Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair

A long, long time ago, when rock music was still very young, a movement started in San Francisco. It was a time of protesting and change. War was ongoing in Vietnam. People were dodging the draft and heading to the Height in San Francisco.

As the song says, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”

Hippies gathered in Golden Gate Park for sit ins, and love ins. The sound of music filtered through the air, along with the aroma of incense and peppermint (and pot, but who’s counting?)

Twisted Summer of Love is the Twisted Hunt Events inaugural Summer Event, and we chose the Summer of Love as the theme this year. With bright colors and psychedelic patterns, you can be sure there will be plenty of vintage clothing, furniture, and other nifty things for sale from the 60 or so merchants.

We are proud to be an official team member of the Relay Rockers this year.  They perform a Woodstock event for Relay for Life in Second Life every Summer, so this was a natural pairing.

Avatar Bizarre has several brand new items being released at the event. The Relay for Life items are a male and a female Dashiki Shirt with a color HUD.  The Dashiki, inspired by the African tunic, has a brightly colored pattern over black.  These are rigged mesh, and come in the standard sizes.  The color HUD includes seven colors!  The male shirt definitely works with the SLink male body.  I can’t vouch for the female version, though I assume both bodies share the same alpha HUD.

Avatar Bizarre is also releasing a pair of denim shorts with a peace sign on the right leg. These shorts can be worn with the Dashiki. They also include a seven color HUD, and 5 standard sizes.

In addition to the Dashikis and the Shorts, There’s a new Twiggy-inpsired mini dress, and Go-Go Boots with a color HUD. So come support Relay for Life, and hit this amazing new event!

You can get there from here.

In a World of Pure Imagination

When you have a sweet tooth as rampantly out of control as mine, you tend to revel in all things chocolate, including Willy Wonka. When I first logged into Second Life, one of my friends was even more into the story of Willy Wonka than I am, and that’s saying quite a lot, considering I’ve been known to Cosplay Willy Wonka in real life. In fact, some folks only knew me as “M.W.Wonka” for the longest time.

When I first built Avatar Bizarre in Second Life, one of the initial outfits for sale was The Candy Man, a costume inspired by the Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka. You know, the really creepy one, as opposed to Gene Wilder’s more frantic, chaotic, mildly sociopathic version. Love them or hate them, these men shaped how we think of the character. Naturally, Second Life needed influence from both.

Flash forward to a bunch of years later, and Second Life’s creation process has mostly ditched the old system layer clothing to favor mesh. Since I’m still a fan of the books and movies, I decided to let them inspire me for a new outfit. Enter The Chocolatier, an ensemble that is loosely based on the Johnny Depp Wonka.

This outfit includes a fit mesh jacket/waistcoat/shirt, a shiny top hat, a peppermint candy neck pin, a cane (with a pose), system pants in six colors, Omega clothing appliers (for those with mesh bodies), and a color HUD for the jacket.

There’s some really good news for folks who are into dressing up: This outfit is also available for women (regular and hourglass shapes), and femboys!

Don’t worry, folks. I got you covered.

Available soon for the Melting Pot event.

Moonage Daydream

“I could make a transformation as a rock & roll star” – D. Bowie, Star from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Folks who know me have either put up with, or completely embraced my lifelong obsession with David Bowie.  I had several of Bowie’s hairstyles while slogging my way through Junior High and High School.  My Walkman always had a Bowie tape in it.  I watched LiveAid just because he was scheduled to perform.  I scoured record stores for anything and everything even remotely Bowie-related, including pouncing on artists like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, simply because they had albums produced by the Thin White Duke.  I actually yelled at Jennifer Connelly’s character in Labyrinth to stay with the Goblin King.  I would have.  When the man went on tour, I raced to get tickets to every show I could attend.  I had the massive Bowie shrine, including all the music, videos, posters, teeshirts, and anything else I could lay my hands on.  I threw glitter on him during performances of Hallo Spaceboy.  If you haven’t guessed, I’m just a bit of a fan.

Monday morning started just like any other; the alarm woke me up.  I squinted at my phone and read emails till I could actually drag my carcass out of bed.  I was puzzled by the sudden popularity of a Ziggy Stardust outfit I’d made for Second Life.  It wasn’t a huge seller…till now.  But still, things didn’t click in my sleep-fogged brain.  Then I saw an email from my oldest and dearest Second Life friend.  It was simply titled, “Shared Grief” and in it, she wrote, “E and I are thinking about you.  If you need to talk, please call.”

I was really confused now.  Who did we both know who had died?  That’s certainly the gist of the email.  I replied, saying, “It’s too early to call and I have to be at work in 15 minutes.  I’ll call you later.”

Then I saw CNN.

THE PLANET EARTH IS BLUE.  David Bowie.  On the front page of CNN.  It hit me like a ton of bricks. Right to the face.  My hero, an icon of my youth, the soundtrack of my life…dead of cancer.  I cried.  I sat at my computer at 6:15am and cried.  I briefly thought, “I need a bereavement day.” but I wasn’t thinking straight.  I went to work and it was the longest day of my life.

“Lady Stardust sang his songs of darkness and despair.” – D. Bowie, Lady Stardust from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

I came home and immediately put on the Ziggy costume, made a black armband for good measure, and headed to The Village of Nyght for the tribute I never wanted to host.  I sent out notices, and people poured in, commiserating, reminiscing, sharing stories, requesting their favorite songs, crying.  People who haven’t been in Second Life for years showed up just to be with other fans and give Mr. Bowie a proper send off to his home planet.

I’m afraid most of us were quivering heaps of jelly, curled into fetal positions, shaking and crying when I played Lazarus from his Requiem Mass, Blackstar.  It got even crunchier when I pulled out a rare live recording of Bowie and Gilmore singing Comfortably Numb.  The tribute set lasted four and a half hours.  Maybe a smidge more.  I’d have kept going if I didn’t feel so utterly wretched, wiped out, and still mourning the loss of a man I never met, yet loved with all my heart.  Besides, after all the tears, my eyes were dry and burning.  It was time for a rest.

“Give me your hands, because you’re wonderful.” – D. Bowie, Rock n’ Roll Suicide from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

It’s now two days later.  I still hurt, but life isn’t all bad.  If I wanted to, I could listen to Bowie non-stop for weeks.  But, it’s time to move on, just a little.  I had mentioned I made a Ziggy outfit in Second Life.  I’ve made a number of Bowie-inspired outfits through the years for Avatar Bizarre, and had a few in the pipeline that were to debut over the next few months.  Now I feel like it’s time to push these costumes to the front of the line.

The first to be built (and released soon for men, women, and femboys, I promise) is Moonage Daydream.  This is an outfit based on a design Bowie wore during his Ziggy Stardust tour.  It is a simple Asian design with thigh high satin boots.  It will likely be available with a color HUD.  But you need to give me time.  Between real life excitement, work, and whatnot, Second Life gets relegated to the back burner sometimes.  I would say after Further ConFusion (a convention in San Jose, CA) this weekend, I will have both versions available in the store and on the marketplace.

Love on, Ya!

It’s the Season of the Steampunk Witch

My model mentioned to me a while ago that it was difficult to find decent Steampunk attire in Second Life these days.  I have to admit I was surprised to hear this, since Second Life has always had a large contingent of Steamfolk, Victorians, and various odd dieselpunk people.  You would think with all that wandering blithely around the grid, that it would be a simple affair to hit the shops for a bit of a Steampunk lark to add to your already bulging, straining at the seams inventories.

Honestly, who am I to argue these points with someone who clearly shops way more than I do.  So, leaving it to the experts, I set forth on a quest to create a Steampunk gown that LO! contains no gears.  Sorry about that.  But slapping gears on something and calling it “Steampunk” is rather like dying your flannel shirt black and calling it “Goth”.  While that practice is, in theory, correct, it’s pretty cliche.  He said, surreptitiously nudging that gear covered waistcoat under the Axminster.

After hammering out a basic design, and giving it the metallic sheen it so richly deserves, the Malefica was born.

Malefica means “witch” in Latin.  Not that this is strictly a witch costume, or that I’m disparaging my model, or anything, but it evolved from something kind of Steamy to something kind of Steamy and Gothic and Witchy all at once.  It’s elegant in its simplicity.

Malefica is a complete wardrobe all on its own:  You can wear it as a corset with leather pants (included), a miniskirt with corset, wear it with or without the blouse, with or without the full flexi skirt.  On top of that, you get eight color options for the skirt and skirt bell, two color options for the blouse, and two colors for the skirt, as well as the pants.  How can you go wrong with all of this?

To top it off, there’s an Omega HUD controlling the pants layer for those of you with Omega compatible mesh bodies.  Oh yes, I’ve literally got you covered this time.

Available at the store and on the marketplace now.

Pull a Comb Through Your Coal Black Hair – Zoot!

Avatar Bizarre has long been a purveyor of vintage and historic outfits, and the Zoot Suit is a perennial favorite.  This is the third incarnation of the outfit released in the store.  The first was released at a Vintage Fair a few years ago (system layers and flexi prims).  The second version was mostly mesh and made only for the male avatar.  It was also one of the first items I meshed up in Blender, so it was time for a bit of an update, which brings us to the third incarnation in the series.

This particular Zoot Suit, unlike the last version, has an open coat, and comes in a female version, as well as the male.  To add to the whole Zoot Suit Riot, this outfit includes color HUDs for the coat/hat, and collar/tie.  There are eight colors which give you many, many more color combinations.  The shirt, which is a system layer (all eight colors included) is also on an Omega applier HUD for those folks wearing mesh bodies.

Please check here http://lovenlustdesigns.blogspot.com/p/supported-meshes.html to make sure the body you have is supported by the Omega applier system before you buy this outfit.

You get a lot of nifty colors, plus white (just in case you wish to tint something a color I haven’t provided).  All clothing items are copy/modify.  The rigged suit cannot be resized or repositioned, but it can be tinted.  The unrigged stuff can be resized and repositioned.

Feel free to try out the demo before you buy this suit.  The demo includes an applier for one of the shirt colors on the Omega system, so you can see if it works with your mesh body of choice.  For reference, the avatars pictured in this blog are a male SLink Physique and a Maitreya female body.

I’m still dinking with last minute details, like making the demo and whatnot, but I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak.  Again, this will be available, starting on January 6 at the Tesoro Nostalgia event.  Price and SLurl forthcoming when I have the details.

A Little Madness Goes a Long Way

There was a minute there when I was all gung ho about making stuff inspired by Alice in Wonderland.  There was a whole “Lewis Carroll’s Fever Dreams” collection that happened.  In included a lot of partial mesh outfits, as I was learning how to model and rig things for Second Life.

At one point, I probably made three or four different Mad Hatter outfits.  They were all different, but they all had this partial mesh thing in common, except for the original Mad Hatter outfit, which was all system layers and flexi prims.  That one had a couple of versions, as I sought to improve things later on, and was far too reluctant to simply give up on the outfit altogether.

The old system layer outfits can still look pretty good, but with the prevalence of all the zillions of mesh bodies out there, particularly Belleza, SLink, Maitreya, and others, these outfits kind of fell by the wayside, because mesh bodies cannot wear system layers without special applier scripts.

But never fear!  In a frenzy of “Oh hey, we have the technology; we can make it stronger, faster, better…” I acquired the necessary scripts and created some HUDs for mesh body clothing layers.  The nice thing about OMEGA appliers is quite a lot of the mesh bodies out there are compatible.  You only have to go out on the Marketplace and buy the particular relay for whichever body you wear.

You can get a list of all the compatible bodies for OMEGA system here:  http://lovenlustdesigns.blogspot.com/p/supported-meshes.html

In a pique of, “Gotta make it betteritis”, the Mitternacht Hatter coats all got refitted, rerigged, and reuploaded.  In addition, a female version of the coat was also created.  The coat and hat are now on a color HUD, which includes all six colors of each.  The shirt and pants are on the OMEGA applier HUD.  There’s an unrigged turtleneck collar included.  Oh, and things have been materials enhanced for your viewing pleasure.

While the older version of this outfit came with boots, I decided it would be best to leave the boots out of this version, and price it a bit cheaper.  It’s currently available on the Marketplace and Inworld for 375L.

The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen conjures up an image of a strong authority, who rules her domain with magic, an iron fist, and a whole lot of ferocious dragons.  Inspired by equal parts H.R.Giger and Daenerys Targaryen, this asymmetrical dress has the look and feel of skin taken from an alien dragon.  Resplendent in six dark jewel tones, the dress itself is rigged mesh.  The pearls at the waist, upper arm, and upper thigh glimmer with an inner light, only seen in the eye of the kraken.  These bands bring the regal look together with gently draped flexi cloth, pulling together the gentle shine of the leather that draws the eye to the left and down.

Then, when it’s finally time to plead to you, good lady, for their lives, the lines lead the eye back up your stunning visage, which is frame gorgeously by a high sweeping collar.

After all, your subjects are facing royalty, and must avert their eyes unless you command them to look up.  You are the Queen of all you survey, and this will be an astoundingly gorgeous addition to your already amazing wardrobe.

Available on the Marketplace and Inworld for 150L

Many thanks to my stunning model, Misha, for putting up with my incessant picture taking.

Everything I Do I Do For You – Fantasy Fair Sneak Preview

Avatar Bizarre has, by some amazing circumstances, and a bit of applying, made it into this year’s Second Life Fantasy Faire, an event created to raise money and awareness for Relay for Life.  To be fair, there have been a couple of sneak previews as yours truly jumped the gun and started making stuff just in case.  Enthusiasm, coupled with that elusive Inspiration has resulted in a few new things.

You already got a sneak preview of the Goblin King and the Boudica Armor.  Now let me give you a taste of the Goblin Queen!  Of course this is mostly because my lovely model (pictured above and below) is champing at the bit for a picture or two.  The Goblin Queen, like the King in a previous post, is going to be available in seven colors and includes the pants and jacket (plus alphas) and shoulder armor (one shoulder).

If you’re itching for just the jacket, don’t worry!  The jackets for the Queen and King will be available solo with a Color change HUD (all seven colors), plus the shoulder armor and requisite alpha.

In other news, there’s a set of boots for both King and Queen available.  The boots will include a rigged and an unrigged pair, plus Color change HUD.  All pieces in the ensemble are materials enhanced. Demos will be available for everything, so please feel free to try them out!

I’m Here to Kick Ass and Chew Bubblegum…and I’m All Out of Bubblegum

Leave it to Misha to spur me into action when it comes to making armor for the distaff in Second Life.  Okay, so it only took me a month and a half to get on the stick and actually make it, but hey, sometimes you have to get up the nerve to outfit someone with big swords like this.

There’s an absolute truism in Second Life:  Avatars tend to be Way Too Tall.  Like abnormally Wookiee tall.  Heck, they’d probably dwarf Peter Mayhew in real life, and I know for a fact that man stands over seven feet tall.  I’ve met him in all of his morose grumpiness.  He’s the kind of guy you walk up to and say, “How’s the weather up there?” and then you get your butt kicked into next Tuesday.  But I digress…

Second Life is full of really tall, generally disproportionate avatars.  You can really run the gamut of shapes, from massive buttshelves to eight foot tall pin-headed galoots.  Speaking of which, Misha told a story about the day she went shopping for swords and was confronted by such a galoot.  Misha, if you don’t know, is a midget in Second Life terms.  Like me, she stands at a paltry six foot three or four.  Tiny.  Miniscule.  However, she is also very much shaped in a pleasing way, and likely attracts the attention of many a galoot.  However, for some reason, galoots have this tendency to believe that it’s okay to try to intimidate those who are perceived as smaller and weaker than they are.  The problem for these guys is they usually have brains to match their pin-heads, so it’s pretty amusing to put them in their place with a well aimed comment, even if there isn’t much sport in it.

With permission (I hope…Misha will probably get a kick out this me quoting her here) let’s relive the shopping experience, shall we?  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

XXX: smiles, aren’t you too pretty and tiny to be looking at swords?
Misha Selene: No, apparently I need a backup weapon to gut you with…

It really makes you inordinately proud.

So all of this is just a long-winded way of saying, “Hey, look at this new armor!”  It will, hopefully, be debuted at Fantasy Fair.  It’s typical:  Standard sizing, materials enhanced.  It comes with rigged pants, corset, and chainmail shirt, along with unrigged shoulder, arm, wrist, thigh, and shin guards, plus a cloak with a hood (combination of unrigged mesh and flexi prims).  The boots are from the Avatar Bizarre Panzermensch collection, but I’m sure at some point before the fair I’ll be making a pair of boots for this as well.  So yeah, stay tuned and all that.  Oh yeah, and there’s a few colors available (pants, corset, and cloak).