New Airship: Air Pirate Zeppelin!

While the scripting of the Prometheus was affected by RL schedules, I finished in the meanwhile the Air Pirate Zeppelin, the big brother of the miniature version I made for the Sinister Steampunk Hunt.

Steampunk Air Pirate Zeppelin!

It doesn't only looks stunning (thanks to materials effects), it is also very easy to fly, has a very reasonable prim-count and offers plenty of positions for Avatars. Take a look at the samples - the model is my lovely Emma Sunshine:

You can find the Air Pirate Zeppelin at the Marketplace or in my in-world store. I also have it on life-size-display at Mieville Twain.

And since Halloween is coming very soon, I also made a "Flying Dutchman" Mini:

Boo! Scary! A flying Dutchman Airship!

Cute, isn' it? Here is the Marketplace-link: Halloween Mini Zeppelin.

Happy Halloween! And I hope to have soon good news about the release of a certain other pretty large project. Fingers crossed that RL cooperates!

Edit:

I like Halloween Mini Zeppelin so much that I made a full-size version of it too - scary thing!

Ghost Pirate Zeppelin!

And here is the link to it!

New Date For The Sinister Steampunk Hunt: Saturday October 4!

Good news! Emedea sent a message today to the hunt merchants: The hunt can take off just as planned. With a short delay though: The hunt will start on October 4, at 8 am SL time. We also got the kit with the hunt-items and I did set up everything for the big day when the daring gift-hunters come!

Starting the hunt at a weekend is actually a pretty good idea. There are much more people online than weekdays, so what sounded like bad fortune first, might actually lead to a pretty glorious start. For further infos, just hit this sign at my store (the Sinister Steampunk Hunt-blog hasn't been updated yet)

Yes - its happening! Start: Saturday October 4!

Speaking of a glorious start: The building of the new air pirate zeppelin is now to about 90% finished. Just some fun bomb dropping features missing yet and the obligatory test-runs. It should be finished shortly and be ready to conquer the skies!

Air Pirates over Flotsam!

It already had its maiden-flight over Blake Sea, including visits at Hollywood Airport, Honah Lee, Flotsam and Crow's Nest, before landing at the New Horizons Airport. It was a perfectly smooth ride. Very pleasing, despite its massive size: its over 64 meters long! Land-impact wise the ship will be in the 50 Li region, which is a amazing number for such a huge build.

Captain Some!

Floating majestically over the rooftops.

Even the evil zombie-pirates nearby were pretty envious !

Oh and on that note: News about the Prometheus-Class! We will finish the scripting very soon (I know, I said this before, but real-life can delay things even for us ;-) ) and plan the release-date to be coming week!

Maiden Flight!

One certain project was keeping me busy over the last weeks - well with some interruptions due to lack of motivation, changes in design and ideas for other things which were much faster to realize keeping popping up.
It's always a special moment for me when a larger construction is completed. Well "completed" - let's say when you finally see results. There is still some work to do at it but its down to some minor tweaking and experimenting with things and playing with design details really.
A build is never actually completed. You just give up at some point ;-) However, the closer you get to this perfect idea you have in your head, the better - and I'm am very pleased with...

The first Drow Science Steampunk Zeppelin!

There is always this level of uncertainity you feel when uploading the mesh the first time. Are your estimations about its land impact correct? (A crucial point to me. Especially with bigger objects: I want to avoid cluttering places with unnecessary large primcounts) Are there any things  I have missed? Any design flaws? Or does the cool and beautiful model in blender looks just ugly and disproportioned when putting your av in it?

Luckily I could answer all these questions to my satisfaction. It has a decently low land impact of 48 prims (at an overall length of more than 50 meters), it looks light and elegant and simply - right :-)

I wanted to make this ship for a long time already. A whimsical, sleek design. Totally fictional of course, but still: its quite believable that a construction like this would actually work!
It is a piece of alternate history, where steam engines learned to fly - even if you had to hang them from large gas balloons!

Friday evening saw its maiden flight. I invited some friends over and took off from the airfield at Foliage.
It was a lovely and quite extensive tour: We did head west to Crow's Nest, had a trip down south to the St. Diabloux Airport, went to Grand Manan Island and Sailor's Cove and even had a trip to Second Norway in the far east before landing at Honah Lee Surf.

Low-level cruising over a calm Blake Sea (Courtesy of Cyhtleen)

Stopping by at Crow's Nest

Drow skipper Somehow steering into the Sunset (Courtesy of Cyhtleen)

Most ships in Second Norway float in the water - some(s) fly!

The next days will see further test-runs, some tweakings and trying one or two ideas to make it even better (hard to believe, I know!), before it will be available at my store.

Oh, and before I forget: there is one thing I definitely need to fix before it goes into serial-production:

It still has no name!

I will fix this flaw - promised! Deadalus sounds not bad for example... feel free to give me feedback :-)

Happy Halloween & Hello, Kestrel!

Yes! Its released! My - so far - most complex mesh creation has finally hit the market.

A classical beauty - the Kestrel Biplane

The Kestrel is a lovely hommage on the biplanes of the roaring 1920s and 1930s with lots of custom made elements like a hyper-realistic 9 cylinder radial engine, authentic propeller, highly sophisticated cockpit, bracing, realistical profiled wings, etc etc.

With a slim land impact of only 22 and low lag scripts its of course a great plane for travelling long distances like over blake sea.

You can find the Kestrel on my in-world stores

at:
Lionheart
Poppyport
Stalingrad


and at the Marketplace.

Curse The White Whale!

SL never stops to surprise me... I was preparing taking off from the Foliage Airfield for a routine flight with the Kestrel as I spotted a giant white whale flying over the airfield disappering fast out to open sea!

Of course I hurried to pursue it, but it escaped me twice in lag and traffic and lag and even more lag!

Therefore I decided to take this measure:

If you have seen it or any information of its whereabouts, inform me at once!

One Step Closer To World Domination!

Blender kept me pretty occupied the last weeks: After some smaller things (Gramophone, Orrery, Globe, Minizeppelin and the BDSM Mittens) I went for something larger: My first mesh airplane - the Kestrel!

My first Mesh Biplane: Moon and Zen inspecting the "Kestrel" at the Honah Lee Airport after it's successful maiden flight.

Later on, during test flights, something fun happened. I was just preparing to land at the St. Diabloux Airport when my friend Moon spotted a very familar object hovering proudly over Blake Sea: a Prometheus-Class Carrier - yay!

Drow Science meets Drow Science: The "Kestrel" making a stop at a familiar looking place.

My heart always jumps from joy when I see my creations in-world. And its good when their owners do some customizations on them. Thats why I like keeping them modifyable: it's showing respect and apprechiation to your customers. It is giving them something they can customize and make part of their personal space.

A few weeks earlier I saw another one at New Babbage. A sight that also made me really proud :-)

The Prometheus-Class over New Babbage.

Pimp My... Airplane!

One of the planes I really like a lot is my Vintage 2-Seater Biplane. It is really a fun to fly, it is not too big, so you can still do silly things with it like fly between houses or land on their roofs, yet it has enough space for a passenger!

A Classic!

By design its a classical airplane of the 1920s and early 1930s. Ideal for lovers of open cockpits radial engines!

Now, one of my customers - Jean Severine - surprised me with some really cool modifications. I have to say he changed its character quite drastically, but I like it!

The Wild Orchid!

He made it definitely more sporty and modern looking than its original design. Its a different airplane now and yes, it did inspire me to make a mesh version in its spirit - more info coming soon! ;-)

For now enjoy some more pictures of it. Its a pixie, isn't it?

A first look at it: nicely done!

En route to the Second Norway Airport.

Safe landing of course - and it looks so good!

New Hobby: The Daily Flotsam Pillock Memorial Blowup

Yarrrrr! Burrrrrn, Flotsam, burrrrrn!

One of the greatest virtues of this digital world called SL is that you have a lovely high degree of freedom. You can explore and find amazing works of creative people in abundance or you can create something by yourself - and learn and get better and better. You can express yourself through your avatar (want to see a blue-coloured fox flying a F 16? SL is the place for that!). You have countless ways to interact socially, go to art exhibits, visit clubs, listen to concerts - even do some RP (for example as blue fox!) - the limits are your imagination really!

However sometimes the fun ends. For example when people with obvious social deficiencies start acting like little SL-policemen and try to ruin your fun. As it happened lately in Flotsam.

Flotsam is a beautiful and fun place made by perhaps one of SL's most creative minds - Aley. A swimming pirate town full of lovely peculiarities. And with a special feature: you can blow it up! Its encouraged - and so I did.

And just as I was enjoying total mayhem (burning buildings crashing into the sea, flames leaping high into the sky - the usual stuff a Drow likes) I was IMed by a random "SL policeman" and was called a griefer!

You see I have of course understanding and respect for the various role-playing groups in SL. I have encountered loads of friendly people already this way: medieval vampires, wastelanders, prisoners and guards, space cadets, steampunks, slave-trader, damsels in distress, pirates, ponies, aviators - even dogs - simply all kinds of folks!

But when a single person belonging to these groups try to force their community-rules on the rest of the Grid or simply starts calling you names because they don't like the shoes you wear or the bombs you throw - at a place that doesn't even belong to their RP-community - then the fun ends for me.

Well, to get clearance I wrote a short inquiry about this issue to Aley. The answer was very clear: I got a cannon and the task to blow the city up at my "hearts content" ;-)

This I did, and I will do this every day now - and I invite everyone to do the same!

Come by to Flotsam, grab one of the free bomb-throwers, cannons, hand-guns or anything else which shoots objects called "CannonBall" and give the city a beating! Its so relieving! Its so much fun! And no worries you could do permanent damage: the city recovers fully in a very comfortably short time!

Go make SL a more fun place. It can endure a healthy amount of craziness and disorder!

Oh, but take a look at Aleymart! first and grab some handy freebies. They are great :-)

Just A Short Notice About LL Incompetence...

Its been several weeks now since a bug occoured causing vehicles to crash when crossing sims. Blake Sea is almost wiped empty and LL still hasn't released a fix - great job...

Here is a short description of the bug by Andrew Linden. As mentioned above despite the thread-title the bugfix wasn't deployed yet.

I can't say I am pleased. Professionalism is spelled differently.

Secret Pirate City Discovered - Flotsam!

Sometimes the best way to find an interesting place is sheer luck. I was happily strolling over Blake Sea in my Fokker D.VII when I spotted a peculiar looking floating pirate city called Flotsam south of the Hollywood Airport. After finding a spot to land I started discovering the place.

It soon turned out that Flotsam is - uhm well... special... but best see for yourself:

Interesting first impression: It seems even outlaws have a court!

Authentic pirate refreshments inside. As well as...

...cells! And thats how it looks when I put you in jail.

Besides a obviously well developed judical system Flotsam of course offers everything a real pirate needs. Shops for indispensable things like prostheses, parrots and ships supplies as well as restaurants (my favorite is Mc Sushi), bars, barbershops, etc...

Flotsam is a lovely addition to the blake-sea area with many pirate-related freebies scattered around. Its also participating on the "Great Blake Sea Treasure Hunt". The HUD and information you can get here.

Aley (aka Arcadia Asylum), the creator of the place also told me about a rather uncommon feature the city has: Its actually demolishable! So don't be surprised if someone blows up the bar you were sitting in! 

Fortunately the city recovers 5 mins after destruction - plenty of time to enjoy a nice little pirate apocalypse!

You can get everything you need to blow up the city at Napoleon Blownapart - of course for free!

Hmmmmm... bombs!

*slips a few handful grenades in her pockets for later*

Applying for a side-job at the tattoo- and barber-shop.

The 1st.. no 2nd... well 3rd Bank of Flotsam...

...and soon they will have a 4th. Perhaps its not a good idea to have the explosives store nearby.

Lets have a dinner at the two gilded arches.

I think I've seen this fellow in the terracotta army already.

An unexpected degree of nostalgia for a pirate hideout.

Good its not me this time!

You won't buck off this drow, cursed Moby Dick!

Voodoo-shopping!

The underwater-part of Flotsam: Very steampunk, very lovely!

After the family came online I showed them the place too.

Blogging and talking about what to do next.

Great idea! Why not trying the explosives in a field test? 

Hell's Angel! Luvia has the talent to find the right outfit for all sorts of places and situations.

Flotsam is indeed one of the most remarkable places I've seen in SL so far. Of course you don't need to blow up the entire city to have fun. You can literally spend hours simply by peacefully discovering or having some pirate RP - but its good to you know you actually can ;-)

Check it out!