Minerva

Venus did not stay the only ancient sculpture I was about to (re)build in second life. Shortly after the lady’s arrival at her virtual home, Intlibber Brautigan commissioned me to sculpt 3 goddesses, related to trade in ancient times. I chose Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Pallas Athena and the Etruscan Menvra, since she was considered to be the virgin goddess of -among others- commerce and crafts.Being still in the avant-scupltie era, I used the same technique to “paint” her face…

 

… and turned and twisted prims and rotated textures to make the rest of her body.

 

 

 

Venus

I am proud to present to you, dear readers and lovers of 3D art, my virtual replica of the Venus by Milo. I made it before “sculpties” were introduced in Second Life, and as a consequence, the lady is a rather large collection of primitives. For those unfamiliar with 3D building in second life, I should explain the difference between “sculpties” and primitives. Sculpties came to Second Life somewhere around May 2007, and offered the plebs of which I am a part, the possibility to import 3D-files into the virtual world. This is done through the uploading of the 3D-file’s texture. In a nutshell this means that now you can make a face with only one primitive, i.e. the imported texture (if you are a real 3D hero), whereas before you had to use (at least I had to) not less than 30 primitives. For the old school Venus, I spent hours and hours rotating its texture in order to make her face a bit “face-like”, in fact using the texture as paint, creating shadows and highlights. 

I had already used this technique on the statues of the French Air pop stars. While I was creating these,  Intlibber Brautigan passed by and saw me “painting” their faces. A few weeks later, he commissioned me to sculpt Venus. The picture below shows the number of primitives used in the sculpture. Each circle is one primitive.

 

Cat and Mouse Games

Since it is only human to do -once in a while- as one pleases, I started a series about a cat wanting to catch a mouse. And because it is always easier to comment the past than the future, I can assure you that I am talking about a very limted one: a series of two. In fact it ended up as a pair, so to speak. Anyway, the cat is ready to grab the mouse, but does not know about his dinner’s secret weapon … a Edam cheese, glittering (or sweating) so hard, that it serves the mouse as a mirror.For amusement only!  

 

In the second, and last (!), sculpture of this series, the mouse hides in an old piano.

 

 

and, as one can tell, the cat does not look very friendly at all  

 

 

The Missing Link

Each evolution comes in stages. Here, dear friends, you would say a transition phase would be appropriate in order to make the step from the 3D assembly of animals to the sculpting of human beings. And I agree, as can be seen below. Because that step is a really big one. Human beings, although being mere mammals themselves, seem so much harder to sculpt! 

 

Unfortunately, I made these mermaids after my first human sculptures (see earlier), but I assure you, if I were to do it again, I consider following my own advice!

The End of Oyster Bay

Even before I had the opportunity to tell my newly acquired readers (anybody there?) about Oyster Bay, it is closing down. Morris Vig (as portraited by my hand from a picture I stole from his secondarts blog and on which he already appears to be in a slight state of red alert) just sent me a notecard explaining me when (very soon), why (more about that later) and how (locking the door and throwing the key away?)  Anyway, today might be the last day you can visit Oyster Bay, so hop out of those beds and get over to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Oyster/24/162/83

Statues for AIR – Pocket Symphony

In the meanwhile, I had met Nick Rhodes, who was so kind to believe in my sculpting talent and asked me to make him a SL remake of the real life statues of Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicholas Godin, the two members of the French pop group AIR (http://www.pocket-symphony.com/) whose new CD was about to be released. He told me that when I was able to sculpt 3D animals, I could do people as well. Now, could I? In every good book, a little voice starts whispering in your ear to take care and to remember the hard moose past, but as we all know, life is not a fairy tale and I did not hear anything at all. And yes, I did it again – no problem, I will sculpt them, what is the deadline? And that is why my days became longer and my rest at night grew shorter as I chiseled, bevelled, cut and pasted hard and soft, rotated textures … Two weeks later, my eyes were screen shaped, and time was up. I love deadlines! Without them, I think I still would be working on the pop stars right now.

 

Newfoundland Animals

These are the animals I made for the Newfoundland sim of Carlbodt Truss. Many more were to follow, but Carlbodt Truss left Second Life and sold the island to someone who was less nature and art minded and who threw the animals and their creator out.  Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not cash 200$! 

First try: moose and caribou – I spent hours on them, a good punishment for thinking you can do everything without any practice and saying you are a moose making expert when someone asks if you are able to sculpt one.

Second try: a polar bear .

 

Third try: a killer whale. For this one, I went to do some industrial espionage on Starax’s orca (sorry S, but you moved on – to a much higher level I must say-  so I thought you would not care too much.                              

        

 

The orca is followed by wolves, 

         

a fox, sleeping on a rock (texture practice on the face of the fox)                                                                                  

 

and with a set of rabbits,

 

 

the Newfoundland page in my book of Second Life was turned. Another chapter was about to start.

My First Mecenas

Beware, dear reader, being a newbie in Second Life is not a laughing matter! There I was, with my bird and silly cat, without  a piece of land and a sudden and unexplained urge to build virtual stuff. The 3D virus had bitten me: I simply had to create and would have done it anywhere. Which was exactly what I did, I sculpted in sandboxes, on the bottom of the virtual see, even while earning a few lindens on camping chairs. And once in a while I visited Reuters, just arrived in Second Life and at that time a very crowded place, not with griefers, or chat-sick fellow noobs, but with more experienced and -in my prim eyes- more interesting avatars.  Carlbotd Truss, a friendly and very kind land baron (whose portrait I made to his honour – to be admired below) was one of them. He offered me a piece of his private Newfoundland sim to build on in peace, and later on commissioned me to make every single animal, living in the real world Newfoundland.  Goodbye camping chairs, here comes Charlot Dickins!                                                                                                                                                                                            

My First Creation

As I landed  in Second Life, out of curiosity about the 3D remakes of cities such as London, Amsterdam and New York, the first thing to do was to build myself an avatar. I pictured myself as a female remake of Gaston Lagaffe, a Belgian comic book figure, wearing shabby clothes and always accompanied by a seagull and a cat. After failing to make myself a puppet that had to depict me as “Gastonne Lagaffe”, I hoped to find a suitable set of clothes. Those who are familiar with the dress code in SL will know my mission to find myself a worn out outfit was more than impossible. So I decided to postpone (!) these 2 items to a later date in the far away future, skipped them without remorse and hopped over to Gaston’s third characteristic: the animals following him around. And again, surprise, surprise, no animals were crossing my path, and when I saw one, it sure was not willing to follow me for free. I decided that, if I could not find nor buy my animals, I would make them myself. I started dissecting a street cat I had found,  learned to build and script and made myself my own black and white cat. Which followed me around! Unfortunately, sometimes and -in my newby eyes- without no reason, it started to turn, ended up on its back and was looking really ridiculous. And because I do not tend to make my life too hard on myself, I regarded this mission as half accomplished, put the cat in the drawer, and started to build the bird. Which is following me around since! (although I have to admit it is not a seagull, but a swallow, but who cares and who knows Gaston Lagaffe anyway). Birdie has opened many building doors for me, just by flying above my head and has even become the logo carrying bird of the SL-world famous sculptor Cheen Pitney (see link).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Well, Here It Is!

Indeed, as mentioned above, here it is: Charlot’s Web. After having been victim of repeated threats of some of my virtual friends, I considered giving in to their demands was the best thing to do and, hence, I started this blog. Moreover, I have to admit they were right in the first place and I should have made a blog a long, long time ago. Which I didn’t and that is probably why you, dear reader, doesn’t know anything about me at all. Well, from now on, and after you have been reading about and following my periodical virtual adventures and real life thoughts, your world will not be the same anymore, so beware! The more intelligent reader amongst you (anybody there?) will already have concluded that the undersigned is suffering from a heavy case of the feared postponement disease, nothing to do with herself -no no- but running in the family. But first things first, hello there, my avatar name is Charlot Dickins and I am a virtual sculptor. I spend my time turning and twisting primitives and baking textures in order -in reverse order of importance- to please the eye of my virtual fellow citizens, and for my very own real life pleasure. Doing this for nearly a year and a half, I can say I have gathered a collection of sculptures, some made as a commission, others just out of inspiration and the blue. So, finally doing what my friends asked, I will throw these sculptures on the web an show them to those interested. Do not fear, my friends, for I shall only show them to you one by one! And because this is supposed to be an introduction on the www, I will start with a nicely made self-portrait.