Toxic Menges

Loads more vids to update. As well as here, it’s a good idea to be looking at my portfolio page, as almost everything I produce goes in there.

So I am sat here with a broken ankle, and two possibly fractured hands. It wasn’t a good walk to work. So a good time to update this site a bit, yes? Well, not the best timing, but I have run out of TV that doesn’t make my eyes bleed. Suffice to say I cannot do any machinima at the moment, so I might as well use my time off productively.

This post will take me a long time to type, so enjoy it!

I’ve been branching out a bit recently, getting braver with After Effects, and trying my hand at a different type of genre. The result is Decay and Repeat.

My fave personal piece of the year so far is The Princess and the Pea, I am very proud of this piece.

I also did a small promo piece for the Second Life StepUp! campaign

Oh and my sim Twas was recently put in the showcase, check out Decay if you fancy a look around.. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Twas/180/95/30

The Machinima community within Second Life is a growing place. We are very lucky to have a huge amount of talent amongst our ranks. There is an excitement in the air, as this new expressive form grows and finds its place amongst the different genres of digital art.

Our community is one where help and encouragement are expressed in equal measure, given freely, and with nothing but the joy that we all share for what we do.

There is a rot at the heart of Machinima in Second Life that we need to weed out and remove before it overtakes the special community we have.

The officer of one of the main Machinima groups has an issue. Apparently with everything. This individual appears to have nothing on their agenda save reminding the group on a very regular basis of the fact that they not only own the group (they don’t – in fact the group has no owners – one wonders why it is allowed to stay as a viable group), but they are the leader.

I was ejected from the group last night after suggesting that no-one really cared about who was the leader of the group, and that we were in fact all owners of the group because we are a community.

Prior to this, the individual in question had sent an edict (and I use that term in it’s most imperious sense) degrading the viability of another Machinima group.

It’s ridiculous, petty and dangerous. This individual could be bringing people together, but in fact due to overtly inflated ego, and exaggerated sense of self does nothing but make a fool of themselves and the community they (self proclaimed) represent.

I think it’s time Machinima in Second Life took back the world for ourselves and stopped pandering to egos. Collaboration, and nurturing is the way forward, not paranoia, and attacks.

I’m glad I am out of that group – there’s no room in there for anyone but the officer’s ego, and certainly no room for conversation and discussion.

There are plenty of other Machinima groups. Vote with your leave group button.

Busy times, but good times.

So – new videos. There’s a truck load of new photos as well, but you can toddle off to my Flickr and Koinup pages for those.

Got silly last weekend – just silly, and this arrived:

I found a new friend, who is exceptionally talented.

SL6B came and went in a flurry of sleepless nights, laughs and two new videos.

I started to do the odd vid here and there for Hamlet Au from New World Notes

Here is Grace McDunnough’s fabulous Musimmersion -in redux.

I did a fashion show shoot for Avenue

it’s been pretty bloody busy, but I did take a month off after SL6B, and felt better for it. Now we are onto Burning Life…

Been a long time – sorry guys – it’s been a bit mad.

So I’m clearing out my inventory in SL, and I had to archive my photos and notecards. Ever saved a pertinent or particularly heartfelt conversation in a notecard? Then gone back a few months later to look at it again?

Aren’t we lucky we have this ability to capture a conversation in time and space and tuck it into a virtual pocket? I have never lost a parent, but I have lost a sibling, and I would love to have the chance to relive old conversations, to look back at the nuances of their language, and remember what I said what they said, and let the sense memories take over.

I log all my conversations in SL, and back them up carefully – I want to save those memories. People come and go in SL, it is a much more transient world than RL, but our emotions and feelings are as strong – savour and hold those memories close to yourself.

Save them, you may never know when it’s all you will have left.

You know, that’s what I really like about Second Life – where else would I ever have a chance to write a headline to a blog post like that?

All I seem to say on this blog, is the fact that I am remiss – this is trufax, I am, and I will keep saying it til I unremiss myself.

Work in RL is very busy for me at the moment, I am building a fledgling community for a b2b website, and they have just got wind that I can edit videos, so as well as days being full of social media doohickery (yes I get to tweet all day – yay!), I also get to help out a lot with the editing we are doing for vids on the site. Filming in RL is something I haven’t done since my media studies at college – I am a little fascinated with the idea of mixing RL with SL in media, so there may be a flip HD purchased in the near future.

Aaanyway, it’s a bank holiday and it’s time to update on my doings and viddings. First up is Pornosophy – which was challenging to film, a blast to edit, and still makes me chuckle when i toss (scuse the pun brits) the url out to a crowd of people. Certainly something to note is the fantastic, fantastic job done by the amazingly talented and all round nice bloke Xengu Kurka with the soundtrack – he asked me how way out I wanted it to be, and he delivered. If you aren’t into NSFW images, cover the screen and listen to this talented man at the very least!

Next up is my entry for the Rezzable “In the Mood” machinima competition. The Mood is a piece of music – St Louis Blues. The competition runs until May 20th, so all your machinimists – get your skates on, less than 2 weeks to go! I applaud Rezzable for doing this competition, the challenge is good, I know Rezzable understand the importance of Machinima as an emerging artform, and the fact they are encouraging it is really good work on their part (By theway, if you haven’t seen their Egypt installation – you REALLY Must check it out – it’s quite amazing, and they are pushing the boundaries of VW’s and leading the way – bravo Rezzable folks!).

Lastly, and by no means least the first episode of “I Wanna Be a Celebrity” the joint venture between Metaverse TV and Phaylen Fairchild Productions has now premiered. I was lucky enough to be involved in this production (mostly from a position under the ground squished up and filming. The collaboration shown in this programme has me astounded – it’s one ting to be a lonely machinimatographer, rendering and uploading your own footage – imagine what it takes to co-ordinate 4 or 5 people filming, a cast of up to 15, 3 judges, a presenter, a set and the sometime vaguaries of SL Voice, and then get everything together in one place – usually a continent away, so someone can edit it into a programme of this standard is quite amazing. I usually think a 3 minute vid is going to kill me at some point – 25 minutes is a feat of the gods! I hadn’t seen this before yesterday, and even though I know what happens I was still captivated. Watch and enjoy  – new eps air for the next few weeks at 10pm EST/7pm PST every Friday.

Enjoy!

Well it’s been a busy couple of weeks since I got back from the states.

Loglady Loon asked me to do another machinima for her, for the opening of her very provocative Pornosophy installation on the ModaSL sims.  I was happy to oblige, and hauled ass to the sim for the opening event – which was exceptionally laggy due to being such a popular installation.

Here’s the link – please leave me a comment – comments are love (or hate!).

Pornosophy

It’s NSFW – but I am pleased with it, and the gorgeous slide guitar that the wonderful Xengu Kurka pulled out of the bag when I told him to be a dirty old man with the Zappa song.

Having some problems uploading this vid to a few places, mostly because of the content, even though I protest that it is art, and a reportage of art. I could be all drama queeny about it .. but there’s no point really!

Be aware before you click on the link that there are graphic images in that vid, but I still think it’s pretty playful. IN a kinda pervy way

Rezzable has a machinima competition that is next on my radar, so I need to get my thinking cap on for that. I’m also halfway through a couple of projects with Phaylen Fairchild – all will be revealed.

So I get this shiny new blog, and then I abandon it – nice eh? Well I was in the US visiting some good friends, but now I am back, and have some exciting stuff coming up!

First off is Pornosophy – opening night is monday the 6th of April

Pornosophy – Loglady Loon, who was the brains behind the fantastic Freak Show is opening a new exhibition – the timing is interesting given the recent LL decision regarding adult content. I am going to have fun with this machinima, I can tell!

Once I have the full details of the nights events, I will post them here, along with the finished machinima.

Hmm a lot has happened in a few days!

Much crapness that Safari 4 beta doesn’t work with wordpress admin page properly – I reported it, but still crappy :S Ohh and Vimeo uploads don’t work either. I sense a trend.. anything I try and use LOL

The SL community has erupted following the announcement regarding the Adult policy that Linden Lab is going to put into place. I have particular views on that, that I am sure I will spout forth on at some point, but seeing as the greater and the more illustrious have already done that, I am not going to bore you with that yet, and certainly not til more information becomes available.

Fishies was accepted into a RL film festival! Wow what a huge shock that IM was! Fishies will be shown at the Indie Music Video Festival in May. Needless to say Sesi and I were grinning like Cheshire cats over that little nugget of news. More info when I have it.

So the Ning machinima group (which you should join if you are into Machinima and on SL), had a mashup kinda thing the other day. We all went to a sim and played instruments and had a great giggle for a band thing, and then we all filmed it to see what we could come up with. Here’s mine – the lag wasn’t good, and it was late for me, it’s just a bit of a giggle really – isn’t that what it’s supposed to be?

Anyway, here it is…

So after a few hours of putzing about with this thing, I have it in a near semblance of a starting point. My RL job is a Community Editor/although that’s really more like Social Media Evangelist at the moment, and I never had a blog in all my years in this business, because I never thought I was interesting enough. Community – sorry Social Media (hate that term btw) people sometimes like to lurk and get the feel for things, we are supposed to be the hosts at a very informal dinner party, who mop up the red wine spills, and show people the way to the loo, and let everyone get on with the job of having fun.

But Second Life changes you, the creativity that blossoms in those that allow it, means that slowly but surely the need to place one’s head squarely above the parapet assimilates itself into the psyche. The need to shout about what you have made or created asserts itself.

In a world where anything is possible, it’s our job to create isn’t it?

Why I am placing this outside SL and in the interwebs of the real world, however is anyone’s guess.

Gonna be a journey, that much is for sure – I know this cause I just spent 166 USD on hosting this bloody site, so I am gonna get some damn good use out of it.

Phaylen, this is all your fault!

So I finally got a blog. After 13 years online in some form or another, and 10 years actually working in New Media, I got a blog. But this blog isn’t about ME, it’s about Second Life and my adventures in there with my avatar, Toxic Menges.

I like to make films in Second Life. Sometimes I do them for other people, mostly I do them for myself. This is a repository of my films, my photos, and I suppose my adventures, and opinions about Second Life.

Gods, I hope you aren’t going to get bored.