute and interested.

6. I've been playing around in SecondLife since before our avatars could kiss!

7. Shhh, it's a secret, but I can script, I hate doing it in SecondLife because it makes my 'fun' feel like work, but I am capable.

8. I secretly wish I could make a living doing this.... wait, that's not a secret.

9. Bonus wisdom: Never do any of the following - work on a motherboard with the power supply plugged into the wall, play spiderman by tying one end of a rope to the banister and the other around your neck, climb the fence your mom told you not to climb, promise to do something big for a temporary reward, loan money, borrow money. Always do the following - what you say you will, say what you mean, love hard, learn always, laugh often, and remember all things in this life are temporary, it's about the journey and the memories you make.


Who to tag, who to tag.... Serra's already been tagged, so has Luna cuz she tagged me, but I supposse tagbacks are out of the question, so.... I'm going to be obnoxious and hit the big blogs;

Akela Talmasca, Tateru Nino, Pixeleen Mistral, Robin Linden, Torley Linden, Jeff Barr, Amras Alder, and Serra! (Lame I know but I couldn't come up with an 8th one who hadn't been tagged and now she can say she's been tagged three times!)

Dungeons & Things with Teeth...

Brochure: You need a quality place for certain things, and privacy to boot, both of which you can find in your own private dungeon skybox. This dungeon is gorgeously textured with one way windows, dark stone, a fireplace to keep you warm, and gold leafed columns that hint at the fine things going on out of reach of the ones subject to your will, the raised platform makes a perfect overlook to watch the goings on. Built in a low prim manner this is expertly textured with fine details yet the privacy one needs when using such spaces.

And now with every one of our skyboxes comes an amazing teleporter that requires no scripting and no notecards to configure, it's extremely simple to set up and will serve you well. Made by Fnordian Furniture, whose items you can see at http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=225731

This was built as a private escape, made with the inspiration of a vampire friend whose name it honors.

This skybox is 20x20 and fits on a 1025 lot with plenty of room to spare. This requires a teleporter or landmark and has no doors. It takes 29 prims. I have other designs that will suit any lot size you have. Check my other items.

The Story: This one was fun, inspiration from a bunch of different people and work with a scripter for one of the great things I personally had a hand in concept and development. I kept getting requests for dungeons in my castles, and though they are easy to do I thought it might be nice to have one people could buy and install easily. The problem with SecondLife dungeons is this, if you dig far enough in the ground, you get water. So your dungeon floods. The easiest way around this is to make it look like you have a dungeon by using teleports. Problem with this is that most teleporters look very modern, and I wanted something that fit in the gothic theme, yet I was still in my 'builds for new residents' mode and wanted something easy to set up. Many many teleports require editing of config files and make designing webpages with multiuser links easy.

So I started scouring SLX and I found Fnordiporters. You can look at his other stuff here. I liked his design, but it wasn't quite what I wanted, so together we came up with a teleporter that didn't need notecards. It's a bit silly but you pop down one pad and wear a magic wand, touch the other pad then go back and touch the original. The script in the magic wand stores the locations and changes the configs without having to edit them at all, which is nice for those of us who just want things to work. As a result every skybox that I make has a rebranded one of these. The skybox itself is pretty simple, although the fire texture was fun to work out. I like the way it turned out, in fact I use a larger modifed one of these as my personal retreat. I hope you like it.

P.S. I didn't procrastinate.

P.S.S The title refers to this being named for a Ventrue vampire princess who is still a dear friend.

Massively something....

Well, I'm back from my seventh eye surgery. I shouldn't say it that way, I've actually been cleared by the Doc and am back to work in both real life and SecondLife. I've missed it but my friends have welcomed me back and it's like I never left so that's wonderful.

I've been extremely neglectful of this site and yet I've still gotten comments, for this I am thankful and I will be contacting you people soon with massive thanks, and little gifts.

I've added a sidebar element tapping into the Massively secondlife feed. Massively is what Secondlifeinsider became when they consolidated into the massive corporate overblog they are today, but they are still the same great people. Check em out if you feel bored at work.

Next post on my builds coming soon! Within the week I promise.... course... I'm also a procrastinator.

Real Life Throws Wrenches...

I am very sorry, Real Life has kept me away so long. I don't really want to talk about it but job stress, travel, stuff.... I hope to pick up the thread here soon but who knows. Please know that I'm still alive and thankful, I'm also doing my best to support my products in SL and that hasn't seemed to have an impact. It's just new products and friends that are suffering and to them I offer my deepest apologies.

Recovery

I apologize for the lack of new posts, I've been down with a throat virus for a couple weeks. More updates coming soon, hope you all will forgive me. Luna Jubilee has been posting away and looks awesome if you want to see a well dressed Second Lifer check out her site: lunajubilee.blogspot.com

A Personal Note.

I suffer from this disease. If this video touches your heart like it does mine, please contribute to a child walking for a cure this summer. If you can't find one of those, the link in the video works too. This disease affects EVERYTHING. Please let's stop it from affecting anyone else as fast as humanly possible. Thank you and blessings.

Tapestry ~ My Parent's Place - Modeling Real Life Structures

Brochure: This home was inspired by my parents RL house, a very well textured design this has one room downstairs, a nice kitchen with lighting and a gorgeous formal upstairs. All of this done with Tru 3d textures.

This house is 25x30 and wieghs in at 47 prims.

Story: So after I finished Sandra's Place I thought it might be interesting to try and model real life houses I was familiar with. In all actuality at this point I was running out of steam and was trying to find inspiration anywhere I could. I had noticed these textures at TRU and really liked them so I used my Parent's new home as a floorplan model for this design. I learned quite a bit about building from this one, stairs were a new process and setting up the flow correctly took quite a bit of work. This is a nicely detailed little home but like most things it looks almost nothing like it's real world counterpart. Making the transition from Real Life to Second Life is actually quite difficult.

The kitchen in this unit was actually quite an experiment for me, using a commercial lighting script. I'm not entirely happy with it but it did teach me even more about scripting and the effect of lighting on good design. The scripts themselves are no modify so I can't learn exactly what he did to create them, although I've reverse engineered it since. I can understand why he did that but it took alot of effort to get those hanging bulbs to look right and I've not used the script since in any of my builds.

One major problem I see alot of new designers make is not making rooms big enough. The biggest Prim building block you can make in Second Life is 10 meters square. This seems big enough and so many builders make their rooms exactly that size. The problem is that the camera bumps into walls at that size, the adjustment level is enough to drive most people crazy. A small adjustment to 12 meters square seems to solve all camera related problems, but it means you have to use more prims. I've gotten into the habit of making large open rooms, and if someone wants to make them smaller then they will. I believe that's why you see so many open or studio floorplans in Second Life. Then again, we buy houses with roofs and it never rains, so maybe it's just genetic. Or maybe we don't want those flying avatars to see what we're up to.

Sandra's Place Townhouse - Modern Minimal Elegance

Brochure: I know most of our builds so far have been gothic or dark. Looking for something more modern? Something that dosen't scream denizen of the night? Then our newest build may be for you. A one bedroom brownstone rowhouse in the tradition of New York Living or San Francisco row houses this quality small house is extremely well textured and the ivy walls scream of the charm of it's residents.

This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made with the inspiration of the friend whose name it honors.

This townhouse is 10x27 meters and fits on a 512 lot more then perfectly, it takes 46 prims and is designed as a nice first home for that small plot of land without sacraficing quality or beautiful construction.

The Story: So, yet another foray into making beautiful builds for new landowners, this is essentially a re-imagining of Anya's Keep but it presented its own unique challenges. At the time I was designing this I had entered the Second Life land market as a realtor. I was buying large plots and putting down small house like this and Anya's and then reselling them for about 10% more then I bought them. I was having some good success with this strategy and someone noted that a row of Anya's Keep properties looked like San Francisco rowhomes. Also at the time I'd just gotten back from a real life business trip to New York City and had loved the feeling of it's old brownstones.

So inspired I began trying to replicate that in this walkup. It really did turn out well and the lessons I learned I later went back and reincorporated in Anya's Keep. But it was an experience in more modern textures and how they work. I really learned how to use the texture offsets in this build. I now am aware that textures have at least as much to do with the build as actual construction. I've seen people do amazing builds but use more prims then they need to because they aren't using high quality textures. On the reverse there are builders who don't make things look architecturally sound because they think the eye candy will detract, it's really a balancing act on each build.

I've been truly surprised at the lackluster sales of this build, but I think it stems from the smaller size. Small size builds don't sell well because of the market. This is a truly attractive place and I'd love to show it to you, test rez it. If I ever go back to selling fully built small parcels this will be the house I put down for people.

The Future of the Web - Or how a 15 year old changes everything!

For awhile now people have been pointing at Second Life and saying that this is what the future of the web looks like, and to a large degree I concur with that statement, but it's always had a bit of a problem in that it needs it's own infrastructure to use and isn't seamless to the way we interact with the larger internet now. It's obviously of importance, after all Reuters has a full time reporter working in world and several countries have opened embassy's there as if it's a new nation.

Now comes exciting news, a 15 year old working on the Teen Grid of Second Life has created an implementation of code that allows people to explore from within a web browser in a limited fashion. This allows people to be in Second Life without the requirements of a 3d graphics card and even possibly allows for nearly universal use without regards to machine requirements. This may not make a huge difference for me as I mostly design buildings and this implementation isn't set to allow people to fully realize the personal space they can have in Second Life, but it's an incredible step in the right direction and can only grow. Best part is it's open source so it will be cleaned up and expanded. I'm linking to New World Notes which has the best coverage of this achievement and you can read their coverage here.

Advertising

It's very late/early, and I'm exhausted, but somebody needs this so I'm tossing this up quickly, this is my web-banner for linkbacks. Please only link to the main page at http://ingmanndesign.com/ as it will automatically link back to you. Much appreciated, I might update this post later and come up with a snappy title.

Update:: Paste this code into your website and the linkback will be handled automatically.

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Update:: You can now use this banner:

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Because Free is a Very Good Price.

I have a personal problem. Stuff that's easy for me to create I don't tend to sell, thinking that anybody can do it... I create things as experiments or just for my own personal use all the time and a week later I find it on SLX or in world for sale. So I've started to change my mind. Most of the items I am talking about are relatively easy to create with a bit of research into scripting or some basic build skills, but some people aren't interested in building, they just want to enjoy Second Life and buy the items they like.

Case in point: I made a photo frame that cycles randomly through all the photos loaded into it's contents. This is a classic script almost directly from the example given on the LSL wiki. The only thing I had to figure out was how to make the texture cycle on only one face rather then all of them, but some noodling and it was done. I created these for my house, so I could look at all my snapshots and share them with my friends, I didn't even think about selling it. However I'm now seeing these things around for sale between 150L and 700L depending on degree of customization. So.... not to be a crook, but I'm giving mine away as lucky chair prizes and free gifts to loyal customers. I'm considering selling them for small prices such as 100L. It took me all of 20 minutes to build. Is this unfair of me? Am I undercutting other people out of the market? Or is it unfair for them to take a pretty universal script example and charge a ton for it? I just don't know. It's one of the interesting things about running a business in Second Life, do you undercut and get a bad reputation among your peers, or do you do what you have the skill for and price according to what you will take for it?

Keep in mind we're not talking about freebies here, although in my opinion they aren't worth a whole lot, copying and pasting a script isn't hard to do. I just don't know.... so this is an experiment. My photo frame is a free give away in my Lucky Chair and I'm going to post it on my vendor at 100L. This is all I think I can charge for it, in fact if you want to know how to build one I'll even tell you. If you aren't interested, it's there for you to grab. I'm truly interested in your feedback on this article, drop a comment, first 10 people to drop a comment on this post with their Second Life name get not one, but two free items! (One of em will be the photo frame.)

Pricing - to Lower or not to Lower?

Well, lame Shakespeare paraphrases for titles notwithstanding, I've been convinced by those I trust that I price too high. I was under the impression that buildings were rare purchases so that they needed to be priced higher as a result... after all why would anyone buy more then one? I've been corrected. Like so much else in this new world, peoplc like to change houses almost as often as they change clothing. So my pricing has actually kept me from being an impulse buy. The other issue I've had with lowering prices is that I don't want to be seen as 'cheap'. I work really hard on my buildings and designs, and I didn't want people to associate me and my work with the quick buck fly by night type of operations I see way too much in Second Life.

So, I've been convinced, all my prices have been lowered quite a bit, this is reflected on SLExchange and my store in world. I hope that prior customers won't use slings and arrows, and I hope it attracts new customers like a rose of any other name.

See, tried to stay with the Shakespeare and it still dosen't work.....

Independance Day

Happy Fourth of July. I know my readers come from all over the world and so you may not know the significance. But in the States we celebrate this day as Indpendence Day, the day we decided to become a country. So I hope you all are with family or friends and that some form of fireworks goes off in your life.

I thought about talking about the freedom we enjoy in Second Life but really I just want another beer. Treat each other with respect and enjoy your day.

The Semi-functional Starter Guide.

OK, so people have asked me, "What do I do if I want to get started in Second Life?" Assuming you haven't yet been in the game at all the first thing you should do is click the link to the right or above and join. Now, if you are willing to be a nomad, which 80% of the people do, then that's it. But the real fun in my opinion starts when you spring for the 'premium' membership and get a piece of virtual real estate all for yourself. That really lets you build and enjoy the toys that you can't use so much if you continue the hobo existance. Currently 512sm parcels are running around 6-8000L. Which under current exchange rates is around 20-30 US dollars. You pay $10 dollars a month for the premium membership. And you can probably earn that money in Second Life itself, so really you're not looking at much of an expense. If you compare it to other Massive Multiplayer Online experiences it's a deal.

How do I earn money in Second Life you ask? Well, if you have your first land I recommend buying a nice house or castle, such as Anya's Keep, or something else (From my designs of course!). After that a good way to earn money in Second Life is by selling the stuff you like. Most people in secondlife will pay commission through catalogs or affliates. If you want to sell my items I offer a catalog that pays 10% commission. To make $10.00 US in a month you have to basically earn 3000L. That isn't difficult under many jobs in SL.

I realize that I built this post in reference to my business, and I'd be pleased if you decided it was worth a shot, but truly, premium membership has its benefits. Give it a try, can always cancel if you dislike it.

Anya's Keep ~ First Land Elegance.

Brochure: This is a small size castle tower built with all the comforts of home, one bedroom, gorgeous textures, a glass dance floor and lovely arches for your own stained glass. All packaged in an easy rezzer. I tried to bring in hints of victoria with the glass tower, reminiscent of greenhouses.

This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made with the inspiration of the great friend whose name it honors.

This castle is 30x10 and fits on a 512 lot more then perfectly. It takes 43 prims and is designed as a nice first home for that small plot of land without sacraficing quality or beautiful construction.


Story: Anya is a nomad, and has never had a home of her own. But she's an amazing roleplayer and probably my best friend in Secondlife. Anya's Keep was once again an exercise in taking the theme of my other two castles and making it fit on a parcel that is often known as 'first land'. Though they have discontinued the program it used to be that occasionally first time purchasers of land could get 512 sq, meters of land for a deeply discounted price. The houses available for that space have to be very prim efficient because they don't have alot to space. As a result they are often the worst designs possible. Throwaway houses. I didn't want to go that route so I built this. It's tight, due to the size of first land parcels there isn't alot of room, but it still has the glass dance floor and a very nice bedroom. I'm proud of it and Anya loved it.

Tested By Fire Designs - Downward Spiral

I'm attempting to tell the story of my designs in order so that you can see where I've improved and what I've learned along the way. One, because I think it's always interesting to see how people create. Two, so you can take the lessons I've learned or leave them as you choose.

Around the time I started working on my third build I met a phenomenal designer named Fieame Tatsu. My nickname for Fieame is 'Texture Queen' because what she was doing with textures was incredible to me at the time. I think I bugged her for a week straight with questions. She's a very gracious soul and we work well together. She dosen't feel confident about her layouts, even though they are wonderful, and I still need her help with textures. Together we came up with this, the Downward Spiral. It's a Gothic themed skybox club that is large enough for whatever you want to use it for, has a phantom hallway for performer clothing changes and a wonderful stage, along with amazing textures throughout.

Fieame means Fire and so Fieame's designs are marketed under the sub-brand of Tested By Fire Designs.

The Customer is Always Right, even when they are a Ghost.

OK, so, this is going to be labeled as Building Techniques but what it really should say is, "Things I DON'T like putting in my designs!"

One of the settings you can do to your primitives is set them to phantom. This means that they only 'appear' to be there, your avatar can walk right through them. If you combine this with the touch script you can make it so your wall when touched, becomes a door. Many, many, many designers make a door that then becomes phantom when touched.... a ghost door... which in a sci-fi setting would be pretty cool, but seeing it on a vicotorian modeled townhouse is just wrong. On my builds my doors either slide in like pocket doors should or swing open, this is much more appealing on a visual design perspective.

I have had customers ask me for phantom doors and I'm happy to provide them, but I really dislike them. Just another small rant. O, and to make this a learning opportunity, here's the door script I use, it's free and was developed by the Lindens (Since I haven't mentioned it, that's what the developers and staff of the company who makes Secondlife are called), although it can be a bit tricky it's well documented and if you're careful it works as well as anything I've tried and better then most.

Sapphire Tower

Brchure: This is a medium size castle tower built with all the comforts of home, two bedrooms, gorgeous textures, a glass dance floor and lovely arches for your own stained glass. All packaged in an easy rezzer. I tried to bring in hints of victoria with the glass towers, reminiscent of greenhouses. This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made with the inspiration of my partner whose name it honors. This castle is 30x30 and fits on a 1024 lot more then perfectly. It takes 93 prims.




Story: Early on I found that I built better if I had a person in mind for who I wanted to give my builds. This held true even though I was building on the same themes I had used before in building DarkRayne this was meant to be a simpler more compact version, still textured and designed in a manner other small prim buildings didn't approach at the time. The person I kept in mind was an amazing artist who eventually became my partner in SecondLife. Sapphire is a wonderful person and actually does all the stained glass in my designs. Our collaboration has been amazing and I couldn't have built IDG to where it's going without her encouragement and support.
This became an experiment in optimizing a large design into a smaller one, I found that the 6 room layout for the DarkRayne became almost pointless in the smaller footprint... it felt cluttered and not like the style I was trying to adopt. I wanted this to have presence just like the DarkRayne, another thing I can't stand in Secondlife is 'cardboard houses'. Walls too thin to look like they can support the roof, no sense of scale.... drives me crazy that these designs are out and bought in such numbers. So, I found that 6 rooms didn't do the sense of scale and openness I wanted, I reduced the rooms down to 2 very large rooms with open entertaining areas as well. I think this turned out very well and it's still one of my favorite builds and I started messing with tints in order to give it it's distinctive blue cieling tiles. It's a great medium sized build that feels much larger then it is.

Prim & Proper? Not Me!

OK, so.... a technical education discussion that many who are in Secondlife probably understand all too well.

What's a prim? According to the Secondlife Wiki a prim is:
In Second Life, virtual physical objects such as cars, houses, jewelry, and even less obvious things like hair are made out of one or more primitive parts called prims. Objects made from prims are usually created in-world using the built in object editing tool. This tool is used for all sorts of 3D modeling in Second Life, playing the same role as 3D Max, Maya, or Blender, but customized for the Second Life way of doing things.

OK, so, a Primitive or Prim is a building block, it's like a Lego block. Everything in Secondlife is built with these things and how you manipulate them is how you design things like castles and gothic buildings. Why pay attention to prims other then just knowing how to build stuff with them? Glad you asked. The concern with prims is this, you only get a certain number of them, and that number is tied to the size of the land you own. I can build a very highly detailed house that's 10x30, which will fit on a small 512 sq. meter lot using 312 prims, but because a 512 lot only allows the owner to use 112 primitives and therefore wouldn't fit on that land. This is why you sometimes see itty bitty houses that are highly detailed sitting on large plots of land. Although that may have as much to do with privacy and the view as anything....

So when I started building I focused on low prim building techniques, striking a balance between detail and efficiency so that anybody could enjoy my buildings on their land. Why am I mentioning this? Because I have moved away from it a little bit, I've started designing things with more detail and as a result my buildings have increased in prim limit. I realized this and tried to go back to my roots with the last build I did, I think I did a good job, but you'll have to judge when I post it. The other reason I'm explaining this now is that at the time I was building the stuff I'm posting this was a major concern. I've gotten several compliments on the way I handled the balance and I still teach my students how to build this way. It's an important first step to take, to achieve with efficiency before you get lazy and design for the person who can afford it all. After all, Honda Accords are way more popular then Ferrarri's.

That enough metaphor's for today?

SLexchange ~ the non storefront way to sell in Secondlife

Around the time I built DarkRayne I started devouring information about Secondlife looking for ways to improve my building skills and sell what I was beginning to create. I didn't have the money or ability to pay for a full sim display area for these fantastic buildings that were swirling in my head, and I wasn't sure that they would sell from a retail store anyway. It was a problem looking for a solution....

I found my soution at SLexchange (SLX for short) which is a web enabled merchant listing site for items in Secondlife. The neat thing for me was I didn't have to rent space in a mall or find a store location at the time I was just starting out with my products, as I built I could put my products on the web and they could be viewed by people at work (not that I'm guilty of that.... no, not me) or home or wherever. The beauty of listing services like this (SL Boutique is another) is that you don't have to fight the lag or downtime of Secondlife in order to purchase things you want from the favorite designers that are listed there. Just in the year or so that I've been with them I have seen their merchant list explode and they are genuinely good people too.

They do take a fairly small commission if you are considering listing your items with them, though I now have my own store and design center in world I often still list my items on SLX first, or offer them at a discount to gauge reaction. (Just a hint on new items, usually I post them on SLX for a discount for a couple of weeks at least.)

I'm still proud to be an SLX merchant and always will be.

The One That Started it All! ~ DarkRayne Fortress.

Brochure: This is a large castle fortress built with all the comforts of home, secret passages, gorgeous textures, a glass dance floor and lovely arches for your own stained glass. All packaged in an easy rezzer. I tried to bring in hints of victoria with the glass towers, reminiscent of greenhouses.NEW! This has been completely rebuilt from scratch and the textures are even better! If you've looked at it once please look again.This was built with layout and ease of use in mind, made for someone in game who always wanted to be a princess. I hope you enjoy it.This is a rather large castle at 30x50 meters and most likely requires a 4000sm lot, although some have put it on a 2560sm lot and had success. It takes 142 prims and yet looks amazing. You will get complimented if you own this.

Story: I owe a huge debt of thanks to the people who taught me and this is the one I finally learned enough on to build what I thought was sellable. I met Serra Anansi, one of the best Estate Owners I know, by picking up on her advertisement for a sim of Gothic intent. I met her and was blown away by the care and concern she showed someone who wasn't even sure they could afford it. In the process she took me shopping for castles. The sim was called Muninn's Keep and hadn't been provided to Serra yet, so I had plenty of time to really consider what I wanted as a SecondLife home.

Serra (who is an amazing designer, see her stuff here) and I finally decided on a design by Inksky Jedburgh. Inksky is probably the other SecondLife resident who most helped me out in these early days. He had a full display model of his Ivanhoe Keep that I spent much time tweaking and making work for me. As I was working on it he stopped by and gave me textures and tips on how he achieved such a wonderful build. In fact up until I rebuilt and repackaged this I was still using the windows and archways he had given to me and given me permission to use. This is my version of a public apology for any headaches I caused by doing so. Now everything is from scratch Inksky, thanks for the early help. By the way, I price high directly so I don't compete with Inksky, and my design aesthetic is of course different.

So now I had a prefab home, and a plan to change what I wanted. So... the glass dance floor came into play. It has become a hallmark of my castles, so every single one has one. Chunky glass blocks that let you see the people having fun on different levels of the castle. I started throwing parties, making a little money. Life was good.

Then, I needed more space. more room for my stuff. So I expanded, and I didn't want to spend the money on someone else's design, I wanted to build my dreak castle. I did, and this is the result. It's actually quite open for a roomed prefab and I've gotten a ton of compliments on it. Still my best seller it would have never happened without the advice of people who didn't have to give me the time of day. I'll always be thankful to Serra and Inksky, if you don't buy from me, buy from them. I try and live my Second Life sharing knowledge and kindness like these two.

Ooooo, you want to know where the name comes from? Another kind person, who told me she always wanted a castle. But her privacy is way more important to me then letting you know who.... if she wants to be found, you'll find her, if not.... poof, she's a fairytale told to kids....

Welcome to IDG!

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2. This is the place to look for our designs, we sell on both SLexchange.com and SLboutique.com, those links are on the right there. I'll be posting pics of each product and some profiles of our designers soon. But I'm the lead designer and my name is on the headstone so to speak. My name in Secondlife is Noelyci Ingmann and I've been living the metaverse life for 3 years now. I enjoy my work in SL and think that this truly is the wave of the future.
   
   
   
   I build whatever strikes my fancy, as do my co-designers in this group, but I tend toward the gothic and architectual well textured builds rather then furniture or clothing. I'm sure youll get an idea of my style as we progress. I hope you'll check back often.