Series Revisited

First off, let me say that the Halloween freebies were a success. In the end I gave away over 1200 witches and I've seen them pop up here and there on blogs, which makes me happy. I'll definitely make more freebies in the future. For Christmas however, I couldn't manage. School has kept me too busy to work on new products much and I'd started this other project ages ago that I really needed to finish. And I now finally have.

When I made my Fastfood Backpack, it was meant as part of a series. I released the Emergency Burger to go with it as a leg accessory and thought afterwards a belt would be cool as well. I wanted it to be less girly looking than the other two, but still referenced to junk food and my favourite website, ICHC. I decided on a technology theme, yet slightly tongue-in-cheek as usual. After some delay, it's finally here: my Burger Vision Belt.


The best thing on this belt was one of the last to be thought up. I had a general idea of what I wanted before I started sculpting the belt base, but the phone was originally meant as a regular cell phone. I find this much cuter though, and I always love a bit of nostalgia. I'm proud of how it turned out and will in fact use this phone for another project, with some slight modifications. It deserves to stand on its own I think.


I added a kitty button to this belt, like I did with the other products in the series. It's one of the few recurring prims and ties everything together a bit.


I had some fun adding images and text to this diary, even if you can't really see much of it. I like the texturing on the strap as well, and the lighting on all the buttons. Thanks to Gabriel Watanabe the remote actually works. The blue and green buttons turn the corresponding TVs on and off, the red button controls both. I thought a feature like this would be good, since some might get annoyed at the continuous animation loops inside the TV screens (an SL limitation).


The TVs I knew from the start I was gonna add. I wasn't sure if animating them would be feasible, but after some fiddling that worked out better than I could've hoped. Each screen consists of two prims, so that the 'static' moves independently from the actual movies. The footage was shot by me inside The Sims 2.


The belt is overall less 'cutesy' looking than my backpack or leg accessory, but I added some sweet elements nonetheless. The texturing on the hearts turned out quite nice and I made bold, colorful buttons to be used throughout the entire belt.


That's it! The Burger Vision Belt is now available at my two store locations and on Xstreet. I priced it at L$350, which I think is fair considering the amount of work that went into it. I add a lot of detail to my items, which I hope makes them more special and unique. And I personally love highly detailed accessories. The more prims, the merrier =^.^=

Mainstore Location
Summer Store Location

Burger Vision Belt on Xstreet

Summer and Halloween

If you love particles, you should know Summer Seale. I'm not talking about obnoxious bling you see at clubs, but beautiful and intricate particles. Summer really is the particle queen and she recently opened her own sim which is just downright gorgeous. I'm honored she offered me a spot there.

The sim is a haven for fairies: magical, cute and filled to the brim with awesome sculpts, most of which Summer herself created.


Sim landing point. Just to give an idea of the goodies. You have to see this place for yourself. Pics can't do it justice.


My mushroom. I got to pick a color, so I went with the purple cap of course. Cutesy colors yay! I so love this little store. It's adorable, I love spending time here.


I'm sure it's not just me, but I get fired up over stuff like this. With this new store in mind, I felt inspired to finally do something for Halloween and perhaps, maybe, yes ... make it free. I've been totally lazy on the freebie front, about time that changed. I'm very grateful to everyone who has bought from me or stopped by my store.

The idea I went with isn't that original of course, as a Halloween freebie, but it all comes down to execution I thought. Wicked Witch Wendy (I hope) turned out sweet and fun. She blinks and her broom leaves a trail of particles (thanks to Summer!). She can be worn on your shoulder, attached to a scarf or as a spinning pet. I made two color options as well: a more classic Halloween look and a colorful pink and purple look. The first can be found at my main store in Linji, the second at my new mushroom store. Both of them will be available until November 1st, after which I'll take them back into my invent, for a year probably.


I hope this will introduce more people to Summer's sim. It deserves all the visitors it can get. Plus, making this was really fun. I think I'll do something for Christmas too, but maybe by then more specifically for customers or store subscribers. Just gotta poke a certain someone to put an update system in place :P

Anyways, happy Halloween everyone!
Grab these little witches before they disappear =^.^=

Wicked Witch Wendy I
Wicked Witch Wendy II

What I Can Never Find

Leg accessories, yes! Good ones at least are hard to come by. And since I wanted to continue my backpack theme, I decided to make one myself. I should've released this sooner I suppose, but other stuff got in the way, as usual.

The Emergency Burger leg accessory continues on my fast food theme, and is again in reference to ICHC. It includes a leg strap, ketchup bottle, toothbrush, toothpaste, blinking kitty, soda, laundry pin, seal, double cheeseburger (with ketchup!), straps, safety pins, fries and buttons. I owe a special thanks to Gabriel Watanabe for making the blink script for me. He rocks, like, a lot.

I put the accessory at L$240, with permissions mod and copy. It's resizable and customizable, the only thing you can't modify is the scripts inside the kitten. I thought about doing scripted resize instead, but this didn't prove as accurate, especially with the kitten eyes.


Sales poster, made like the backpack one.


The ketchup bottle made me drool in-world. I think the shine on it turned out nicely. The texturing on the lid I'm really proud of.


I thought it would be fun to add extra little details to the soda bag, so I ended up making the toothbrush and paste. The idea being, let's say, that if you eat junk but brush all is good. It's meant to be playful. I added little paws to the bag texture and put my logo on the toothbrush as well (for lack of inspiration).


I didn't set out to make the kitty totally realistic, which is why the paws are a bit more cartoony. I wanted to dress him as well, seemed sweet. Added some more detail to the pants in the process.


The note on the bag I wrote myself. That's the idea that got me started for this accessory and where I got the name from. The seal is totally cute to me. Best appreciated if you know ICHC.


I guess despite the name for this item, the burger really isn't the most important thing on it. It was the easy part of this project, since I already made it for the backpack. But I revamped it a bit, added more ketchup and different pins.


The strap lock, with a soft shine to it. There's a lot of different colors on this accessory, but I think they blend in together well enough.


That's it! Everything shown in detail as much as possible. I'm so glad to have this item out and I hope people will enjoy it. Off to make more stuff =^.^=


Mainstore Location

Emergency Burger on Xstreet

Unfinished Business

I'm taking care of some unfinished business and finally updated the photography guide I wrote ages ago. More than long overdue, since the previous release was from before Windlight (Windlight introduction to the main client I mean). So I rewrote the Windlight section, reviewed everything and added some more stuff here and there that I'd been thinking of for ages. I've tried making it as logical as possible, leaving out some info that's perhaps less to the point.



Another thing that's off my 'to do' list. I was getting more annoyed by the day realising people might get confused by the outdated info. Plus, I recently made the time to Photoshop again and the thought of that old, old guide was like a constant bee sting. Yah. I was surprised finding out how many people have actually gotten the 1.1 version, so I hope the update will be appreciated. If you have the 1.1, you should've received the 1.2 by now through the update system. You can always get a new, updated copy of course if you didn't. (May happen if you opened the first box in a no script area.)

Anyway, I really appreciate feedback. I'm hoping to turn this into a long term project, where others may want to contribute as well.

Eventually I'll make a pdf version for easier reference, but for now this update will do. There's too many other things I need to finish still. I started on another sculpt project and really want to get a move on.

Off to battle!

x
Anya

AnnaMayaHouse Gallery
AnnaMayaHouse Mainstore

Photo Guide on Xstreet

Fastfood Backpack

Hi there, Anya Yalin here: sculptor/animator/machinima lover/... This is my first ever post on a blog of my own. I started making content for Second Life quite a while ago, but now I want to handle this like a big girl and become a bit more organised. (I'm all over the place most of the time in just about anything I do.) This blog will be for store info obviously, as well as occasional ramblings and cookie dispensing.

Now to dive right in. There's this bag I made. I have a slight addiction to prim accessories (hence you'll find me with most attachment points occupied 99% of the time), so I wanted something with a lot of detail. And I mean a LOT. All sides of the bag covered, little nicknacks, the whole deal. Going to this website daily I settled on a fastfood/kitty/cutesy backpack. (Plus, I'm a neko.) And woot, now it's finally, and I really do mean finally, finished. I drove myself (and a few others) nearly crazy, but the bag turned out like I wanted it to, yay. I'm so excited to release it after a lot of frustration with sculpting, texturing, baking and endless tweaking. In and on the bag: fries, hamburgers, soda, burger box, baggies, decorative buttons, safety pins, little hearts, tiny bell, 10 dollar bill, paper notes, kitty logo, knife, fork, spoon, and more!

After some consideration I decided to price it at 350, which I think is reasonable considering the amount of work that went into it. The bag totals 192 prims, 186 of which are sculpted. To prevent the sculpt maps of the prims from being seen, this item is no mod. However, the box contains 5 different sizes to ensure perfect fit.

I took loads of pics to show as much detail as possible. Either way, if you want to inspect this bag before purchasing, I provided demo versions of all sizes at my store and on OnRez and SLX.


Sales poster. Man, it's hard to cram in a lot of info on such a small resolution, considering I use this for Xstreet too.


My long lost addiction to coke, yah. I used to be a sugar bomb.


Hmmm yum. I'm so proud of this stupid bun lol.


My store logo, inconspicuous enough I think. I personally don't like stores putting their names on products, even though I realize it's normal irl.


Fries and buttons ooooh. Inside the curled up note is a reference to that website I mentioned earlier. I've noticed myself using that kind of 'lolspeak' more often in SL conversations. I used to type all neatly even in IMs, punctuation included :P


Adorable big button and more fries. The burger box I relit a couple of times, wasn't sure about what I wanted. I made it slightly pinkish too, because I thought that was cuter and would blend in better with the overall colors.


The belt. I had a hard time settling on the color. I eventually went with a light blue similar to the main bag. I like having the color scheme be one whole, elements returning as well. That's why there's splashes on both the belt and the bag too. I'm a dork like that.


The dollar bill was cool to make. I thought about doing Santa money instead, but I found nice resolution images of the 10 dollar bill so there ya go. The image on the pink button was scanned from a little booklet I have irl. The texturing on the bell I'm quite fond of.


More cat references. This little guy was too sweet not to use.



Phew, I think that's about it. I hope you'll enjoy wearing this bag as much as I enjoyed making (and wearing) it. It's available at my main store location and on OnRez and SLX. Gifting is available at my store too by the way, courtesy of Gabriel Watanabe's awesome vendors. I thank him as well for his support during the creation of this item. His patience with my whining is endless.

I love input, so feel free to leave a comment or say hi. You might know me from elsewhere already. I'm scattered all over the internet, on YouTube, Flickr, Koinup etc.

Anyways, I sign off for now!


x
Anya Yalin

Mainstore Location

Fastfood Backpack on Xstreet (and demos)