…Codie is way too busy and tired to blog efficiently lately. I like being calm and rational, alert, and well rested while I post something, unless it is a rant. A long, ferocious tirade that ends on no constructive conclusion.

But this is not one of those posts. You around me all knows how crazy hectic it is for me lately. So many things happening in a short time, in both lives. I will spare you the RL crap apart to say im getting help for my lack of sleep and plan to rest more. And my SL is always more and more amazing as it goes, the love, the people, the fire of creativity burning holes into my soul… I am one fuckin lucky betch to have you all in my life, supporting me in such a caring way it leaves me weeping with bliss. I am humbled, honored, and devoid of words to tell how grateful I am to everyone around me. Thank you all, so much.

I’m rushing to finish the Boudoir Rouge series, about 25 left to do, and started scrambling again with the MachinimaCam codebase. We are in the last days of organizing the art exhibits at SL5B, task made maybe a little bit more heavy on my heart with all the surrounding drama. I will refrain of commenting furthermore until this event is done, not by fear or even by ethics, but because it drained me so fucking much I decided to go with the “Let’s do this and get on with it” attitude. Which is not exactly what I expected by volunteering for what is supposedly a resident ran event. Through all of this I managed to setup the Boudoir Rouge kiosk, and the China Red kiosk on the Asian Culture sim. Despite that little sadness in my heart, I will try and focus on the positive, the art, the people, and making sweet new friends.

In much more exciting new, something BIG is coming on my friends, read more in the next post.

Unfortunately due to a schedule conflict (RL and TZ are bitches!) I cannot attend to the Koinup Machinima Contest ceremony at Orange Island. But the winners are already announced on Koinup. Myself and Tao Takashi each chose a winner and the community chose their own favourite, which was also my first choice.

Here are the top winners:

• The Little Newbie by Alienhearts (community winning machinima)
• “The Cats Will Play” Grindhouse Tribute by Bkiddo
• ChouChou by ChouChou

They will receive a cash prize from Koinup, and a license for MachinimaCam HUD Pro as soon as I can go inworld to deliver it.

There was a very high amount of outstanding work presented for this contest, the choice was very hard. I encourage all participants to continue working on doing machinima, many of you are extremely talented and are showing some real skills for the art.

Again, congratulations to the winners, and thank you all for your very active participation to this contest. Thanks to Tao Takashi for co-judging this contest, and thanks to Pierluigi of Koinup for giving me this opportunity to see all those marvelous pieces of work.

I will be giving a 1h presentation on making Machinima movies at Orange Island on Thursday this week, 9h30AMSLT, for Orange’s Machinima Week. Check the schedule for more information.

I got commissioned by Jacek Antonelli of Cuddlefish Junction to make a demo of her Bubble Ride product, so I thought I could as well make it artsy and nice to look at. So I used Windlight to capture this movie, using a mix of presets and custom settings for the sky and water. I then made the final cut and editing using Sony Vegas.

Hope you will enjoy it, especially on this extended downtime day.

High resolution version available here:

WMV Format (60 megs very high res)

Flash Format (high res)

I am proud to announce that I have been requested by Koinup.Com to be a judge and to provide MachinimaCam as prizes for the new Koinup Second Life Music Video Contest.

Here is the integral communique:

——-

Videos and Music tell more than thousands words! So we had this idea to create a Second Life Music Videos Contest.

The theme is totally free. You can create a video, which features your first 100 days in Second Life, or create a whole story, directing other avatars! Otherwise, you can show us footage from your favorite sims. Or just create a sequences of wonderful images and stream them, as a slideshow, Just remember to add your video a good soundtrack!

You can submit your entries from April, 2 until April, 29.
The winners will be announced on May, 6 here and on the Koinup Blog.

Here are the latest entries.
Rules and Guidelines

• In order to take part in this contest, you must have an account on Koinup. Registration is free and takes only a few seconds.
• All the videos have to be shot in Second Life.
• Add some good soundtracks to your videos. Remember: all the entries have to be music videos!
• All the submissions in the contest must be tagged with this tag:
  secondlifemusicvideoscontest
  (copy this tag and paste it in your entries)
• Videos can’t be shorter than 1 minute or longer than 6 minutes.
• We accept .mpg, .mpeg, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi formats up to 150 MB in size. We do not support files with more than 2 audio channels and Windows Media Audio Professional (WMA Pro) audio codec.
• Submissions can’t be videos already hosted on Koinup. We accept videos already published on other websites. So if you have a machinima that meet the rules, you can submit it!
• Videos must remain on Koinup after the end of the contest, but you are free to publish them also on other websites and blogs.

PostScriptum: Don’t you know how to tag pictures? Look here!

Here are the latest entries.

Regarding the music

Some SL musicians has been so kind to gave us permissions to use their tracks as soundtracks of the contest!
Here are the links to download:

• Funk Shepherd & Dizzy Banjo
• Lyn Carlberg
• Melanie Fudge
• Rich Palmer
• Kim Seifert

Pay attention:
you can use these songs, but only for the contest. you have to type credits (authors, titles and links of the tracks you have used)
If you want use other music, we highly suggest to use only contents released with Creative Commons licences. You can find good sources of CC music here:
http://ccmixter.org/
http://creativecommons.org/audio
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Music_Podcasts

Winners and Prizes

The price is totally Amazing!
20,000 L$ plus the MachinimaCam created by CodeBastard Redgrave.
MachinimaCam is an effective and highly useful tool to control your SL camera and help you to make machinima.

Winners will be selected by our authoritative judges: CodeBastard Redgrave and Tao Takashi.

There will be three winners. Two of them will be selected by our jury. The third one will be the Community winner and will be selected by the Koinup Community.

How become the Community Winner? Well, your video will be the community winners if it will be the coolest once submission will end. Coolest video is the most commented, faved, viewed!
Here you can find exactly what is coolest on Koinup.

Here are the latest entries.

Hope you will be a large number to participate!

I’m very glad and honored that I was invited to participate to Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon. One of most very interesting person I met recently in SecondLife, Sophrosyne Stenvaag, is the immersionist behind the Extropia Sim, which I visited lately. She released this communique which I’m copying here.
Sophrosyne’s Saturday Salon: Art, Machinima & Immersion in SL

Come rock the house with the Red Queen!

I’m very glad to have the occasion to present my work at Extropia Core, this is going to be one awesome experience. Thank you Soph!

First, a huge gigantic round of thanks to all of those who submitted a logo for that funny little contest. All the entries were very good, and all of them mean a lot to me, just that you took some of your precious time to make something for me. I am touched an honored, and found out a lovely trait about me in every and each logo designed by you guys. Much, much love to you all, you so totally made my day/week, and what the hell, you guys made my whole year.

Here are the contenders:

So, here’s the winners, in invert order.

*DRUMROLLS!*

3RD WINNER: STEPHEN VENKMAN

The only thing not good about this logo is that its not a monogram. Apart that, well it is quite me! Steph took a very nice capture of me to represent on this logo, a closed eye shot, my favourite kind. Stephen wins a complete set of Dramavatar stuff, including 78 pairs of eyes and shirts.

2ND WINNER: OPENSOURCE OBSCURE

This is a very nice monogram. Very nice idea too. Many people told me it was their favourite. With maybe slight modifications, this could become my secondary logo, like a watermark or a seal. Very good work, Opensource. Opensource wins a MachinimaCam, and all Dramavatar Stuff.

1ST WINNER: RYKER BECK

Okay before you go and think I favourited Ryker because she’s a sweetheart, think again. This logo has all characteristics I was looking at. It’s red, hawt, and me. I think I’m going to ask for a few little modifications, but basically, it’s perfect. Elegant, simple, classy, clever, a little naughty. Rings any bell? I can see that to sign my work, I can see that like a crown on my website, my first reaction was: wow! fucking awesome! Congrats Ryker, you totally deserve that win. Ryker will get $L4000, MachinimaCam, and all Dramavatar stuff.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

As I said, and I will repeat, ALL works submitted were awesome and all of them have something touching and significant. All entries were so cool that I decided that everyone will get a little gift from me, as a thank you. I love you all, thank you very much for participating.

Codie

Today Shockwave Plasma asked me if I had a personal logo, like the one that belongs to Tateru Nino. Tho I surely don’t have the cult following Tateru has, Shockwave surely thinks I’m hawt shit for asking me such a thing. Apart my standard signature, I don’t have a distinctive mark that can represent me.

I surely don’t have the time right now to design a logo for my personal use. Tho, it would be surely lovely to have something unique I could appose to my work or use around for fun, like a graffiti tag. So I had this idea that it could be a really fun to do a little contest, and ask for you lovely people to design a logo for myself.

The prizes:

• 1st prize: L$4000 cash, 1 MachinimaCam HUD, 1 Sakura Blossom Emitter, all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts), and a big valentine smooch from Codie
• 2nd prize: 1 MachinimaCam HUD, 1 Sakura Blossom Emitter, all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts)
• 3rd prize: all Dramavatar eyes (78 pairs) and shirts (60 shirts)

The rules:

• All entries to the contest must be posted as a link in the comments of this blog entry. No exception made.
• The logo must be a minimum of 1600×1200, for better scaling
• You can submit more than one work
• The 1st winner must provide the Photoshop and/or Illustrator files used for the logo.
• The 1st winner must concedes the full rights to his creation to me (CodeBastard Redgrave) since it is to be used as my personal logo. You retain the right to present your work as a porfolio item of course. I retain the right to modify it at my will.
• I do not engage in using the logo if you win. EDIT: To precise my intent, it’s just in case I feel no logo represents me. Very unlikely to happen but I’m of a careful nature.
• All works must be submitted before Feb 14th 2008 @ 12:00 AM Linden time
• Codie is the sole and only judge, will choose the 3 winners and will give out the prizes personally

Guidelines:

• Red is a must
• Monographic logos are better since they can be used in a single color or incorporated in other designs, but not mandatory
• The logo should be of a square ratio
• Bonus points if the logo looks good when embossed
• The logo can contain writing but should be as universal as possible
• If you are to use any of my previous work, please ask permission. Of course if you need inspiration, feel free to scour my flickr.

Have fun! I know I will checking out the entries. If nobody participates I will take that L$4000 and go blow it on something just to cure my sadness.

I am so honored that you guys chose me as the Avastar of the Year 2007. I was already honored of sitting in that list with some of the most extraordinary newcomers, including people I admire greatly including RightAsRain Rimbeault, Ana Lutetia and Nicholaz Beresford among others. I’m still a bit under the shock that you guys chose me.

Now I’m getting more feedbacks about how that could happen because honestly I couldn’t believe it. Many people sent me emails and letters to tell me they encouraged my candidacy for that title through their mailing-lists, forums, groups, blogs, even Flickr threads. You people just proven me you can be sweet to the core. That just flatters me to an unimaginable level that I could influence your Second Life, be it just a tiny little bit. For me it’s a world of difference. It means that sometime, somewhere, I have tried my best to be good to people around, that all my efforts to contribute to the community in a positive way have been acknowledge. And acknowledged by you people.

I want to thank each and everyone of you. If I could do it personally, I would. I want to thanks the Avastar for nominating me with all those marvelous people. I want to thanks everyone that voted on that poll and that supported me through that stressful but enlightening process. I want to thank all the candidates for being such good sports. I want to congratulate Ana Lutetia as a Second winner and RightAsRain Rimbeault as the Third winner.

This has been my honor and pleasure to serving this amazing community in my first year. I will try to make my second year even better. I love you all to bits.

Sincerely,

Codie

(Myself and 2nd winner Ana Lutetia. Credits: All pictures by Ana Lutetia. Thank you for your permission to use them.)

Lots of things going on so I didn’t take time to blog much lately, sorry for depriving my faithful viewers of my almost daily delirium.

I think I made it with 1st place on that Avastar of the Year poll, tho the votes from the Avastar island aren’t counted so I don’t know who wins yet. This will be presented at the Award Ceremony January 16, 09:00 SLT, at The AvaStar (107, 219, 80). This would fall straight in the middle of my work day so I don’t even think I can attend. Which kinda sucks.

Apart that I’m working on a new photoshoot for a Bubblefish/Atomic Soda ad campain. Pictures looks awesome until now, I’m looking at two other shootings that needs to be done before the set is complete. I’m also working on their new logo which should be done soon.

I’m preparing a new artsy photo set to put exclusively in the new Code Red 3.0 building, which I will inaugurate soon if everything goes well. The new build is all made with 32×32 megaprims and is only using 75 prims, compared to the 400 needed for the previous build. It’s also much well organized and more clean, at least to my own taste. I will also re-manage the actual collection to keep only the best of the best for your viewing pleasure.

I’m of course working my ass off to finish the latest MachinimaCam version, for which I will need beta testers soon. I keep adding new stuff but I want this brew to be completely workable and bug fixed before releasing it. It is promising tho, since it allows amazing expansion compared to the previous version. Be sure I will keep you posted.

That’s it for now, of course, more to come.