Scary Fae-rytales: Fae Varriale

Fae Varriale

Some people are so talented that thy leave “normal residents” just speechless. Fae Varriale is one of them. The English, living in Wales, is not an artist rl and landet in Second Life just out of curiosity. As experienced gamer she wondered what SL could be. More accidentally she joined a contemporary dance company for a while and art took her by surprise a bit later. Fae tells: “I just landed in a creative community which started me off with building and landscaping. Then I discovered the SL artists on Flickr and it inspired me.”

Artwork by Fae Varriale

She taught herself building apart from a few tips from a friend when she got stuck early on. But she did wonderful pictures as well which found much appreciation in exhibitions., as well as her builds. Her last large work, a full sim installation revealed her wide variety of building skills. Now she joins the MadPea builders team and we asked her about it:

Part of her full sim installation Wonderlands

Quan Lavender: Now we have you in the Madpea team, that is great!

Fae Varriale: Yes, getting madder by the day! *laughs* Thanks to Harter's help I have just started trying my hand at mesh. By the way, I saw your talk with Bryn Oh on your blog, about artists and creating everything they use in their art, that was interesting. Its a hard one really, if I created all my sculpties I wouldn't have been able to express what I wanted here, but I would love to be good enough to do it. If you look at RL, the old masters often had their disciples doing the backgrounds in their paintings. Andy Warhol had a production line for his screen prints and Tracey Emin didn't build her bed.

Artwork by Fae Varriale

Quan Lavender: Yes, so true. We often forget that many artists had or have a team at the back. Christo never could have realized his projects without the help of his wife and the team. Here at MadPea you have a team at the back too! So, what are you building in the crazy team?

Fae Varriale: I made a fortune teller place and have just finished the ghost train and wait now for help with the scripts. That was a challenge to fit on the plot :) Hopefully it will scare a few folk when it pops up. They are going to get locked in there and have to find a key. It took me forever to escape from the damn room. *laughs*

Sounds like much crazy, scary MadPea fun!

Autumn Is Not Far - Come Hunting at MadPea

The Harvest Moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox. When the night of the Harvest Moon coincides with the night of the equinox, it is called a "Super Harvest Moon". Time for a new hunt, the Harvest Moon Hunt wich runs from August 26th - September 16th.    

                                                                  

                       

The Theme of this hunt is anything and everything to do with Harvest Time/Autumn. From clothing to Jumping into Autumn Leaves. All Items of the 70 participating shops will have the colors of Autumn in them. You have to look for a leaf. You get the hunts gifts for 1 Linden.

See here the cool gift from Madpea:

There are sits in all 2 arms and the seat of the bench.

See more details about the hunt here: http://beachsidehunts.blogspot.de/ 
And here you find photos of the Gifts: http://tinyurl.com/8qextxs

And here is you Taxi to MadPea: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/143/203/26

HAPPY HUNTING!

Show and Tell Today!

This nice picture is done by Cold Frog

And another week passed by...now building fans are looking forward to seing the next Show and Tell presentation today at 12 PM SLT. All varietes of works are highly welcome. Come and join Show and Tell, the place where all creative minds in SL come together. You can either choose to present your latest creation or sit in the audience to meet with others and see what new stuff is out there.


There will be L$ prizes split among all presenters, the pot will begin at L$1,000, but audience members are encouraged to toss more into the pot and usually gets pretty big. All kind of builders are invited to present! The great variety is the fun part of Show and Tell.
See you at 12 PM SLT!



Come to Show and Tell @ 12 PM SLT!

Taxi: http://slurl.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/155/114/3501

Don't miss Primtionary Today!

Every Saturday PRIMTIONARY fans meet at Madpea. Come and play with the coolest and funniest people. All levels of building abilities are welcome!

What is PRIMTIONARY?

PRIMTIONARY may just be the longest-running, most popular game in Second Life. It was created in early 2004. The rules are simple: the contestant puts together prims to build out a secret word, while the audience tries to guess the word within 10 minutes. The audience member that gets it right earns 25L and the privilege of building the next word. PRIMTIONARY is a challenge for both your mind and your building skills. From easy to impossible, we've got a level for you!

How to play?

An experience truly unique to the virtual world, PRIMTIONARY is the modern Pictionary: One person gets up on stage and is given a secret word by the host which describes what they have to build. The volunteer must try to build using basic prims. As they build the audience tries to figure out what the word is. The first person to guess the word wins a token prize - currently 25 Lindens per word - and, more importantly, the privilege of building the next word.

PRIMTIONARY is free of charge and open to all. Many experienced SL builders acquired their essential skills on a PRIMTIONARY stage.

WHEN?

Come today, Saturday at 2 PM SLT!
Guess, build, win Linden and have fun!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/88/180/3501  

The Poetic Engineer

Artwork by Yooma Mayo

MadPea has a really international team. One of the newer members is the Japanese builder and artist Yooma Mayo. Yooma became well known in Second Life with his huge installations on full sims. Technical parts of metal turn from looking far to poetic nature sceneries.

Artwork

Yooma Mayo in a human avatar

Yooma is RL in web engineering. But he was artist too: “ I've made some objects in RL before. I used mixed material. paper, wood, steel, glass. Sometimes I even used living wood. My RL creations stopped 10 years ago. Not only because of time limitations. My works has been so large and did not fit into my house. Thus, I mainly came to SL to create. The idea of user created content fascinated me and I think, prims are just another, new material.”

One of Yooma's many non human avatars

Yooma Mayo does not create only large objects in SL. In his main shop on the beautiful Kowloon sim he sells avatars and many playful items, mostly made of metal parts. His first product was a tiny avatar and that gave the shop his name: Yooma Guijin Dou. Dou means shop and Guijin is a word creation by him: Gui means fake and Jin is human, so Guijin is fake-human = avatar! The name of the shop is translated 'Yooma's Avatar Shop'.

Yooma likes rusted factory & mechanics. That's why he is the right person for building a creepy, rusted roller-coaster and rails for MadPea's Carneval. Yooma made a draft of the whole build and is now finishing it. He said: “I love roller-coaster and evil things :)” We are not allowed to reveal too much, but here is a sneak peek:

Yooma's Steel Wheel Man in a rusted roller-coaster

It will be great and eeeevillll!

Perfumed Cutlass Hunt

The legend of the Perfumed Cutlass is one hidden in obscurity but for the adventurous scholar who is willing to delve deep into the pirate books of lore, there is great reward in learning about the female pirate known as the Perfumed Cutlass. Though her tale might not be as bloody or body strewn as those of more notorious rogues there is a vast treasure at the end of her journey for those lucky enough to decipher the clues and find her hiding spot. 

Starting September 7th, you're in for a treat for the new grid-wide hunt by MadPea! 

Show and Tell is Exciting Each Sunday

1st place last week was Sea Mizin's virus

And another week passed by...now building fans are looking forward to seing the next Show and Tell presentation today at 12 PM SLT:

by Takni Miklos

All varietes of works are highly welcome. Come and join Show and Tell, the place where all creative minds in SL come together. You can either choose to present your latest creation or sit in the audience to meet with others and see what new stuff is out there.

by Firlefanz Roxley

There will be L$ prizes split among all presenters, the pot will begin at L$1,000, but audience members are encouraged to toss more into the pot and usually gets pretty big. All kind of builders are invited to present! The great variety is the fun part of Show and Tell.
See you at 12 PM SLT!

by Addy Sworthain

All photos taken by Harter Fall.

Come to Show and Tell @ 12 PM SLT!

Taxi: http://slurl.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/155/114/3501

Come For Building Fun With PRIMTIONARY!

Every Saturday quiz- and building friends are coming to MadPea for Primtionary. Don't miss that fun!

Popular SL game "PRIMTIONARY"                        

Running for over 6 years straight, Primtionary is one of the most - if the not THE most - popular group game in Second Life.  An experience truly unique to the virtual world, Primtionary is the modern Pictionary: One person gets up on stage and builds a secret word given to him or her by the host, while everyone in the audience tries to figure out what the word is.  The first player to get the word wins a token prize money (25L per word) and, more importantly, the privilege of building the next word.

How to play?
The game consists of one player "building a word". Think of what level you can build at: Easy, Medium, Hard, Evil or Impossible. Tell the host in chat what level you want.  They will give you a word in Instant Message for you to build at that level.  The first person that guesses the correct word wins that round and 25 Lindens, and is entitled to build on the next round. Please remove all of your build  off the stage.

You are not allowed to spell the word out or even part of the word.  You can use letters for the build but not if the letter is in the word.  Custom textures and colors for prims are allowed.  No textures are allowed that are the word.  As in "mural", you can't put a mural texture on the prim.  It does need to be built on stage, so you cannot pull something out of your inventory.  What is allowed is building green "CC" prims to represent "SOUNDS LIKE". The CC is a symbolic ear and that is why it is used for "SOUNDS LIKE". You can also use a green "+" if you need to break down the word into syllables.  You can use a green arrow to point at what you want the audience to see or say.  No scripts are to be used in the build, and no sculpties are allowed.

Come to MadPea at 2 PM SLT!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/88/180/3501  

The Benefits of Mesh: RAG Randt

Today we are happy to present one of younger MadPea team members: RAG (Rag Randt). He combines having fun in Second Life with learning for RL. It was exciting to hear him talking about the benefits of mesh building.

Quan Lavender: You are quite a long time in SL. Was building your main interest from the beginning?

RAG: Well, not too intensely. I was concerned with uploading my 2D art. I wanted to display my 2D art in SL as a promotion for my RL work, but quickly found out that SL was not that kind of market..too small. But then i discovered the work of A.M Radio and Bryn's. I discovered a whole new communication medium: a new way to tell stories. So i realized I needed to learn how to build here and about the same time mesh was being talked about. I got interested in the open source 3D program 'blender'. So for the past 2 years I have been studying and learning blender

Quan Lavender: You started with smaller artworks, I still have and love that cute house with windows and went to 3D then.

RAG's Art Studio

RAG (rag.randt): Yes, I learned building on my own through Building Brewery and tutorials on blender guru and blender cookie. I would like to get back to artwork soon. But no time.. I have so much to learn with mesh and blender and much more!

Quan Lavender: But good to have you in the MadPea team now :)) So, what are you building here?

RAG: Well I am thrilled to be here! And I learn a lot too. I build stores for the builders which are run down structures to fit in with the general decay of the new sim build. This is my first and my last store using prims, because now I know how to upload mesh and textures integrated and it is much more efficient with lag etc. good for the sim performance. This store is 77 prims, the mesh houses are 15. That is important! But have a look here. This house is the latest mesh upload :) Its fun working with mesh, so flexible.

The Prim Store

Quan Lavender: In which way is it more flexible than sculpts or prims?

RAG: I am not limited in any way with mesh because I can make it in blender using points lines and faces; making any shape possible and relatively easy and less laggy in many instances!

Quan Lavender: I experience that too as user, but why is mesh less laggy?

RAG: Because we can control the amount of verticies (points) the structure has. So for instance if I have a simple cube. In a sculpt that has to have 1024 points or verticies. With mesh, i can make that same cube with 8! And I am working on my first car to upload too. There is a trick i am learning.....I can upload a beautiful car, but it would be 1000 prim equivalent! So, I am learning to make a low PE car but texturing it so that it looks high PE (prim equivalent).

The Mesh House

Quan Lavender: You are designer RL, does your experience in SL helps for your RL job?

RAG: My RL job is changing into SL technology: mesh...I am looking to become a master mesh designer and will use 3D technology to supply the growing 3D industry. In SL and any 3D application. My traditional 2D print illustration industry has been in market decline for a long time now and the 3D world is a new medium for me as an illustrator/designer. It's a tough transition but its good for the brain to learn new things. But i can apply all my old techniques. Mesh consists of two major components: topology and texturing.

Quan Lavender: You have fun and learn at the same time! That is perfect! Do you think that 3D animation and 3D worlds will have an increasing importance in future worlds?

RAG: Yes. In many industries such as education and advertising, training and of course gaming.

Quan Lavender: Thank you Rag, that was interesting! Is there anything you want to say to our readers?

RAG: Always learn new things, then you will never feel left behind in life and make sure your mesh has good topology. This is the way you structure the mesh in an object. With good topology you have good textures and good movement.

Mister WarBug

The MadPea team has many cool members, who are always good for some fun. Among them Arduenn Schwartzman, who is packed with crazy ideas. Many of them can be found near his WarBug Store. While visiting his shop – of course – we started talking about his famous WarBugs.

Quan Lavender: WarBug is a long running success obviously. How got you the idea?

Arduenn Schwartzman: I got inspired by several things. The idea of having a dogfight combat sim was lingering in my mind years before the WarBugs already. For starters: Of all computer games that have ever existed, I have enjoyed flight simulators the most. I already played 'Fighter Pilot', an F-15 simulator on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, in the 80s when I was in high school. In SL, I had a vision about having a few sims with two airports for competing.

Testflight at WarBug

Quan Lavender: That sounds good; flying from sim to sim...

Arduenn Schwartzman: Actually, crossing sims has always been a problem in SL. Especially with fast-moving objects. So that's why I had the idea of making smaller and slower planes--Not necessarily for tinies or micros, but also normally sized avatars. They would just have to squeeze their arms and legs together to fit in. That's how the WarBugs were born. I made then fly slower so a single sim would be more than enough for dogfights. And it seems to work quite well, ;) Yet, WarBugs still seem the most popular among tinies. I was also inspired by the Wallace and Gromit movies of course! There's one famous scene where the motorcycle sidecar that carries the dog Gromit detaches and turns into a little airplane. (Spitting image of a WarBug!)
 

Inspired by Wallace and Gromit

 Quan Lavender: To use the WarBugs, people need to rez, right?

Arduenn Schwartzman: Well, there's two kinds of WarBugs... Private WarBugs that can only be piloted by their owners, and need to be rezzed on a land by them. So, on no-rez area's there's no way, unless you rez it somewhere else and fly to that land... But the other kind of WarBug rezzes from a rezzer placed there by the land owner. Moreover, those planes are accessible by anyone. And the rezzers keep the combat scores and relay them to http://warbug.net .

Quan Lavender: Your shop has so much more to offer, many fun items.

Arduenn Schwartzman: The best selling item in my shop is the tummy talker! I have so many bad reviews for that! *Laughs* Mine's the only one that makes nasty gurgling sounds. I even quote the bad reviews in the marketplace picture. It is bought very frequently by people who actually hate tummy talkers too. They wear them in protest. Personally, I find it a bit weird, talking tummies, and people talking to prim babies and change diapers while that's actually the worst thing about babies IRL. I sell a prim baby in a jar of formaldehyde. Its diaper never needs to be changed and it only cost L$1! Here lemme show you my little shop of sexually transmittable diseases and abortions.

Quan Lavender: I am not sure if I want to see it ;)

Arduenn Schwartzman:  It's quite decent. I try to keep things Moderate here. Here, for instance, is a Bratwurst on a stick, to carry around. You see: I make a lot of items that enrich SL greatly! I have a nice disease here too: herpes! My noob avatar ('The Lady's Man') is a disease too ofcourse. It's surprisingly popular on MP, even though it's the standard horribly-looking n00b avatar with cheap jeans, freebie hair, very wrong body shape and some special 'attachment'. I think I'm partially responsible now for n00bs looking very bad in SL. Finally, there are dozens of other gadgets, such as an electric pink kitten guitar, wearable rain clouds, assorted wearable furniture and, of course, fart gadgets. Fart pranks are not my favority type of humor, but they sell damn well in SL!

WarBug Headquarters Airfield

Quan Lavender: I see, these items are necessarily needed for a proper life in SL. And your prices are really cheap!

Arduenn Schwartzman: To be honest, I've always been stupid about money. And the terrorist griefer in me dictates that, in order to undermine SL economy, I have so tell all this stuff at ridiculously low prices. But the sheer size of the SL market makes that impossible of course, so the only one affected by this is me :) But I make enough to pay the parcel rent, so why increase the prices? L$10 is a nice and magical number to sell things at. (Yet, selling WarBugs helps pay the rent too.)

Quan Lavender: Oh wow, that is good! So, what brought you here and how came that you started creating?

Arduenn Schwartzman: Well, that famous interview with Anche Chung about six years ago was my first encounter with SL. ( http://boingboing.net/2006/12/21/second-life-griefers.html ) My reaction was: Wow, that SL thing is really cool! So I subscribed, with a couple of weblog friends and we started to terrorize the town, like a good noob would do. We'd bump into people shopping at Yadni's freebie store in wheelchairs and flashmob real life company sims. But then of course you settle down a bit and take things a bit more seriously in SL. :) ... (Sometimes) ... It actually took about a year for me to discover that building stuff in SL is fun. It was about then that I saw the full Lego potential and went crazy making fun little things for the Hobo community.

Quan Lavender: Do you have RL background for creating?

Arduenn Schwartzman: Throughout my life I've been drawing and designing a lot, even though I started a career as scientist, and do experiments in a lab with DNA and proteins and viruses and bacteria. That was kinda fun and creative too ;) I did a lot of teaching as well, which was a lot of fun. My favorite journal to publish in was The Journal of Virology (impact factor 5.5, I think). Nonetheless, as my career evolved, it became more and more a desk job. I've been cutting down with work a bit more lately though. My wife took over, partially, so I'm half housedad now, able to spend more time with drawing and designing again. My wife supports my time being spent building in SL, as long as I can cash in some L$ to do RL groceries. *laughs* SL's a great place to be creative. I've learned a lot of new things here--even HTML5, Javascript and jQuery and such things, to make SL communicate with the web. My latest passion is 3D design. I really love the new mesh capabilities in SL.

Quan Lavender: Let's talk about MadPea, you are currently more involved in the creation process. What are you doing?



First peek behind the curtains at MadPea

Arduenn Schwartzman: That's a very big secret! There's a big secret project under development at MadPea now, and it's very new and spectacular. I'm building at the landing point of the new 'game', so it is supposed to make a pretty good first impression! The new MadPea project was an opportunity for me to learn to make mesh objects. It took me a few weeks watching tutorial videos and talking with people and LOTS of practice ;) But it really is satisfying. With mesh you can do stuff never seen before in SL. And mesh has been around for such a long time in other platforms and games as well, so I'm glad it made it here too. It's actually easier to make mesh than sculpties too, so you'll be seeing a lot more mesh from me in the future.



Quan Lavender: Thank you Arduenn. Looks as if we can look forward to a great new game at MadPea!



Have Fun at Show and Tell Today 12 PM!

Come to Show and Tell, present your works and win Linden! Or come as visitor, enjoy and vote!

Last weeks winner was Takeo Kanashimi

This is the show where creative types share with others their latest creations.  You can show anything. The only limitation right now is our space for the size of something.   Please note in advance that the showing area is 25 x 25 meters, in a circle....please be able to fit your build in that area.  If you're going to present, please show only items that you have made. 

2nd place: levi Ewing

We have openings for 6 presenters. You will have about 8 minutes to present your works.
If you'd like to present, it's a good idea to show up a little early and let us know...we think the board will fill up pretty quickly.

3rd place:  Mucus Mesmeriser

If you'd like to come and just observe, please do, it should be a lot of fun! We do the show in voice, so as long as you can hear you are good..but you are able to text if you cannot talk.

Today's host Arduenn Schwartman made place 5 last week

There will be L$ prizes split among all presenters, the pot will begin at L$1,000, but audience members are encouraged to toss more into the pot.

See you at 12PM SLT!

Taxi:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/155/114/3501
 Hit the lm again once you arrive to get to the arena.

Come to PRIMTIONARY Today!

Primtionary already has a made a fan group at Madpea. Come and play with the coolest and funniest people. All levels of building abilities are welcome!

What is PRIMTIONARY?

PRIMTIONARY may just be the longest-running, most popular game in Second Life. It was created in early 2004. The rules are simple: the contestant puts together prims to build out a secret word, while the audience tries to guess the word within 10 minutes. The audience member that gets it right earns 25L and the privilege of building the next word. PRIMTIONARY is a challenge for both your mind and your building skills. From easy to impossible, we've got a level for you!

How to play?

An experience truly unique to the virtual world, PRIMTIONARY is the modern Pictionary: One person gets up on stage and is given a secret word by the host which describes what they have to build. The volunteer must try to build using basic prims. As they build the audience tries to figure out what the word is. The first person to guess the word wins a token prize - currently 25 Lindens per word - and, more importantly, the privilege of building the next word.

PRIMTIONARY is free of charge and open to all. Many experienced SL builders acquired their essential skills on a PRIMTIONARY stage.

WHEN?

Come today, Saturday at 2 PM SLT!
Guess, build, win Linden and have fun!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/88/180/3501 

Bored? Come for Hunting at MadPea!

MadPea is working hard on the current projects. In the meantime you have our events to enjoy, like Primtionary, Show and Tell and others. But currently we are also participating two hunts!

The first hunt is the Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves Hunt. The great gift is a necklace with a violin in two sizes. The violins are playing 4 beautiful melodies each.

The second hunt is SKULL-N-BONES The Pirate Hunt 2. The MadPea gift is a photoprop.

What you will get is a copy of "puzzle 2"  in the new MadPea adventure puzzle game "Pocket Pirates".  This copy does not, however have an active puzzle, it is more of a teaser/photo prop.  The perms are set to MOD, so you can add any poses or scripts you like and can modify it to suit your needs. We hope you get hours of fun-filled enjoyment out of this gift. Do feel free to upload any photos you may take to the MadPea Game Flickr group:  http://www.flickr.com/groups/madpeagames/

Chic Aeon made a nice blog post using the photoprop:

Come on hunting!

Taxi:  http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/154/107/3501

Show and Tell @ 12 PM!

Come and join Show and Tell, the place where all creative minds in SL come together. You can either choose to present your latest creation or sit in the audience to meet with others and see what new stuff is out there. You know we all love NEW STUFF!!

If you'd like to present, it's a good idea to show up a little early and let us know...we think the board will fill up pretty quickly.

If you're going to present, please show only items that you have made. 
Please note in advance that the showing area is 25 x 25 meters, in a circle....
please be able to fit your build in that area.

If you'd like to come and just observe, please do, it should be a lot of fun!

There will be L$ prizes split among all presenters, the pot will begin at L$1,000, but audience members are encouraged to toss more into the pot and usually gets pretty big.

See you at 12 pm SLT!

Taxi:  http://slurl.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/155/114/3501
 

PRIMTIONARY today!

Hey Peas, come for building, guessing and fun, come to PRIMTIONARY! Each level of builders can take part! Linden prizes to win!

What is PRIMTIONARY?

PRIMTIONARY may just be the longest-running, most popular game in Second Life. It was created in early 2004. The rules are simple: the contestant puts together prims to build out a secret word, while the audience tries to guess the word within 10 minutes. The audience member that gets it right earns 25L and the privilege of building the next word. PRIMTIONARY is a challenge for both your mind and your building skills. From easy to impossible, we've got a level for you!

How to play?

An experience truly unique to the virtual world, PRIMTIONARY is the modern Pictionary: One person gets up on stage and is given a secret word by the host which describes what they have to build. The volunteer must try to build using basic prims. As they build the audience tries to figure out what the word is. The first person to guess the word wins a token prize - currently 25 Lindens per word - and, more importantly, the privilege of building the next word.

PRIMTIONARY is free of charge and open to all. Many experienced SL builders acquired their essential skills on a PRIMTIONARY stage.

WHEN?

Come today, Saturday at 2 PM SLT!
Guess, build, win Linden and have fun!

Taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/MadPea%20Base/88/180/3501