So I had a spark of inspiration tonight and decided that it might be fun to make a video of me working a picture up, a simple picture, from beginning to end. Be warned… it’s VERY fast, but pretty fun to watch! Interested in seeing it? Check out the video here… or watch it below!

As of tonight, I will be out of town in New York City until late, late Friday night. Real life work… always getting in the way. Thought I would drop that all on you for now, so that no one freaks out like last time when I left town and was unresponsive for a few days!

I’ll leave you with this… my latest release on Flickr. Click for the Flickr page!

And the caption, as I’m sure some of you will probably recognize…

Come little children, I’ll take thee away…
Into a land of enchantment.
Come little children, the time’s come to play…
Here, in my garden of magic.

See you this weekend for my LIX Designs launch!!!

Whew! I finished this video about 30 seconds before I started sneezing uncontrollably, so… forgive me if I sound a little congested! Why do I keep doing these when I’m sick I wonder? Huh. Anyway!

I came to the realization this morning that I’ve been promising this tutorial for a while, and I suck, my apologies for not getting it out here sooner.

This video actually sucks in comparison to my other tutorial videos (quality wise, not intellect wise :P), because for some reason my computer was going all hokey this morning and not letting me produce the video as a flash file… so here it is as a Quicktime video with shitty quality. But… que sera sera. At least it will explain how to combine the shots! :P

Hope you guys find this a little useful. :) Any questions, feel free to IM me!

Check out the tutorial video here!

PS: It’s going to be about 45 minutes before the video is actually live… it’s a 200mb file (damn MOV files) and still uploading while I run to work! <3

My dear friend CodeBastard Redgrave, an exquisite photographer and brilliant scripter, has started a series that she has aptly named “Boudoir Rouge”. Comprised of many of SL’s elite business women and creators — those behind the scenes, known but not necessarily in the spotlight — it is a sexy and tasteful series, magically composed of beauty and crimson.

Among the names that Codie has managed to capture are Ana Lutetia, Dakota Buck, Callie Cline, Roslin Petion, Shockwave Plasma, Gwyneth Llewelyn, and of course… yours truly:

If you haven’t seen this beautiful compilation of sass and womanly vigor, I highly recommend checking out Codie’s Flickr page and taking it in. Besides, who doesn’t like women in sexy lingerie? ;)

Codie is the creator of the Machinima Cam, SL’s first Machinima camera HUD. Check it out at OnRez!

As many of you know, I am heavy into the Second Life art scene and participate regularly in various artistic events (photography contests, gallery openings, the SL Artists Network, etc). Recently, my good friend Track Hax, owner of the Avatrait Gallery in Second Life presented me with what I can only consider the opportunity of a lifetime: the ability to teach a free introductory art class for residents.

Words can’t even EXPRESS how excited I am about this.

The official press release (thanks, Eschatos!) is as follows:

Avatrait Gallery is very pleased to announce the start of
a new series of in-world Art classes, beginning this
month with celebrated Second Life designer, artist and
photographer Ryker Beck who will be leading “S.L. Art 101:
An Introduction” on Wednesday, January 23rd, at 6pm SLT.

Ms. Beck, a Second Life resident with a special interest
in in-world fashion,photography, and art, has been blogging
her experiences at http://rykerbeck.com,where she has also
relocated her popular graphic and scripting tutorial series.
She is a writer for ASpiRE! Magazine, and has recently
launched her own in-world jewelry design business, Beck’s
Fine Jewelry.

This will be the official launch of Avatrait’s in-world
classes. Ryker Beck will be teaching the modules of how
to create art in Second Life, but there will also be
classes on Art History, Art Appreciation, and other topics
of art and in-world photography interest, on Wednesday
evenings (with machinima re-plays on Thursday afternoons)
every month as part of the new Avatrait activity calendar.

The Avatrait Gallery
(http://slurl.com/secondlife/Simuality/41/213/35)
features Second Life’s most outstanding artists, one of
whose works are featured every month, with exclusive
collectible one-of-a-kind framed images available in-world,
and high quality framed prints available through the
Avatrait web site (http://Avatrait.com) for real-world
display.

This certainly does promise to be a class to remember. With my lesson plan already mapped out, and development underway, I am busy at work preparing for what I hope will be one of the best introductory classes in Second Life. I sincerely hope all of you can come, and I can’t wait to see you all there!

PS: If you have any special requests for something you’d perhaps like to see, please don’t hesitate to let me know… I might be able to squeeze a few juicy tidbits in. And if you DO attend the event, please don’t forget to ask questions! This will be a very interactive affair, and I welcome and would LOVE feedback!

I am sure most of us, by now, have heard the name Paolo Bade. I had the pleasure of meeting him (early) this morning at AvaTrait’s Meet the Artist gathering, which Venkman so kindly invited me to! Paolo is an incredibly talented photographer, and his exhibition “Sex and the Virtual Landscape” is one that truly should not be missed by any means. I fully encourage anyone, if you have not seen it yet, to head on over to AvaTrait and see the exhibition while it still exists. There is also a photo contest involving the sets that Paolo has built and you, the SL photographer.

Further information from Stephen Venkman:

Here is your chance to show us what you can do with the sets created for “tribute” to Helmut Newton. Paolo along with Avatrait will be holding a photo contest starting December 2nd @ 4 am PST. All you need to do is come through the exhibit and take some photo’s using the set’s created for his exhibit. All images need to be received by December 9th by 6 pm SLT in order to qualify and only one photo for avatar name. Please send photo images to Paolo Bade @ paolobade@gmail.com with the following information:

- Mail Subject: Avatrait Contest
- avatar name
- title you named the photo
- a brief comment to your photo

We will then post all images up for the public to vote on during the following week. On Sunday the 16th we will then tally the votes and a quialified jury will choose the winner among the 3 most voted photos. Winner will receive a unique, unpublished photo of the Newton series.

I don’t know about everyone else, but while I was growing up, I was very, very religious. And while my beliefs have changed dramatically as I’ve gotten older, my love for the music I listened to then did not. And since I’m going home next week for Thanksgiving, and I’ll see all of my old youth group friends for the first time in six years… I’ve been getting very nostalgic. So I started listening to some of the old music again… waking up old memories. Feeling old feelings.

Here is an image inspired by one of my favorite songs, by a band called Jars of Clay.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In open fields of wild flowers,
she breathes the air and flies away
She thanks her Jesus for the daises and the roses
in no simple language
Someday she’ll understand the meaning of it all
He’s more than the laughter or the stars in the heavens
As close a heartbeat or a song on her lips
Someday she’ll trust Him and learn how to see Him
Someday He’ll call her and she will come running
and fall in His arms and the tears will fall down and she’ll pray,

“I want to fall in love with You.”

I read this amazing, amazing, AMAZING blog post today, written by Marc McGuinness of the Business of Design Online blog. While 90% of the blog post is heavily geared towards writers of somesort (bloggers, novelists, poets, etc), I found a lot of the information he provided to actually be pretty fucking useful and insightful for the mind of an artist in general.I’ll begin this post by saying that this is in no way Second Life related. But for those of you who are bloggers, writers of some sort, or graphic/digital artists (like so many of us are!), then you might actually be interested in what I’m about to write about.

Now, back to the incredible Mr. McGuinness. Essentially, his post was about time management, and the necessity of organization in order to effectively enhance your creative work flow. He gives you some intriguing questions to ask yourself, a few pointers, explains the concept of “self-hypnosis” to get into the “creative zone”… Effectively, the entire little “seminar” is about 5 blog posts long and a LOT of reading… but REALLY worth the ride.

For those of you who don’t want to read all five posts, I’ll sum up some stuff for you. For those of you who do want to read every word this brilliant man has to say, I will provide the links in order:

Post #1 - Why You Need to be Organised to be Creative

This post was more an introduction to the proceeding four than anything else. Marc goes on to explain the importance of setting aside time to work towards obtaining your own personal goals, along with the goals everyone else expects you to accomplish. He also gives you the following questions to ask yourself, mostly to “assess” your personal creative needs:

What is your attitude to organising your creative work? Do you see organisation as soulless, uncreative routine or as a necessary, helpful part of your creative process?

• What effect does feeling muddled and disorganised have on your creativity?
• Which areas of your work would you like to be more organised about?
• What do you like about chaos? Where in your work do you want to give chaos and randomness free rein?

Post #2 - Prioritise Work That is ‘Important But Not Urgent’

This post goes on to explain the four levels of prioritisation and how you rate your tasks effects the work you are able to accomplish realistically. Noting Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, McGuinness states in his post that:

Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent (the blue square in the diagram). Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with.

He also follows the post up with four more questions:

• Think of the achievements you are most proud of, and that have added most value to your life and work. When you were working on them, how many of them fell into the ‘important but not urgent’ category?
• How do you feel at the end of a day where you have made even a little progress towards a cherished goal?
• How do you feel at the end of a day that has been totally swamped by others’ demands and urgent tasks?
• What difference would it make to your life if you devoted more of your time to ‘important but not urgent’ work?

Post #3 - Ring-fence Your Most Creative Time

There is one main focal point of this post. At least, the one that I want to get across: Pick your most creative time of day. Pretty simple, right? I know exactly when mine are (I have two of them… who’da thunk). They are between the hours of 6:30 and 8 AM, and 11:30 PM and 2:00 AM. If you’ve ever noticed my photo-posting trends on Flickr, you’ll notice that most of my work goes up around those times.

Another good point of this post is the idea of unintentionally self-hypnotizing your mind into the creative zone. His explination touches on the habits and “routines” that other well-known writers have (i.e. Maya Angelou and ProBlogger Darren Rowse) in order to get their minds started on their creative process. Everyone seems to have that little thing that they need to ignite that creative spark. I never actually thought about it, but I do have a particular routine that I go through in order to maximize my creative potential for a project and completely immerse myself in “the zone”. Do you?

And, as always, follow up questions:

• When is your most creative time, when you are most alert and find it easy to focus?
• If you could arrange your ideal schedule, what time would you ring-fence for focused creative work?
• How close to your ideal schedule can you get within the constraints of your current situation?
• Do you have a special place for creative work?
• What physical triggers (such as pens, paper, computer hardware or software), rituals or routines do you use to get yourself in the right state of mind?

Post #4 - Avoid the ‘Sisyphus Effect’ of Endless To-Do Lists

I have to admit, I am VERY guilty of making to-do lists, as I’m sure a good bit of us are. I always feel overwhelmed to the point of needing to write everything down in order to avoid forgetting it. Most of the time, it actually works out for me. Sometimes, it’s just intimidating.

Among other things, a couple of Marc’s really good points in this post are:

The bottom line is that interruptions destroy your concentration. And loss of concentration = loss of creative work. If you’re not careful, you can end up in permanent ‘reactive mode’ – spending your time responding to others’ demands and all the things you ‘have’ to do instead of the one thing you really wanted to do today.

Faced with the twin problems of unpredictable interruptions and the Sisyphus effect of never-ending tasks, you need to give yourself room to breathe, keep a clear head and stay focused on what you want to achieve. In short, you need to install a buffer between others’ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.

And of course… more questions to ask yourself.

• What effect do interruptions have on your creativity?
• Do you recognise the Sisyphus effect? What does it do to your motivation levels?
• What difference would it make to your working life if being derailed by others’ demands was the exception rather than the rule?

Still with me?! Good! Last one…

Post #5 - Getting Things Done by Putting them Off Till Tomorrow
What difference would this make to your creativity?

I will simply cut and paste my favorite part of this entire post here:

Dealing with e-mails in one batch is more efficient. You can get into ‘e-mail mode’ and zip through them in one go.

It’s more motivating to deal with a finite number of e-mails than an ever-expanding inbox. In other words, it cuts out the Sisyphus effect and presents you with a manageable task instead of a never-ending one.

Today’s e-mails can’t interrupt you – because you’re not going to respond to them today. I experience a feeling of relief each time I look at an e-mail containing a request and then ‘let go’ of it and return to the task in hand – confident that I will deal with it tomorrow.

You answer e-mails in a better state of mind – so you’re much less likely to take on unnecessary commitments by agreeing to something in order to get rid of the e-mail. You are also likely to make a more thoughtful and helpful response.

It doesn’t really matter how often you check your e-mail. Personally I can see the benefit of only checking e-mail once a day, but I’m not disciplined enough to resist, especially if I’m waiting for something important. This way, I can check my e-mail as often as I like without getting caught up in responding to it.

You deal with the difficult e-mails. Most of us have a few ‘tricky’ e-mails that we put off answering for various reasons. But this system means you answer all the e-mails that came in yesterday – so you end up clearing out the difficult ones and getting them off your mind.

You know when you’re finished for the day! Once you’ve answered yesterday’s e-mail, you’re finished with e-mail today – how good will that feel?

Followed by the final two questions:

• What difference would it make to your work if you knew every morning how much work you had to get through that day?
• Apart from ‘do it tomorrow’ how else could you create ‘buffers’ between incoming demands and your response?

Wow! That was long. But honestly, guys… very well worth the read if you get the chance. And I’m sure he’d appreciate your feedback as well!!! *runs off to enter the “creativity zone”*

Hi everyone!

I realize it’s been… all of 24 hours since I last wrote, but I swear I have a good reason!!! Aside from being suddenly stricken with the plague, that is (damn the cold weather).

I’ve been doing some work compiling a few things for the blog. Links, resources, and what not. You know. USEFUL shit, and not just the constant rambling of a Second Life junkie, namely moi. So here’s what I’ve been up to:

Fonts & Brushes

This is a page where I’ll be keeping an ongoing list of all of my favorite fonts and photoshop brushes. You can view them and download them from this page. If you’re at all interested in seeing the things I use on a near-daily basis, this would be the place to look!

Resources

This is the page I hope will become the most useful on this blog. It is a compiled list of all the links I currently have for various reasons (SL tutorials, general tutorials, art websites, photoshop filters and brushes websites, font websites, etc). I will be adding to it consistently, as I’m always looking for new and exciting material. *such a junkie* If you have anything you’d like to add, or find a dead link somewhere, please don’t hesitate to drop a comment on that page! Hopefully, with some work, it’ll be a good resource for many one day.

Whew! That was a lot of work, and it’s no where near done… but damn, I’m excited to be sharing the wealth!

Next up… a compiled links page of all Second Life related blogs/websites I can manage to round up, conveniently organized into corresponding categories (fashion blogs, designer blogs, Second Life news, Second Life bloggers, etc, etc…). This is a work in progress, but I hope to have it up soon!

This page, you’ll find, is probably going to be your most favorite ever. At least, I hope. Hey, I can dream, right?

The new tutorial page is an accumulation of the Photoshop tutorial videos I’ve managed to complete while engaging in the land of Second Life photograph touch-ups. I figure, if there’s something I don’t know how to do — then there’s likely someone else who doesn’t know how to do it. And believe me, there’s PLENTY I don’t know how to do. So when I figure something out… I want to share. This is my way of doing that.

Don’t worry. I’ll add more as I make them. Hopefully someone, somewhere will find these useful! Enjoy.