Blog Archives
New World: Hatchburg Fishery
A quick guide on what can be found at Hatchburg Fishery in First Light.
Click the picture to enlarge. I misspelled lifebloom in the picture. (It’s not lifeblood…although, that’s a cool name)
Second Life: Photography Tutorial Part 2
Photography tutorial part 2: How I make the eyes look so expressive.
Emotion in the eyes:
When it comes to capturing emotions in the eyes, I do a few tricks. It’s not natural by any means.
1. I do use mesh eyes. (Catwa eyes to be exact) The hud that comes with the Catwa eyes allows you to move the eyes in different directions. This is helpful when you are posing to have the eyes stay in the position that you want them in. You do not have to use Catwa eyes but it is handy to have that Hud with the eyes.
2. Depending on what emotion I am trying to capture, I will move the mesh eyes up or down. I find if I want to capture anger, hostility or even a sensual pose; I move the iris more towards the top of the eyelid. If I am looking for a soft, sad, depressed or even a more innocent expression; I move the iris closer to the bottom. (See pictures below)
3. I edit my face shape. I have several shapes saved for pictures that I custom made myself. With one shape, the outer corner of the eyes are intentionally turned downwards. (Not a lot because I don’t want to make it super noticeable) This gives the face a natural sadden appearance. When you experience grief or are crying, the outer corners of your eyes will turn downwards. When you are overjoyed or excited, those outer corners will turn up. So based on the type of picture is the shape I use.
4. Not all mesh eyes are created equal. I think we all can tell the difference between noob eyes and high quality eyes. I tend to use eyes that I know will photograph well. There are a lot of good quality eyes that look great but for some reason just don’t photograph well. It’s just like real life when you think you look great and then somebody shows you a picture of yourself from a party and your eyes look like they belong in the black pits of hell. After a lot of trial and error, I have found several people that make wonderful photographic worthy eyes. (I have not tried all the eyes in Second Life – these are just my personal preference – use the eyes you personally like)
5. Here are a list of eye makers to try out if you are struggling: (Again, I use the Catwa Eye system with appliers from the designers below)
a. A R T E
b. Euphoric
c. Go & See
d. Song
e. IKON (He doesn’t really update but his eyes are mesh and they come with a hud)
5. Eyebrow shapes are seriously important to your picture. The wrong eyebrow shape can really make your picture look like shit. Here are two pictures using different eyebrow shapes: I think you can see the difference in facial expressions.
Will write up a tutorial for wind lights soon. So look for part three soon.
IPAD Games: Animation Throwdown Tips & Hints
Animation Throwdown
Beginner tips:
Quests: Follow them
Keep following all those quests especially in the beginning.
They are relatively simple and offer bonus rewards.
Decks:
Customize your deck as soon as possible.
How: Go to the “Deck” option on the main menu.
Turn “Auto Deck” off.
The top row is the deck, you are playing with. The bottom is all your extra cards.
Drag and drop your cards that you do not want to the bottom row.
Place all the better cards into the top row.
The pink, blue and green are the better cards. The gray cards are the lowest tier.
Upgrade:
Level up your cards
You do not need to level up all your cards. Start with the rarer ones in your deck. (Pink, Blue & Greens)
Still in your deck option from the front menu, click on one card from your deck.
Once you click it, there is an option to upgrade the card at the bottom.
In order to level the card up, you will need some “Giggitywatts” or “Coins.”
How much it takes to level up a card depends on how rare it is.
You can also hit the “Max Out” button at the top of the card if you just want to max the card out.
Fuse:
Make your card even more powerful!
When you have maxed out / leveled up two identical cards, you can fuse them together to make one better card.
I do this a lot with my extra grey cards because you are going to need grey cards in your deck, so you might as well make them as powerful as they can be.
Research:
Research those combos!
During battles, you can stack cards onto other cards if the combo has been researched.
Click on “Research” from the main menu.
Click on one of the research pods and pair two cards together. It usually takes a few hours to a day to research most combos. (It depends on the rarity of cards on how long it takes)
I pick one card out of my deck and try to research as many combos with that card. Basically, keep doing research until every card in my deck can be paired with another card or multi cards.
You can also obtain rare cards from research.
Money:
Buying extra cards……
You do not need to buy extra cards if you level up your cards and research combos.
If you just want to support the creators and get rare cards faster, then go for it.
sugarriott.com 