Giving and receiving

A couple of weeks ago I did something I've been meaning to do for a long time. I have a stall at Luna Oaks that I won in a Linden lottery. I never sell much there, because the only people who visit the sim are noobs, who generally don't have much money and no experience of what the world has to offer. I mean, imagine yourself getting off a ship in a strange port in a foreign country: you're not gonna make any purchases at the tourist shop inside the gate, you're gonna want to explore the world, check out what the world has to offer. So anyways, this store had a very boring display of my shoes. I'd packed in 9 different styles in 4 colors each - I hate stores like that - wall to ceiling vendors. Buy, buy, buy. So the other week I changed it. I decided to make this a 50% off store for the noobs. I put 8 men's shoes and 8 women's shoes on display and today I made my first sale and, I hope, made someone happy.

Yesterday I get this nice IM: [1:18] Cord Heckroth: I just wanted to drop you a note. I bought a pair your Oslo shoes. I am *SO* not an clothes guy but I flippin' LOVE these shoes! Thank you!

Today he writes me again: [0:28] Cord Heckroth: ..street map of Oslo in the lining... such.. detail

And this one: [3:20] Heaven Lacey: Hi. Can i just say its my first time in your store, my hubby raves about this place, and to stop him yapping i thought I come and check it out, anyway thankyou so much for doing the Ughs, I cant afford uggs in RL but at least I can here. Thanks so much lol Heaven :)

This is why I love Second Life.

A Chronology of Shoes & Notable Moments

11/29/05 ~ I arrive in Second Life.

02/19/06 ~ Jeepers Creepers (men's) ~ My first shoe was the Jeepers Creepers All-Black Buckle, and its still one of the most popular. I was inspired by Feri Beckenbauer's Doc Martins, the first shoes I bought. I examined them closely, trying to figure out how he made them.

03/17/06 ~ Jeepers Creepers (women's) ~ in response to many requests, I released a women's version. Because I couldn't shrink the original men's shoe, I had to scale down each individual prim by the same percentage, and then re-position them in the same relationship.

04/02/06 ~ OttO ~ Inspired by Joe Stravinsky's stunning shoes. The high-heeled version was later joined by a medium- and low-heeled versions. My inability to create my own textures held this exciting design back. I always intended to re-texture and resize these shoes, but it hasn't happened yet.

07/04/06 ~ Wellies ~ a simple two-part shape. Later reissued with patterns, prim eyes and other bits and pieces, but in my opinion, the unadorned welly boot is the best.

08/12/06 ~ Sold my 1000th shoe!

08/13/06 ~ Trashville (men's and women's boots) ~ This time I built the women's boots first and simply stretched them to create the men's.

09/16/06 ~ Clogs (women's) ~ These were essentially the same as the men's Clogs but were withdrawn prior to a re-introduction that never happened.

10/01/06 ~ Betty ~ an inspired shape that proved very popular.

10/18/06 ~ Second Life hits 1,000,000 registered users.

11/29/06 ~ On vacation in Thailand for the month of December. Ah bliss! Complete absence of Christmas schmaltz. Though getting online is no problem and I can check my e-mail and IMs, this is not the place for concentrated creativity.

12/27/06 ~ Clogs (men's) ~ I tried to simply scale-up the men's shoe from the women's but there was something not quite right about the shape, and I had to redo a lot of it. Later on, I revised and re-textured these and got to put the price up as a consequence.

12/29/06 ~ Hawkes & Healey ~ this traditional Oxford style shoe was ages in the making. The shape is straightforward enough, but I had the hardest time with the textures. A black shoe with a shine is a very hard thing to get right.

01/01/07 ~ Ugh/Sherpa ~ pure plagiarism. So blatant that I changed the name to Sherpa. After I decided I could live with the shame of plagiarism, I changed the name back to Ugh. (The name reflects my feelings about this style of footwear). For more on the subject of ugly shoes, read "Gallery of Horrors" by Manolo the Shoe Blogger. http://shoeblogs.com/horrors.html

01/011/07 ~ Janine ~ I've always liked ankle boots.

01/21/07 ~ Groks ~ a total knock-off. Disgraceful behavior. Ashamed again! But there's knock-offs in every High Street. Still waiting for "cease and desist" letter.

01/28/07 ~ Lisa Llanfair buys 9 pairs of Clogs, 1 pair of Groks, 2 pairs of Jeepers Creepers, 3 pairs of Ughs and 22 pairs of Wellies.

02/04/07 ~ Coco Nico buys 4 pairs of H&H Oxfords, 12 pairs of Clogs, 6 pairs of Groks, 6 pairs of OttO and 4 pairs of UGHs.

02/05/07 ~ Lunar/Luna/Zero-G ~ a futuristic metallic women's boot. Never really took off.

02/25/07 - 10/26/08 ~ Rigger (men's work boots) ~ two styles of boot in the shoebox: One, a normal boot version with a separate leg, and the other as though the leg was rolled down to form a cuff or collar around the ankle.

03/04/07 ~ Twill ~ Initially released as women's Rigger, but since this boot was not a female version of the men's, the name was quickly changed. The name was inspired by a lovely canvas twill texture I found.

03/18/07 - 12-01-08~ RadioActive ~ Lots of lovely hazard warning labels. I wanted these boots to leave glowing "radioactive" footprints, but I wasn't impressed with the results. The slowly pulsating glow was left in, but only really shows up at night.

03/21/07 ~ Hi-Rigger/ Uptown/Hi-Top/Combat/ Sci-Fi (formerly Zero-G). A collection of designs that I'd never released.

04/29/07 ~ Strike! (men's and women's) ~ This bowling shoe was a real breakthrough. For the first time I abandoned the 3-prim sole and replicated a RL sole, both in plan view (which resulted in dramatically different left and right builds) but also in the curvature when viewed from the side. This resulted in a realistic 15-prim sole.

05/13/07 ~ Veronika ~ designed to complement Betty, it never really caught on, mainly because the sole was much too clunky. It was about this time that I realized that I didn't really understand women's shoes.

05/27/07 ~ Giddyap (women's) ~ a Riding Boot spin-off from the Zero-G build, in response to having a stable across the hill from my main store. For fun, I added a riding crop which, when worn and clicked upon, would result in a smacking animation and a whimpered "oooohhh". Available in both men's and women's voices, depending on the object of your attention. This is the last women's shoe I made.

06/10/07 ~ Giddyap (men's) ~ sure enough, guys wanted a Riding Boot too. They also got the whips.

07/12/07 - 01/06/09 ~ Rebel ~ this men's shoe was another breakthrough. In addition to the multi-prim sole, I developed the sliced-bread style of shoe building. Unlike previous releases, all four of the original designs were slightly different.

09/09/07 ~ Scratch ~ based on the Strike! chassis, this shoe was inspired with a texture I found and modified to create a scratched/canvas appearance.

09/23/07 ~ Quixote ~ a much more realistic looking boot with a slightly "worn" appearance. This is the first (but so far the only version) of a series of men's boots. I intend to use the same shape but with different textures and add-ons to create a variety of styles: buckles, laces, zippers, straps, emblems, etc. Many people tell me they never use the leg, preferring to wear just the boot portion, under jeans.

10/14/07 ~ Carl Perkins ~ this design first appeared as one of the Rebel series but I felt it was a strong enough design to be released in 6 different color suedes.

11/02/07 ~ Oslo ~ an ankle boot version of Henry Morgan - one of the Rebel series. I've always wanted to do an elastic-sided boot. A shoe this height does not require a separate "leg" portion, and when worn with jeans, does not show any socks (or lack thereof).

11/23/07 ~ Ho! ~ Talk about crass commercialism! I made these boots on Buy Nothing Day - the day after Thanksgiving, which signals the beginning of the month of Christmas. Last year, I went to Thailand for the entire month of December, and it was the best Christmas I've ever had. To make these bi-sexual boots really annoying, I added an optional sleigh bells sound effect.

11/25/07 ~ Ugh ~ The men's Ho! boots came out so quickly, I thought I ought to do some men's Ughs for winter. Six masculine colors.

12/16/07 ~ SOMA ~ I wanted to do a slighter taller boot than the Oslo, without getting into the separate "leg" portion. These work pretty well except in a few "broken ankle" poses, where the top of the shoe pokes through the pants. I spent about 3 weeks working on this design. The shape came fairly quickly, but I worked on the textures right up until the photo shoot, before I was satisfied. FYI, I created and uploaded around 150 tga textures while working on these shoes. Sometimes the change is just to get a stitch in the right place, or a shadow line aligned. I also took loads of snapshots of the shoes, overlaid with the alignment grid, and more during the photoshoot.

12/29/07 ~ Shanghai ~ I wanted to try something different with this shoe. I knew I wanted to make a two-tone dress shoe, but instead of using two different leathers, I chose a dimpled leather and a heavy silk brocade. This shoe has an upturned "snout" at the front, and is fastened with a wooden peg through three iron loops. To top it off, each shoe is decorated with a Chinese coin (held in place with a Chinese button knot), and the sole is incised with a Chinese dragon.

01/29/08 ~ Kippers ~ Maybe it was the wet January, but I often found myself wearing an old comfortable cozy pair of slippers in the evenings, so I decided to make some in SL. Even though the shape was based on another shoe, I ended up re-designing the whole thing. When it came to the textures, I had so much fun! Finally I whittled the choice down to 6 variations and since Valentine's Day was around the corner, did 50% off the red quilted ones.

03/01/08 ~ Dublin ~ Well what started out as a quick repeat of an earlier shape turned into a start from scratch exercise. And I'm glad I did: this shoe has (IMHO) the most realistic shape so far. I began with the brown version then added other textures, including the patterned "black cherry" that Ben Vanguard has been begging me for, ever since I used a similar texture as the lining of my Shanghai shoes.

04/19/08 ~ Toltec ~ The other weekend I went camping. A friend was telling me about the history of the conquest of Mexico, and that night I had a dream about shoes. Toltec is the result. I showed them to my good friend Raven Pennyfeather and she was inspired to create an amazing outfit "Castenada".

05/25/08 ~ Sebastian ~ The medieval retro look of Toltec warranted a second, modern look. Now who would wear high-heeled bright yellow shoes I wondered? Why, a rock star! More conservative colors followed... Like the Toltec, these shoes have a built-in sculpty "ankle" that models the upper part of the foot. The ankle has the same texture as the included socks, so that the foot appears to enter the shoe naturally.

06/25/08 ~ Finz, Mavericks & Reef Riders ~ I've had a few guys ask me to make my Grocs in men's sizes. I've found that scaling up women's shoes to men's sizes doesn't work, the proportions are all wrong, so I had no choice but to start from scratch. I worked first on the Mavericks, named for a really big wave in Northern California. Beginning with the sole and heel shape, I added a full upper and since these were intended to be beach shoes, I included perforations for drainage on top and around the edge. I copied the simple buckle from some diving goggles. I found some textures that give a nice translucent effect, and added some ripples and waves. For the Reef Riders, I removed the heel and replaced it with the same buckle strap. The Finz got stripped down even more. All three shoes are offered in half a dozen translucent colors.

08/25/08 ~ Havana ~ While on a three week visit to Thailand, I was inspired to produce some men's leather sandals. Simple leather straps wrap around the foot and ankle to create an airy shoe. I used a Resizer on this shoe, which gives the user maximum ability to size the shoe according to the proportions of their avatar. Because these shoes allow the foot to be seen inside, it is important to size the foot to match the shoe, rather than setting the foot size to 0.

10/18/08 ~ aXion ~ Autumn is here and my thoughts turn to winter boots with the rugged aXion line of hiking boots. Whether you're exploring the urban or rural environment, these sheepskin-lined, fur-cuffed sturdy boots will get you where you need to go. Available in muted black, blue, brown, gray, olive and sand.

10/25/08 ~ Rigger Redux ~ I've finally made a start on updating my older shoes. The Rigger work boots are still popular but the shape needed a major facelift. I based the shape on the aXion boot, but with a rolled-down cuff. Available in a traditional work boot, two camo versions and three leather colors: black, brown and black cherry (shown).

12/01/08 ~ RadioActive Redux ~ The first version of the RadioActive boot had about 4 prims; this one is based on the Quixote shape. Instead of a solid black sole, I used a translucent jelly (the same color as the shoes - red, black, yellow and silver), and embedded black graphite lugs into it, to create a 3d version. The boots are decorated with Hazard Warning symbols on a long-grain asbestos impregnated twill fabric. I also included a choice of 2 legs, an old school one and a sculptie version. But the best thing about this boot has to be the optional flaming radioactive footprint animation. Many thanks to Darek Deluca for his scripting that transformed a cartoony boot into something sublime.

12/01/08 ~ Ho! ~ Just in time for Christmas, the Dept. of Shameless Commerce has released an Elven Green version of the Santa Red Ho! boots.

01/03/09 ~ Red Diamonds by Luciano de Vincenzi ~ The first shoe of the New Year! I was all set to release this shoe a week ago, then I scrapped the original shape and started over. This loafer is the result. For the first style I chose a formal dress shoe, with three crimson diamonds on the instep and a black silk bow on the tongue.

01/06/09 ~ Henry Morgan by Luciano de Vincenzi ~ This is an updated version of the eponymous Rebel shoe, introduced in July '07. Very popular with the period costume set and now with a ReSizer.

09/19/09 ~ KiX ~ My original idea for this particular shoe had a pastel-colored canvas upper, with contrasting leather trim. This became Miami (see below). However, the first texture I tried was the black/gray version shown here. That's when I realized that the design had more than one style going for it. Kix became a sort of "crossover" shoe, part sneaker, part loafer. Available in black, blue, green and red, these shoes have a flexible non-slip sole tinted to match the leather/GoreTex (R) two-tone uppers.

09/19/09 ~ Miami ~ A summer shoe. Ideal for the beach and the boulevard. Pastel canvas in cream, sage, pale blue and peach, with leather detailing. Wear with shorts or slacks; socks optional.

10/21/09 ~ Vader's (I) ~ My first sculpty shoe. In the interests of full disclosure, I must declare that the sculpty shape used in these shoes is not mine, unlike the hand-drawn textures, which are all my own work. I'm in the process of learning to create sculpties, because ultimately it will give me the ability to create shoes that aren't possible with prims alone. Unfortunately there is a steep learning curve to negotiate before I can create my own sculpties, so in the meantime I used an excellent pre-made shape.

10/23/09 ~ Vader's (II) ~ After the first four Vader's (in black, khaki, gray and red canvas), I got busy with some more detailed ones. The second batch (all-black, cream, cocoa and russet) have individual soles and leather detailing.

11/6/09 ~ Trashville ~ Old time residents may remember the first Trashville boots released back in August '06. I withdrew them a year ago because they looked clunky and out-of-date. Today, the Trashville brand reappears. I bought a pre-made sculpty shape boot, added a sculpty leg and some prim straps and buckles, and created new textures. There are two classic styles "Engineer" and "Harness", and two colors, black and brown. Simple.

How I texture. Part 1

I have been complemented on the appearance of my shoes. While I make no pretense to call myself an artist, I have found ways to be creative within my limitations. First and foremost, I am a builder, a manipulator of prims. But without the ability to add a realistic texture to an object, it will appear flat and false, rather than alive and authentic. While I strive for realism in the things I make, my comments also apply to builders of cartoonish or fantastical objects.

One of the simplest yet most important things you can do when texturing a complex object, is to make sure that all similar textures are to the same scale. The repeat of a texture varies from cube to sphere to torus, particularly when they are cut or hollowed. With regular patterns e.g. a brick wall, its quite easy to see which faces need to have their textures corrected, re-oriented, stretched or shrunk. but with abstract patterns, sometimes its hard to see if the pattern is even going in the right direction. Rest assured, it will show up down the road, when you wonder why one face looks a little different from all the others.

What I do before I begin texturing an object,is to cover all faces of the object with a simple 10 x 10 grid. The one I use is divided into 100 numbered squares. The numbers enable me to wrap a texture continuously across a series of faces. Confession: I copied this grid from somewhere in Second Life without asking for the owners permission. Bad!


To demonstrate my technique, I'm going to use an example that occurred recently, when I decided that the stairs in my store needed a runner; a carpet that would lead the shopper up the stairs to the next level. I wanted to use an existing oriental carpet texture as the runner, and have it flow seamlessly up the treads and risers, without a break in the pattern.

Step 1. (Pun intended) Since the stairs in question were existing, I had to make the carpet prims fit the size of the tread and rise (the horizontal and vertical parts) of the stair. I began with the middle step and once I had it sized correctly, I duplicated it to create the top and bottom parts.


Step 2. After making all 3 prims transparent, I used the grid texture on the faces of the three prims that would become the carpet: in this case, 3 treads and 2 risers. You will notice that each face displays the full 10 x 10 grid, but depending which way the prim cubes are oriented, the grid may not be oriented in the same direction on each face.


Step 3. Change the Rotation of the appropriate faces so that the grid texture is oriented in the same direction on each face. So far so good. But we don't want to display the full 10 x 10 grid on each face. We want to stretch the grid texture out across the full length of the carpet, so that the proportions of the grid are identical on both the treads and the risers. NB. In this instance, I am not concerned about the width of the carpet. The carpet could be 1m wide or 10m wide.


Step 4. Department of Mathematics. My treads are 1.0m deep (from front to back) and the risers are 0.45m high. The total length of the carpet is 3 treads plus 2 risers or (3 x 1.0) + (2 x 0.45) = 3.9m. If I divide 1 by 3.9, I get 0.256m. Or to put it another way, each tread will be 1.0 x 0.256 of the grid texture and each riser will be 0.45 x 0.256 (0.115) of the grid texture. To check this, 3 treads @ 0.256 (0.77) plus 2 risers @ 0.115 (0.23) equals 1. (Numbers are rounded up for convenience)


Step 5. Click on all 3 tread faces and change the Horizontal Repeats Per Face from 1.000 to 0.256. Next click on the 2 risers and change the Horizontal Repeats Per Face from 1.000 to 0.115. Now all the grid squares are of the same proportions, but the numbering does not flow continuously from end to end.


Step 6. Beginning with the top tread, we want the #1 square of our grid to be at the far end of the prim. By trial and error (there must be a cleverer way to do this, but it works for me) set the Horizontal Offset to 0.630. Leave the middle tread the way it is, and set the bottom tread to 0.370. Change the top riser Horizontal Offset to 0.817 and the bottom riser to 0.187. Hopefully, you will see that the grid numbers now run continuously in the same proportions from top to bottom.


Step 7. Click on all five faces of the stair runner and select the carpet texture. Bingo! A seamless carpet pattern. (Your results may vary).

Coming out of the closet...

Confession is good for the soul, they say. So here goes. I'm not a woman, I just play one in Second Life. Until now. Say goodbye to gorgeous, 30-something, white-haired Epy, and hello to handsome, aging, gray-haired Epo.

Questions arise: why did I use a female AV for so long, and why have I decided to reveal my RL gender. Every day, every minute, everything we do (or don't do) effects our future. Every now and then Fate intervenes and offers us a wild card to play (or not). When I joined SL, I had no idea I would still be here almost two years later. Not because I thought my interest would wane, but because I doubted that Linden Lab would hold up under the pressure of explosive growth. For this reason I never went Premium, preferring to rent rather than purchase land.

But back to the questions. Why did I chose a female AV? Blame it on Lara Croft, heroine of Tomb Raider. This third-person action game was (I believe) the first computer game to have a woman as the principal character. I quickly grew accustomed to watching a female character perform the actions that I controlled. So when I joined SL, and was given the opportunity to select the gender of my AV, I had no hesitation in choosing female. So did a lot of other guys.

And I gotta say, it's been fun. For starters, speaking as a straight guy, I'd rather watch a woman walk ahead of me, than a man. Thank goodness for the sexy walk animation! Suddenly I had a whole new wardrobe to experiment with, and I discovered that I had no difficulty in selecting which lingerie to wear, which shoes went with which outfit, and how I wanted my hair and make-up to look.

But the minute Epy stepped out to explore the world, I experienced male-female relationships from a whole different perspective. Guys would hit on me! "Hey Babe", "Hi Doll". I had become a sex object! So for those early months when she explored SL's most popular activity, she became a lesbian. But all that was before I became consumed with building shoes. But being a woman stuck. Epy made friends as a woman, but when she started exchanging RL information with others, I always felt deceitful. I've confessed my RL identity to a few close friends, but I'm tired of the deception, and that's why I've come out of closet. From now on, Epo will appear as a guy. Get used to it. And all those gorgeous outfits? I've transferred all I could to one of my alts - a gorgeous, white-haired, 30-something woman.

One last thing: I don't want to hear from anyone complaining that I tricked them by appearing as a woman. Get over it. Ain't nobody here looks like their AV; that's the advantage of this place: we can and should be anyone we want.

What's in a name?

In the beginning was the word; and the word was Jeepers Creepers.

When I arrived in Second Life in November '05, I spent most of my time in the sandboxes, learning how to build. I've always considered myself an artisan rather than an artist, and SL provided a place where I could build anything I could imagine. Every now and then I would venture out into the world and find a camping chair to earn some money for clothes and especially shoes. Although my first AV was female, I quickly realized that it was the shortage of good men's shoes that would provide the inspiration for my first commercial venture.

The first shoe I built to sell, was a black crepe-soled creeper. It has a simple design that offered plenty of opportunity for variations: different colors, buckles, laces, faux-fur tops, emblems on the toe and heel, etc. The obvious name for the shoe appeared out of nowhere: Jeepers Creepers. That name appeared first as a logo on the label inside the shoe (which is why there is a row of stitches around the perimeter), and also on the lid of the shoebox. That selfsame Jeepers Creepers logo also appeared above my first and all my subsequent stores, up until today, when my store logo became the far more prosaic JCS, Jeepers Creepers Shoes, with the separate Men's Store version shown below.

I'm glad that I've finally made the change. There was some confusion, at least in my mind, that Jeepers Creepers was both the name of my store and the name of one of the many brands of shoes that I sell. Also, I always felt that the original logo was somewhat cartoonish, and while that was not inappropriate for the shoes it adorned, when it appeared above my store, as the name of my store, it did not reflect the quality and variety of the shoes I make.

For anyone who's interested, I chose Bookman Old Style as the font for the JCS, because it has a shapely clean look and a very strong J. In homage to my original Jeepers Creepers logo, I chose yellow as the font color (although in a richer and less garish shade), and a modest bevel and emboss to lift the letters off the black background. Initially there was slightly too much space between the J and the C, so I switched the letter spacing from the default Metric to Optical. The other font is the honest Arial. I kept the same enhancements for the MEN's, but for the Jeepers Creepers Shoes, I chose instead an Inner Shadow which has the effect of making the letters appear to be incised from the background, reflecting their diminished importance.