Tuesday, November 11, 2008

What I'm up to

Here are my current plans and projects. This is a six-month plan, and would mark a completion of everything I want to get done in SL at present. After this I will review if whether or not I want to stop all additional development in SL and leave, depending on whether Linden Lab massively changes the way it works, as at the present with the handling of the openspace policy and the policy itself, it has shown that it could care less about its customers want.

Interzone: this is a full sim build with nearly everything sculpted, using holistic sculpting (more on what that in a future post.) Interzone is to be a sim-size steampunk seafaring city, analogous to a pre-modern arcology. Theme-wise, it is a mobile sea and air ship port, center of commerce, and gathering point for all sorts of free-wheeling types, from pirates, treasure hunters, diplomats, and traders. Interzone is short for International Zone, which you can read about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_zone. Tangier is one example, and the idea is similar to free ports such as Morocco (a staple setting of international intrigue in modern cinema and literature). It will not be victorian but feature a range of architectural styles (tudor, san-fran style victorian, industrio-steampunk, and perhaps some Chinese), and some anachronistic elements. The idea is that even though the general theme is "fantasy steampunk," due to its transient nature a great number of avatar themes could fit in. There's also some general social commentary it will try to make in its construction, which will be more optimist than dystopian.

While I progress in this long-term project, I plan to set for sale the components and builds I make for it. Most likely very reasonably priced to encourage the spread of steampunk culture (the project is not primarily commercial in motive.)

Aside from that, there's also some actual _work_ I need to do. Now that Oblong sculpts are released, sculpts are at their prime. I have unreleased work in many of these fields that would make them roll out faster:

Near Completion:

1) Sculpted Chains Rehash using Oblongs (boxing them up at the moment)
2) Sculpted Letters (mostly finished; only fine polishing needed.)
3) Sculpted Pathways (again, mostly finished)

Future plans, in order:

Scene components (going from exterior, to architectural, to more individual elements)
4) sculpted plants and trees, for perhaps a month.
5) rope bridges.
6) Architectural components, including new stairs, railings, windows, doors, columns, and visual details
7) Furniture, such as chairs, couches, bookcases (with books), benches, and tables.
8) Interior details such as furnaces, fireplaces, lights, chandeliers, and appliances.

Building components:
9) Specific jewelry elements, such as jewelry chains and jewel settings
10) Mechanical elements, such as new gears, animated pistons, nuts, bolts, beams, etc
11) Generalized "primtype" elements which are multiple objects per prim.
12) Animal and Character/Avatar bits.

Sometime:

Vehicles, including cars, airships, and steampunk vehicles.
Sculpture ("pure" sculpt art, something I want to get into at some point).
Landscaping effects, such as water, rocks, and caves.

Along the way, I plan to create mini-tutorials on sculpt design, and eventually compile them into a full website.

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