Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Builder Chey



Written 8 January, 2007

I Get a Career

I. Builder Chey

Somehow I’ve become a builder in Second Life.

I suppose it started when I learned how to move an object from one location to another.

That’s an important skill, for if you don’t have it you’ll have to call in a friend every time you want to move a table from one end of the room to another.

And then my friend Bill Havercamp showed me how to apply texture to one side of an object, and I was off.

My first built object was a little pier. Nothing fancy, just a horizontal prim to which I applied a texture of weathered boards, and barnacled posts to anchor it to the sea floor. I deliberately knocked a couple of the legs askew so the pier would look a bit dilapidated. I played with giving the platform a twist too, but settled on applying a translucent decal of a fish instead.

Next, I made a one-prim table for my friend Kal, and a different and bigger table for the House of 1000 Pleasures.

Back at the beach, I added a series of platforms with the same weathered texture, and suddenly I had a beach camp.

Before I knew it, I was making all sorts of things.

A landing ramp for the House of 1000 pleasures? Sure. We’ll make it semi-circular, out of the same beautiful black marble as the floor. Uh-oh. It’s hard to see where the ramp’s floor and walls join. Let’s add a ribbon of gold at the junction as a visual aid. And might as well use the same gold at the top of the rails. Tweak that texture density. Perfect! Now let’s link it.

And so I’ve slowly moved from being a being-able-to-put-something-where-I-want-it person to a builder person.

It helped to have a tropical island to decorate. I got rid of Dreamland’s wimpy lava and smoke and installed a bed of lava of my own making. Now it ripples and turns, and you can stand chest-deep in it. I even made a special place where you can fall through and find yourself under the volcano.

I wasn’t satisfied with the lava flow I paid for, so I dismantled it and constructed a replacement, using my own prims, then found a script to make the hot lava flow.

I’ll never be the designer or builder that Exuberance is. Her imagination wheels and soars; in 3-D, at least, mine plods along. She builds sweeping non-linear constructions. I stick blocks together.

But I’m a builder!

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Photos: Builder Chey— Pier without peer. Note the crooked legs.

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