#lttc outfits

[linked-through-the-centuries]

Take two because I accidentally posted this on the wrong acc 😔

I am no artist, and I did download a mannequin off of Pinterest in order to draw these because anatomy is hard, but I wanted to try to draw some of the outfits I’ve designed for the links, so here are the first three!!

Past’s tunic is definitely more of a dress than a tunic, and they also have a corset! Tune’s outfit was HEAVILY inspired by Will Turner, I’m not even gonna deny that one. I used one of his outfits as a reference and then just tweaked it. And for Warriors, it’s pretty much his in game tunic but longer and with more gold designs because he’s fancy

At some point I will try to draw them actually and not just their clothes, but for now I hope these are good enough. Again, I am not artist, I just sketch sometimes

This is not going to be a comic, it’s going to be a written story, but I will do my best to draw occasionally :)

[freddymcfreddy]

Week 12- Identity Crisis?

This week we met the lovely Sitearm Madonna, an engineer who works in the oil business in Texas in real life and was involved in the setup and management of Virtual Dublin in Second Life. Sitearm has been on Second Life almost since its creation back in 2003.

But, the question is...why does Sitearm look more like Sue Ellen than J.R.? Well....why not? The first avatar I created in SL was male. I just felt I would like to try it to see how it felt, and because I could! Unfortunately I had some glitches and when it came to trying again I just gave up and Freddy became a standard female in SL.

Site brought along some portraits from over the years demonstrating how his persona had changed and outlying some of the reasons for these changes.

First there was Artemis: “A greek goddess. Hot, took no prisoners, hardass, champion of childbirth (changes)”. Site mentions how he was brought up by a single mum who must have somehow inspired him. Unfortunately the name Artemis was unavailable, so was Artemis1, Artemis2, Artemas784 etc., and so he settled on the anagram ‘Sitearm’.  

The second avatar became slightly more glamorous, wearing the same ‘gypsy’ dress as she (I feel I should refer to the proper SL sex now) had on in class. While discovering SL she came across a place where good times were had, an environment where you felt included, a bit like the bar ‘Cheers’, everybody knew your name, the conversation was good and filled with plenty of humour. Feeling like this was a great place/concept, and clearly a natural charismatic entrepreneur, Sitearm decided to get more involved in setting up events and created, ‘Artemis Consulting’. 

It was during this time that Sitearm was ‘picked up’ by a guy called Oliver and went on to become his business partner in SL event management. Site mentioned at this stage that while being female in SL had lots of advantages such as great clothing and male avatars lavishing you with wonderful jewels, she did experience plenty of unwanted attention and lewd advances. 

Unperturbed by these individuals it was at this stage that Site decided to glam-up her look even more, In the 3rd photo we can see her with fiery red hair and sultry green eyes. She had discovered ‘SL skins’ which allowed for better skin tone and the addition of makeup. She also spoke about the animation override which allowed her to adapt a more feminine walk and swish of the hips. We can see that Site was really getting into the concept of being female and living her life to the full.

In the next photo she goes back to the gypsy dress, there is a photo of Site lying on the ground, hands behind her head. She mentions that she loves this pic, the light and the smile. Personally I found this one a bit uncomfortable, maybe it’s because the avatar's face looks quite young and innocent.....while the rest of her..well, I will let you decide. 

Moving on we have the goth look fully equipped with vampire teeth and long black hair. Site changes her outfit for us to show what she was wearing back in those days. I am beginning to think I preferred the previous avatar! She mentions that at this time there was a big vampire controversy in SL with avatars going around biting other avatars. Could this class get any weirder?....yes it can!

It is important to note that when SL was first created there was no voice option, so communication was done via text. It was at this point that Site’s SL persona started to merge with her RL persona, James Neville, due to an event combining a SL exhibition with a RL exhibition. Site was still working alongside her sl partner but flaws were becoming evident in their business relationship. Oliver was becoming too commercial for Sites liking, he wanted to earn lindon dollars bringing some major multinationals into Second Life, such as Coca-Cola. Site told us how she wasn’t interested in going down that road. Because of this and the fact that she was ‘coming out’ in RL and also that voice was now a feature in SL, Site had to come clean. Needless to say, her partner was shocked, fully believing that she was also female in RL. Unfortunately this also lead to the end of her involvement in Virtual Dublin.

I found this part fascinating. Her business partners reaction was totally understandable. I’m sure he felt betrayed. Did he have feelings for Site? Perhaps he felt used and taken for a fool and I’m sure he got some grief over it. But then I thought, does he have a right to feel aggrieved? It shouldn’t matter what sex the avatar is (its a computer generated image) or what sex your business partner is for that matter. But as we have seen, SL is very real for many people involved in it. There are people behind these avatars with very real emotions and feelings. Betrayal it betrayal and how would you feel if you were in a relationship (business or personal) for years and then found out it was based on lies?

The next photo is of Site sporting the typical ‘Irish colleen’ look. Back to the red hair with an Irish flag waving in the background. An attempt at desexualising her avatars image? It is definitely far more respectable (and a bit... yawn, yawn, boring, not to mention cliched). This is the profile pic that she uses in SL. 

I guess that last avatar was far too plain for Site as once again she transforms into the dark eyed diva fully equipped with botox lips. I have to say I love it. The gold-digger is back :-) 

Alongside this photo we can see a cartoonised version of the real James. A glimpse of the man behind the mask. Site still prefers the female versions. I found it hilarious the way Site spoke about dresses and jewels and shopping and how much he loved that part. Considering my dislike for dresses and jewels and shopping I thought it might be interesting if we had the ability to transform our bodies in RL. Why is it that we have such stereotypes about not even what we should look like but also about how we should behave and what we should crave depending on our sex? 

We were also joined again tonight by Locks Aichi or Claudia Igbrude as she is known as in real life. Locks is the eLearning development officer with the DIT Learning and Teaching Centre (LTTC) and also lecturer on the MSc Diploma and Certificate programmes. When asked why she decided to choose a male avatar in SL she explained that she was a bit of a tomboy growing up and so, it was something that just came naturally which she felt comfortable with. There was no specific reason, it was not because she felt she was getting harassed as a female in SL. She told us that she does have a female avatar in traditional Nigerian costume that was ‘gifted’ to her. As you can see from the picture below, she is absolutely stunning, nothing like the barbie doll avatars thich seem so prevalent in SL. 

Here is an interesting article from The Independent about Virtual Dublin and Second Life:

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/where-everybody-knows-your-virtual-name-29399511.html

[linked-through-the-centuries]

do you have any specific design choices in mind in order to distinguish between the different links?

I DO I DO, I’m just an awful artist so I can’t like… fully sketch out what I have in my brain but I can do my best to describe it!

Warriors: Would he even be HW Link without that damn scarf- It’s a staple part of who he is at this point, and it was a gift so of course he always has it. I haven’t done much to change what he wears, it’s very similar to the green tunic he wears in game, just with a lower cut V neck and the fabric of it reaches his knees. He has a few more “professional” looking outfits, he likes to dress nice and look presentable. Also I have designed him better boots because drawing his canon boots killed me. He doesn’t wear the blue earrings he did in game, he’s switched them out for gold ones

Tears: This guy’s wardrobe would have Warriors on the ground sobbing if the good captain ever caught the full extent of it. Tears likes to mix it up, wear new outfits, their favorite is the Frostbite Armor tunic with the strappy sandals you get at the beginning of totk, and he likes doing his hair nice, but that’s not always practical, so they have the hylian trousers and champion’s tunic that they wear most of the time. He also has multiple piercings, so they can wear more of their charmed earrings at once

Wolf/Twilight: Well right now he’s stuck as a wolf, but if he weren’t, he’d wear his Ordonian clothes. They’re comfortable for him, and they remind them of home (he really misses his family). He does still have his green tunic which is more comfortable to wear armor with, but again, he is stuck rn as a wolf so clothes are the least of his concerns. Tears saw he had pierced ears and gave him small earrings with guardian resistance

Sky: I’ve definitely redesigned his outfit in my mind quite a bit. I imagine he’s very attached to his green tunic, but I think he’d wear the red piece of his “casual clothes” (i don’t know what it’s called) over that. The sail cloth is wrapped around him kinda like a shawl. He has feather earrings from his loft wing, and he wears his blue earrings right above them (so he has two holes in each ear). Sky also has a tattoo that wraps around his right wrist (his sword arm), and it’s his loftwing’s wings

Tune: Another one I’ve redesigned a bit. He wears a loose fitting dark green tunic that he leaves incredibly loose around the neck, tucked into pants and belted. (Think William Turner from pirates of the Caribbean. There’s one specific outfit of his I’m thinking of, with the dark red shirt from I wanna say the third movie). He wears an eyepatch, and his hair is quite long and very curly, but he ties it up and out of his face. His hair also has several braids woven into it. He has a lot of piercings, several in his ears and an eyebrow piercing

Hyrule: Very similar to his in game design, simple green tunic with brown sleeves and brown pants. He doesn’t have much, but he likes his clothes. They’re a bit worn, so they have patches and places where embroidery covers small holes, and at this point he could afford to buy new clothes but he’s sentimental. Wears small gold hoops in his ears as a last resort to sell if he really runs out of rupees (it has never come to that)

Past: They have very long, bright pink hair that they sometimes tie up, but a lot of the time is just loosely braided to keep it out of their face. Down, it reaches just past his collar bones. He has a long green tunic that’s kind of dress-like, belted with a flashy belt, and wears shorts under it and then boots. The fabric of the tunic is a bit flowy like a dress as well, and Past has embroidered little patterns and flowers along the bottom hem. They got bored one day. They have a lot of earrings and necklaces, they like shiny things, and have a staff they claim is used to channel magic but really is just a fancy walking aid (he doesn’t need the staff to do anything magic related. It’s literally just cool to them and it also helps them walk when they need it)

Calamity: Champions tunic or full on soldier gear. He hasn’t learned to relax much, he’s always a bit stressed and he dresses to impress and to look “official”

Mask: He’s another one I took creative liberties with. He wears incredibly casual clothes, mainly a plain white linen shirt belted over plain brown pants, because he doesn’t want to be associated with the Hero of Time (which is he, he just won’t tell the others that) and he doesn’t own a whole lot of clothes. His hair is shoulder length and cut a bit choppily (he did it himself), and sometimes he pulls it back. He has simple but pretty blue earrings, which were a gift from Warriors for one of his birthdays during the war

Spirit: He wears his engineer’s clothes, they are usually covered in dirt or coal

Minish: He wears something VERY similar to his in game design, except I’ve also given him a small, darker green cape. He gets cold a lot, and he often wraps it tight around himself. He’ll also put the hood up sometimes to try to remind himself of Ezlo

One day I’ll have to get over my inability to draw and sketch these out, but for now I hope this works!! None of them wear the hats, those were just things they had for their adventures :)

If you have any more questions please ask them!! I would love to talk more about these guys I just literally don’t know what to say