Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Photo Session all about colors by Zephyru Zapedzki

Join us this coming Monday 1st of June at 11.00 am SLT in the Orange Island Photo Gallery for our first class based on RL Photography Theory «Colors in Second Life» by Zephyru Zapedzki.

This session will consist in an introduction to color in Art/Photography/SL. We will then observe the effects of this on the way we use the SL World Environment Editor. Finally, we’ll have some tips about how to work colors out of SL and some practical lessons.

a Photo Session all about colo...

When we asked Zephyru to describe himself he said: «In RL I am mainly an oil on canvas painter and my work’s characteristic is still the vast diversity of styles and themes. I’m also a musician and sometimes a photographer. I'm a self-taughted artist in all the ways of art that I use, a polymath defending the “do-it-yourself” erudition. We can handle photography in SL as in RL, the biggest difference is that in SL we have no limits.»

We wanted to know why he decided to teach us the color Theory and he replied «I’ve been accused of having a great sense of color in my RL work, so maybe this helped my decision. Colors are important in photography as eyes are important to see. Even in the black and white photography, colors determinate the tonality of the grays

Photo Sessions are events dedicated to help photographers share and collaborate. Orange Island and Koinup partner to make instructive classes for SL Photographers and especially the Second Life Comunity on Koinup.


Join the Photo Session Group to stay tuned on all the events and classes!

Friday, May 29, 2009

Rocking the Metaverse - Bringing Live music to Metaplace!

You're all invited to the Metaplace Rocking The Metaverse Tour Stop on this tuesday (2nd of june) at 1:00pm Pacific Time (SLT).

Rocking the Metaverse tour next stop is Metaplace. The team of Metaplace just created a venue completely dedicated to the show. You can reach the Rocking the Metaverse Metaplace world, here.

Save this date: 2nd of june at 1:00PM SLT
Waiting for you in the Metaplace venue there will be the most exciting performers of the metaverse:
Doubledown Tandino
Slim Warrior
Dizzy Banjo
Grace Mcdunnough


To join the event (and correctly signup in Metaplace) read carefully this thread and join the Rocking the Metaverse group to stay tuned on the event and all details about the "RTM" tour.

Rocking the Metaverse (2)

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Photo Sessions: how to use shadows in Second Life



Join us this coming Thursday 28th May at 1.00 pm SLT in the Orange Island Photo Gallery for an introduction to using Shadows in your Second Life art with Lordfly Digeridoo.



This session will be about getting shadows to work in Second Life and using them in your work. The first part will be a step by step tutorial for downloading the RC client to actually see shadows around your avatar. We will also discuss the many opportunities photographers now have to make their art more realistic.

Lordfly Digeridoo is a well known urban planner in Second Life, who has just made a machinima that shows how breathtaking the new shadow effects are.

You can also watch some of the works by Opensource Obscure: Experimental Realtime Shadows and Multiple Lights and Shadows and Projected Textures in Second Life.


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Photo Sessions are events dedicated to help photographers share and collaborate. Orange Island and Koinup partner to make instructive classes for SL Photgraphers and especially the Second Life Comunity on Koinup.

Join the Photo Sessions group to stay tuned on the calendar of events

Bringing live music in the Opensim. Rocking the Metaverse 2nd show!

Yestarday was a great day for the Metaverse development. Rocking the Metaverse made its day in the OpenSim (Reaction Grid). Doubledown Tandino, Slim Warrior and Dizzy Banjo performed in a great way and we in the audience had the chance to listen to amazing live music in the Opensim sceneries of the Reaction Grid.

Apart some minor issues, everything was fine. Opensim proved to be a good platform for live music. Sure, there are some issues to improve as the avatar capability for sim and others. But the line is drawn. Below you can find a series of footages captures during the show.

Reminder: next week Rocking the Metaverse will move to Metaplace

Rocking the Metaverse Dizzy Ba...

Rocking the Metaverse At the R...

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Rocking the Metaverse today show is at the Reaction Grid (Opensim)

Rocking the Metaverse, the most exciting "cross world music tour", lands today at the Reaction Grid, one of the most important clusters in the OpenSim universe!

Save this date: Today, 26th of may at 1PM SLT (also known as Pacific Time) join us at the Reaction Grid for the Rocking the Metaverse 2nd show!

Photobucket

There will be some of the most incredible musicians and artists of the metaverse waiting for you on the other side of your teleport in the Reaction Grid. To name a few: Doubledown DJ Tandino, Talia Tokugawa, Slim Warrior, Dizzy Banjo, J0anna, Vive Voom aka Luca Lisci (the list here)

Get all the info about the Rocking the Metaverse show, here

To signup and join the show at the Reaction Grid, look here

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Cross Virtual Worlds. The group to create mixed media pics, merging together pieces from different virtual worlds


MedeAthena, Magggg, Violentdoll just founded a group dedicated to cross worlds art. In the Crossworld group you can share art pieces and pics created by merging together in a single artwork backgrounds and/or avatars from different virtual worlds. Read more, here

Join the group!



Image above by Magggg, created by merging background from Second Life (the rouge forest) and avatar from The Sims

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Photo Reportage from Rocking the Metaverse first show at the Orange Island


The 1st show of the Rocking the Metaverse was a fantastic experience! Doubledown at the microphone as emcee, Dizzy Banjo, Grace Mcdunnough and Slim Warrior on the stage entertaining the audience with great music and talent!

The guys behind the Orange Island made a great job as hosters and the environment of the sim and all the areas were absolutely amazing!

We had also the the opportunity to meet Tami community manager in the Metaplace and Kyle owner of the Reaction Grid!

Reaction Grid, Metaplace and Twinity will host the Rocking the Metaverse tour in the next weeks. More updates soon!

To staty tuned with the Tour and related events, join the official Rocking the Metaverse group

Talia Tokugawa and Poid Mahovlich snapped all the time. They are the official photoreporters of the tour.

If you missed the show, you can still enjoy the mood and the atmosphere, thanks to the amazing people (and photoreporter) that sent hundreds of postcards to Koinup directly from the Orange Island. View here

Soon, you will have the chance to watch also a series of machinima based on the show, created by some valuable movie directors.



DD Rocking The Metaverse - Poi...


image above by Poid (original here)


Let me add some notes about the terific twitter coverage on the event:
I'm counting hundreds of posts on Twitter

Monday, May 18, 2009

Rocking the Metaverse. Bringing Live music in Second Life at the Orange Island

Rocking the Metaverse, the Koinup sponsored project aimed at bringing live music in virtual worlds, is going to meet you guys at the Orange Island.

The first live show will take place on 19th of May at 1PM SLT at the Orange Island in Second Life


In the incredible sceneries of the Orange Island in Second Life, the 4 musicians of the tour will perform live, entertaining the audience with an incredible series of tracks

During the show we will briefly introduce the mission behind Rocking the Metaverse project and announce the next dates in Reaction Grid, Metaplace and Twinity

Rocking the Metaverse is a project sponsored by Koinup and powered by Orange Island, Metaplace, Twinity and Koinup!

Bookmark this date (19th of may at 1PM SLT) and join the Rocking the Metaverse group to stay tuned on the events!

Rocking the Metaverse (banner)

Direct slurl to the Orange Island


#(SLT is the Second Life time and it correspond to California time)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Metropolis, by RockerFaerie, featured on Hiperia 3d News blog

The Hiperia 3d news group this week features "Metropolis - SL", by RockerFaerie. This is filled with nostalgia of Metropolis, the film from 1927 (Fritz Lang). Read more on the Hiperia 3d news blog

<a href="http://www.koinup.com/RockerFaerie/work/134307/">Metropolis - SL</a> - a <a href="http://www.koinup.com/in-second-life/on-videos/">Second Life Machinima</a> by <a href="http://www.koinup.com/RockerFaerie/">RockerFaerie</a> on <a href="http://www.koinup.com">Koinup</a>

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Koinup is finalist at the Techgarage Startup Award!


We are so proud to announce that Koinup is one of the 10 finalists at the Techgarage Startup Award 09.

Techgarage is one the most important international awards completely devoted to web 2.0 startups and companies. You can read more about Techgarage, here

Here instead, you can read the list of finalists (italian only)

The 10 finalists startups will have the chance to pitch their business in Rome on 22th of may in front of an incredible panel of international investors, venture capitals, and high tech/web experts.

Stay tuned for other notes on the Techgarage award!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Photo Session: making your own presets for the FilterCam HUD


Join us this coming Thursday 14th of May at 11.00 am SLT on the Orange Island Photo Gallery for an introduction to the FilterCam HUD created by Codebastard Redgrave.

The session will consist in a short presentation of the HUD and a class about adding your own texture masks and creating your own presets for the FilterCam.

The FilterCam HUD is a very handy tool that allows you to make your SL snapshots much more attractive without using Photoshop or any other post-processing tool. FilterCam works basically like a standard camera filter and uses four distinctive layers to make various effects combos. But the most important is in our opinion the Build your own presets feature: you can add colored filters, overlay textures, and change layer transparency directly on your screen.

If you want to know more, have a look at http://vimeo.com/3401209. If you are using this HUD, we recommend you follow the instructions on Mechanized Life.

You can watch some works made with FilterCam published on Koinup by Solange Korobase and Clarrice Cinquetti.

Photo Sessions are a series of events in Second Life dedicated to help photographers share and collaborate. Orange Island and Koinup partner to make instructive events for SL Photgraphers and especially the Second Life Comunity on Koinup. We host events every Thursday at 11.00am SLT.

Codebastard Redgrave just created a group called: FilterCam Exchange whose mission is: to allow people to exchange FilterCam transparency masks through Koinup.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Rocking the Metaverse - Bringing Live music to Virtual Worlds

Koinup is proud to announce “Rocking the Metaverse” , the 1st Crossworld Music Tour powered by Koinup and sponsored by Reaction Grid, Twinity, Orange Island, Metaplace and Koinup.

Rocking the Metaverse is the first multiworld music show, aimed at bringing live music to the most important virtual worlds, particolarly: Second Life, Opensim (Reaction Grid), Metaplace, Twinity.

Four Musicians and a few Artists will cross the most important metaverse platforms, performing live and making live shows for the enjoyment of the virtual worlds members.

The first date is scheduled for the 19th of may at the Orange Island, one of the most important cultural venue in Second Life. Then the tour will move to Open Sims, the opensource metaverse platform, where the musicians will have the opportunity to perform at the Reaction Grid. You can get all the info on the first date and venue, here

Once left both Opensims and Second Life, musicians will move again for a series of dates in Twinity and Metaplace. Both Twinity and Metaplace are raising the bar of the metaverse entertainment, providing users with innovative amazing features to enjoy and express themselves.

Rocking the Metaverse mission is to support and empower the music culture in virtual worlds, offering musicians a new way to engage the audience and a new stage to show off.

All the people that would love to be part of the the project (and leave their feedbacks) are invited to join the http://www.koinup.com/group/virtual-world-music/ group on Koinup (link: http://www.koinup.com/group/virtual-world-music/ )

Images and group forums of the Metaverse Music tour will be available on the official Rocking the Metaverse group. Join the group and share your voice with us!

Koinup is the social network that connect all the virtual worlds people and make easier your access and discovery of virtual worlds. Koinup connects the creativity of virtual worlds users and give them a new social network to share contents and meet friends.

Would you love to know what are the musicians performing on the show? Would you love to stay tuned on the next events or become an official photoreporter? Join the group and keep it updated with it!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

IMVU User Generated Contents. The best groups to join on Koinup


IMVU is one of the most vibrant user generated community on the web. There is an amazing scene of designers, developers, posers, fashion stylists and avatar artists that each days are going to create thousands of contents.

If you like to follow a bit of this scene, probably you may consider to join a series of IMVU groups, recently created on Koinup

IMVU Artists
The best IMVU Public Rooms
The best of IMVU
Avipics Maker
iRAWK


Image above by jojobabe (Japanese Feudal)

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Postcards from the Edge (of SL). The Machinima

If you missed the first appointment of Postcards from the Edge, (just a reminder "Postcards from the Edge" is the "music and postcards" event created by Doubledown Tandino and hosted at the Alexander Beach sim) you can now appease your eyes, by watching the amazing machinima report created by Joanna .

In the video (called: DJ Doubledown mixes live at PFTE) you can admire the impressive builds at the Alexander Beach sim and the incredible Doubledown mixing music and entertaining the crew, with some super-funny animations!

<a href="http://www.koinup.com/J0anna/work/140809/">DJ Doubledown mixes live at PF...</a> - a <a href="http://www.koinup.com/in-second-life/on-videos/">Second Life Machinima</a> by <a href="http://www.koinup.com/J0anna/">J0anna</a> on <a href="http://www.koinup.com">Koinup</a>

Don't despair, you can join the next event. All the info are here. Remember to join the Postcards from the Edge group to stay tuned on the events and next parties

Friday, May 8, 2009

SL6B. Join the "Second Life 6th Birthday" group on Koinup


On June 23, 2009, Second Life turns 6 years old. Also this year, Linden Lab is going to make an incredible events to celebrate the metaverse turning its second half-decade.

The Birthday theme this year is "The Future of Virtual Worlds"

Talia Tokugawa and Poid Mahovlich just founded on Koinup a group to collect images, slurls, ideas, feedbacks all related to this year SL Birthday Event. The group is called: SL6B and I invite you to join it now, in order to stay tuned on the most interesting things happening this year for the Second Life 6th birthday!

You can read the announcement of the birthday party on the Second Life Official Blog

Image by Poid!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Eve Online group for Koinup mmorpg fans


If though the social virtual worlds make the large part of the Koinup community, there is also an active group of members enthuse with the more traditional multiplayers online scene.

There is a vibrant group for all the Warcraft oddities (more than oddities, I'd say: amazing screenshots!) and now there is a cool group aimed at Eve Online members. If you're a member in Eve Online, probably you may want to join this group and share your screenshots (or ideas, opinions, feedback) in the group.

Founded by Sered Woollahra the group feature already a considerable number of nice Eve Online screenshots. Have a look, and join it now!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Add shadows to your Second Life images


The new Second Life viewer 1.23 RC0 (recently released) include "as non supported feature", the deployment of shadows.

Shadows are a decisive feature for photography and machinima artists. Shadows inject realism to scenes and make more convincing characters and objects. There's a group on Koinup to share/collect/discuss Second Life images with shadows.

Its called With Shadow (created by Bark) and I invite you to visit and join this group. If you happen to use the Shadows Viewer and take some pics, remember to share them in the group!

You can get more info on how to enable the shadows in your Second Life experience, by reading this piece on New World Notes


Image above by Conniesec

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The Pre Windlight viewer Era. SL Art without the sky editor


Just stumbled on this nice group called Before Windlight: SL Art created recently by Sysperia Poppy

As said by Sysperia, the group is "for shots taken before using a windlight browser and all of its associated components. This provides a group for older works for those who've been around awhile. No limit for posts, no content restriction besides viewer used."

Join the group and share your virtual memories and/or virtual shots taken in the Pre-Windlight Era.

Some days ago, Doubledown Tandino founded a similar group aimed at collecting images taken in the Golden age of Second Life (2004-2006)

Playstation Home Machinima. An upcoming tool for movie making

Playstation Home, the embedded virtual world for playstation users, is going to release a series of tools and utilities that will make easy, funny and probably exciting to create short clips and movies in Home. I invite you to have a look at this "short" preview on Kotaku

If you stumble on some other hints on this news or will have the chance to use and created with these tools, you're warmly invited to share on Koinup Machinima Section! (or here on this blog)

Murku Contest Winners featured on the Gwyneth Llewelyn blog


Fun, fun! Koinup, who have been so deeply engaged in SL (and, well, other virtual worlds too!) have sponsored the 1st Murku Comics Contest, and announced the winners today. Read more on the Gwyneth Llewelyn blog

Gwyn one of the most popular bloggers in SL takes on the Murku Contest and feature some of the winning entries.

Monday, May 4, 2009

The winners of the 1st Second Life Comics Contest


We have just announced the winners of the 1st Second Life Comics Contest. Discover in the forum the winners and the honorary mentions

It has been a fantastic competition, with some really cool entries and some brilliant ideas. The Murku HUD make the creation of comics in Second Life something very easy to do and so funny for many people.

I encourage people that have tried the Murku HUD to continue their experiments with comics and keep it up their good work.

Koinup and MURKU creator Deep Semaphore will continue to collaborate with the goal to bring to you further artistic (and strippy) initiatives

Read the announcements

Advertising your virtual world business on Koinup


Some people on Koinup are creating a series of groups that could be easily used to promote inworld activity, business and enterpreneur initiatives.

Doubledown Tandino launched the group "Logos of companies in Second Life", while even more recently AFcreations created the SL Marketing Group.

These two groups are aimed at giving second life entrepreneurs a free space to advertise their products.

I'm looking forward to see similar initiatives for other worlds( have a look at "Beyond Second Life" thread in the metaverse group). I know there is a vibrant designers community in IMVU and a particolarly active CC creators crew for the Sims. I know moreover that other virtual worlds are raising with companies and custom content creators building amazing contents, as it's happening in Open Sim or Entropia Universe and others....

Hope we'll see soon marketing groups on Koinup for those other metaverses...

Sunday, May 3, 2009

The most gorgeous virtual girls

Sometime we hangout in virtual worlds to seek for the ideal beauty and if we don't find the way, we use them to "create" such a beauty. Particolarly the female beauty doesn't cease to amaze us both in real and virtual worlds.

EsteladeAlmeidaCostaPP

Image by Nith85, created with the Sims 2

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Second Life Postcards Contest and Music Event


Koinup & Ravelong Productions bring to you: Postcards from the Edge (of SL)

Postcards from the Edge of Second Life is a postcard contest and music event that will take place each THURSDAY in the amazing:
Alexander Beach (Second Life!)


The following is calendar:

May 7th - THEME: Exploration and Close-Ups - Contest: $2000L best photo
May 14th - THEME: Lighting - Contest $2000L best photo
May 21st - GAME: "Find it from the Photo" Contest - Multiple prizes
May 28th - THEME: SPEED SHOOT - Best Photographer within the 2 hours - $5000


But along with the contest, you will have also the chance to listen to great music and be entertained by the amazing emcee Doubledown Tandino

What you have to do? Join the crew each thursday at the Alexander Beach
(11am-1pm(slt)) listen music, dance and meet your friends there.

DJ Doubledown Tandino mixes up the blend of electronica, house, fusion, broken beat, and world beat tunes, while everyone is invited to photograph the surroundings.

You can follow the updates of the contest in the Postcards from the Edge group

See you there!!!!

Friday, May 1, 2009

The Virtual Landscape Art (a new art form based in Second Life)

The Am Radio builds are inspiring a new kind of art, based in Second Life and aimed at capturing the metaphysical beauty of Second Life environments.

We call it: Virtual Landscape Art ( probably you can find a better name)

Below you can find a perfect example of the Virtual Landscape Art created by Icarus Robbiani. You can view some other examples here in The IDIA Laboratories pool

The Red and the Wild / 3