Winston Ackland to perform at Organica’s re-opening party!

Winston Ackland

Alongside the store-opening, store-wide hunt and new items to be released (full details in a forthcoming post), I’m pleased to announce that Winston Ackland will be performing at 12PM SLT on Saturday, Sept 14 2013 to help celebrate the store re-opening! Join us at here at the Organica open-air stage!

[box] Premier Second Life live performer and real life music professional, Winston Ackland provides smiles with his clever original works and quirky adaptations of obscure covers. Somehow, it all makes sense as audiences relax in a comfortable atmosphere and enjoy innovative songs crafted from a blend of rock, bossa nova, jazz and lounge. Winston is able to connect with in-world audiences like no other.

Simply put, Winston Ackland is a musical party with old friends you haven’t met yet.

Winston left the SL music community in April of 2010 to pursue creating home goods inworld and he and SL/RL wife, Sesi Ackland, had great success with Little Boxes. Sesi and Winston closed the pixel doors of Little Boxes in the summer of 2012 and logged off for nearly a year.

Accomplished RL musician for over 20 years. December of 08, RL and SL merged when Winston’s cover of “Lithium” hit the big screen in 20th Century Fox Films blockbuster hit, “Marley and Me”.. and again in the summer of 2012, when Winston’s cover of “Psycho Killer” was featured in Oliver Stone’s “Savages”.

Website: http://www.myspace.com/winstonackland

http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/BruceLash

http://www.brucelash.bandcamp.com/

Winston’s groundbreaking music video, “All the Little Fishies” is a Second Life Showcase Machinima feature. It can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72C5IdTw4B0

Winston in the press:
New World Newsfeed: Leading Second Life Musician To Be Featured in Owen Wilson/Jennifer Anniston’s *Marley & Me*(via New World Notes)
Dream With “Fishies”: Real Life Mysteries Explored in a Machinima Music Video Set in the Metaverse(via New World Notes)
Appearance on Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe [/box]

The Arcade, Norns Studio, new location, land news!

TinyDragon-Promo1Wilds of Organica will be participating in the March run at The Arcade!

For those not familiar with the event, The Arcade is a great opportunity to pick up completely new and original pieces of work from many of SL’s top content creators!

It’s a giant gachapon (random prize machine) festival that’s running March 1 thru 31st, and it features a boatload of great merchants, whom I’m humbled to be participating with. Participants offer a set number of items ranging from fashion to home decor and beyond for low prices and limited availability.

Wilds of Organica has created a special tiny dragon avatar for the occasion and more details will be unveiled closer to the event, so keep your eyes open for further news!

New to Organica Sim:

Norns

I’m very pleased to welcome Norns Studio to the Organica Commercial District.

As per Norns Studio’s press release:

February 15, 2013 – [ norns studio ], the first fine art gallery located at Organica, has its grand opening on Friday, February 22, 2013 with a reception from 7 – 10 pm SLT.

The opening exhibit will highlight the work of artist, Kelly Judd. Kelly Louise Judd received a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute in 2002. She continues to live and work in Kansas City. Victorian Illustration, fairy tales, abnormal psychology, and Northern Renaissance art are just a few of the things she is inspired by. Celebrate these limited edition prints as a suitable gift for the loved one in your life or to enhance your personal environment.

“I know amazing artists and, over the years, many of them have asked me to help them promote their work.
It has always been my dream to open an art gallery, and when I found this great space, I knew the time was right,” says Amas Veritas, owner of the gallery. “The goal is to place our artists’ work in a wide range of public and private collections.”

The [ norns studio ] is the newest addition to Organica sim, owned by Aki Shichiroji, The dynamic, tri level open gallery exhibits emerging, mid-career and established artists creating contemporary works on paper, paintings, fine art photography and assemblage. The focus of [norns studio] is the ‘promotion for creative development ‘. The gallery offers an unforgettable experience for those who appreciate the beauty of fine works of art.

Owned and founded by Second Life resident Amas Veritas, the gallery serves as a connection to a wide range of art styles, mediums and approaches from all over the world. These artists are all known personally and professionally by Amas. These limited edition prints are only available at [norns studio]. The gallery plans to hold future shows featuring an international group of work with established names, as well as emerging artists.

As an art collector herself, Amas believes that a work of art that truly reflects the collector’s unique personality will provide a lifetime of pleasure. Amas Veritas, graphic artist in RL welcomes you as she weaves and creates lifelike portraits that bring your avatar to life. http://nornsstudio.wordpress.com/.

For more information, please contact:
Amas Veritas, Gallery Owner and Director
paige.peapod@gmail.com

Organica News:

Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Organica has joined the excellent merchants located at The Nest Home & Garden Shopping Town. I look forward to bringing a selection of my work to this neat space and invite you all to visit the new location as well as explore the rest of the town!

Along with this new location,  the main store, which includes landscaping and home decor items, will now be known as Organica Specialty Landscaping & Home Decor. The transition will be gradual and overall the change should be minimal to those who are already familiar with the brand, however I’ve been wanting to redefine and clarify my personal goals for Organica for quite some time, and hopefully this change will make it easier for folks to find things I make which were perhaps not so easy to find previously. Ideally, trees, plants and other landscaping items will continue to be produced, however I’d also like to dedicate some more space and time decor and building items in the near future.

Land

Six parcels of land are now available in Sylvan region for residential use, ranging from 960-1680sqm at a 1.75x prim bonus, L$1.8/prim/week. Beautiful alpine-themed environment, your ideal next home!  Drop by the Sylvan Land Office for more details!

Home and Garden Expo breakdown, Event exclusives, freebie

H&G Expo End of show notes:

First off – thanks to all who dropped by my spot at Home Expo this past couple of weeks; Home and Garden Expo is always interesting (and sometimes stressful) to prepare for and your support definitely makes it worth the time.

This year the Expo was home to 14 sims, one which was completely dedicated to live music events and another which was home to Breedable exhibits. All of the other sims were packed full with dozens of merchants and sim sponsors were encouraged to get their fellow merchants together to make their sims unique.

I managed to get my exhibit mostly designed and ready for presentation by a couple days before, but was putting together new content for the show as late as the last day before opening. I originally decided to make a larger prefab to serve both as a display and store-space, but regrettably had overlooked the fact that my booked space was not very large. Ultimately, while I worked on the prefab until about 75% completion, it became evident that even if i were able to get it to fit, thematically it wouldn’t make sense to put a whole bunch of my stuff inside and not actually allow people to compare the rezzed item with the item on the vendor.

So a couple of days before the event I discarded the idea of finishing the prefab for Expo and decided to work out some sort of display which would take advantage of developments in Second Life since the last show; namely mesh. While the nature of terrain and estate management in SL really isn’t condusive to a lot of custom changes in terrain, I did take the chance to sink down the majority of my parcel and instead created a wholly mesh terrain covering that would take its place. By doing so, I was able not only to create shapes that would not be as detailed with normal terrain, but I was able to texture the ground of my exhibit the way I wanted, including the addition of a desert-like corner, which helped a lot with making the rocky outcrops work with the set. (I noticed one of the other regions did this on a region-wide level, making sim look more authentic compared to what normal SL terrain can do. It worked out really well!)

All in all, it worked out. There was a lot of last minute repositioning, adding, removing of stuff and there was definitely more content I wanted to fit on my parcel, but I ran out of time, space and available prims, so had to make do with what I had.

As far as the overall event, I was able to raise a significant amount for the American Cancer Society and in addition found it remained profitable but have some lingering concerns.
– At 14 regions, there are a LOT of merchants to sift through. While the sims were arranged in a figure 8 configuration, the pathways (which seemed to have been predetermined by staff and not by sim sponsors) were laid out in a grid pattern and did little to direct traffic. While this has always been the case, I did find that with the immense size of the show, the lack of linear direction made it easy to get lost.
– While none of the sims looked bad, it seems to me like a couple of sims were designed to be pretty and not necessarily optimized for shopping. This is especially important for events such as these because with an event that features rezzable content, there are already so many prim, sculpt, mesh and textural assets being sold. I found myself crashing a heck of a lot, especially in the Southern/swamp-style landscaped regions, due to the plethora of huge trees wherever I turned.
– I’m not sure I understand the need for a completely separate region for live music events when each region was also given live event space. While that region may well have been donated rather than paid for by the other merchants, it inevitably demanded the majority of the event traffic, night or day. It wasn’t uncommon to see the number of avs in the Entertainment sim completely surpass the number of avatars in all of the other merchant regions combined.
– Breedables – while I get that any sponsor might demand presence, whether relevant to an event or not, i kinda felt like the Expo jumped the shark by making Breedables a big part of the event. I don’t contest that the breedable market extends the need for suitable home and garden items, however *all* of the Breedable exhibitors were grouped together on a single region and no major association seemed obvious when viewed in the context of the larger event. If Breedables are to remain part of the event moving forward, I’d prefer to see their relevance stressed throughout the event rather than confined to a single region that battles with one other region for traffic.
– Is the event getting too big? Clearly there are a lot of skilled Home and Garden-type merchants within SL. Should the event continually grow to accommodate that growing number or should it concentrate on presenting quality work visitors will be more interested in picking up? I kind of felt like such a large event led to diminishing returns. It’s not a matter of feeling competitive; after having browsed the 14 sims several times seeking items I wanted to buy, I came away fatigued with only a handful of items.

With all that said and done, the Home and Garden Expo crew did their best to make sure merchants had what they needed to get things ready for the show. I’m thankful they were so considerate with set up times and asking many merchants (including myself) for assets to fill in unused areas. It does look like the event was a success; Team Home & Garden Expo has raised L$8,184,288 for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life so far and the publicity generated for all of the participating merchants will likely help to generate more in the coming months.

All Organica RFL items will remain available in-store for the duration of RFL, so if you missed your chance to pick up any of them, please feel free to drop by and have a look.

 

New Event items:

Organica is participating in two major events at the start of June; FaMESHed is a monthly event which showcases exclusive content from a selection of mesh creators within SL; I’m flattered that I have been considered for participation and will be offering the following item as an exclusive offering for the month of June.

This low land impact item is offered mod/copy/no transfer and comes with detailed foliage & branch structure and a suitable rocky base. Offered exclusively at FaMESHed!

Organica is also participating in Mesh Around, which is a hunt featuring mesh content, running June 1 thru 15.

While this item is not exclusive, this will be the first and only time it is offered for free. To learn more about Mesh Around, check out their website, where you can find out more about the hunt as well as the starting location. 2LI as packaged, comes with full and petite sizes. Mod, copy, no transfer.

Organica at San Diego

Organica will be opening a new location at the Botanical Gardens of San Diego Balboa sim, Jan 22 2012, during the grand opening of San Diego 3D!

Visit the new location at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/San%20Diego%20Balboa/149/211/33

 From the press release,

SAN DIEGO 3D GRAND OPENING

For Immediate Release

SAN DIEGO 3D is pleased to announce our official grand opening on Sunday, January 22, 2012.

San Diego 3D is a themed entertainment destination recreating the look and feel of San Diego, California in the virtual world Second Life. Using their avatar, visitors can explore some of San Diego’s most beautiful landmarks, in stunning, interactive 3D. Destinations include historic Old Town; Balboa Park’s Organ Pavilion, Museum of Art, and Spanish Village Arts Center; downtown; and the famous San Diego Zoo. For entertainment, they can catch a live performance at the Balboa Theatre, or dance in the ballroom at the Hotel Del Coronado.

San Diego 3D promotes tourism, entertainment, and the arts through strategic partnerships with businesses and organizations operating in the physical and virtual world. Founded in 2007 as “Diegoland”, the project passed into the hands of its current owner, Ayesha Lytton, in 2010. In 2011, the simulator was completely rebuilt by Akimeta Metaverse Development to create the most realistic replicas yet of numerous San Diego locations.

Our grand opening event will be held on Sunday, January 22, 2012 at the Balboa Theatre. This near-replica of the 1920’s vaudeville and movie theatre features numerous details accurate to the real building, including its famed wall murals and working waterfalls in the auditorium. The Balboa Theatre 3D raises the bar for live performances in Second Life, using realistic animations, sets and costumes to create a truly immersive theatre experience.

Our first concert showcases soprano Tamra Hayden, who has starred on Broadway and on tour in musicals such as Les Miserables, the Phantom of the Opera, and Cabaret. A talented songwriter in her own right, she will be sharing some of her own beautiful music as well as favorites from Phantom, Wicked, and more. Hayden and Lytton have been collaborating for several months with programmers Alchemy Epstein and Tangle Giano, as well as builders and designers to create the effects seen in the production.

The event is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. Formal or semi-formal attire is preferred.

Second Life SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/San%20Diego%20Balboa/178/61/33

 

 

More photos of my work from the rest of the project can be found here.

Home and Garden Expo 2011

Organica will again have a display at this year’s Home and Garden Expo!

As usual, items that were originally RFL fundraisers are being offered again as fundraisers, so things like the Bougainvillea Gate & Tsukubai will raise funds for the American Cancer Society for the duration of Relay for Life. Additionally, RFL exclusive items will make an appearance/reappearance for the fundraiser; the RFL Pink tulips are back and two new RFL exclusives will debut at the Expo, then make their way to the main store when the Expo closes on May 23.

Like the other lilies released earlier this past month, these RFL exclusive purple tiger lilies are low prim, come in 4 shapes to fit various terrain, and are mod/copy/no transfer.

New roses are now available! Ranging from white through red to black, these bushes are low prim and look great! Offered separately or as a fatpack, mod, copy no transfer.

There’s also a RFL exclusive purple rosebush, and it’s also mod/copy/no transfer.

Visit Organica at Home Expo 2 sim May 13, 12PM  thru 23rd 10PM SLT!

Today is the big day!

Organica celebrates its official opening this afternoon from 4-6PM SLT with some great tunage, prizes and discounts for today only!

Join us in Organica Sim for your chance at some pretty valuable gift vouchers,

The sim is presented in two parts that will combine what regular visitors will be used to based on the previous store set-ups both in Sylvan and abroad:

First, much of the sim is devoted to displaying new stock. Visitors are free to explore the ground level areas and will find vendors for stock on display next to most items.

Visitors will additionally be able to browse vendor boxes for most stock within the Japanese styled building just west of the store landing point.

Out with the old

Sort of. Some of you will have received updates for your products earlier this week or may be receiving further updates soon.  Many items were updated to use more efficient foliage and rather than making you buy new ones, they were passed out to existing customers on record.  If you have one of the following items and haven’t yet received an update, please pass me a notecard with your transaction number or a screenshot of the edit menu that comes up when you edit your tree and sit tight – I do have records, but they are plentiful, very old, and archived. Since I am also in the middle of organizing events for today, there may also be some delay in my getting back to you right away.

Updated Items: Cherry 1, Cherry 2, Japanese Maple 1, Spruce 2, Trident Maple 2

***Trident Maple will be sent out later today – please wait until after March 21 to send inquiries about this update***

Some items have been withheld from sale and are on hold pending update or retirement. If you don’t see something you were looking for, please ask.

There are other items that are being retired from display entirely due to age and lack of space.  These items will be found in the store on the right-hand side at permanently discounted prices. They may at some point be retired from sale entirely, though such will be announced specifically at some later point on the blog or through notecard.

In with the New

sugarmaple2-vendor2 This package of young sugar maple trees includes five different seasonal foliages – Spring, two Autumn shades, Winter and Lit.  A first for Organica also is texture change scripts (which were also included with the Trident Maple 2 update) which are available as a seperate single tree in the package for those who wish to use them.

aldergrove1-vendor2

These trees are available in three sizes and are great as broad forest items. They include both spring and autumn foliage, scripted and unscripted.

japanesemaple2-vendor2

A taller, fuller edition to the Japanese Maple series, this tree reflects the lush and humid nature of the natural environment Japanese Maples hail from.  This tree is again available in green and red foliage, along with a scripted edition which can switch between the two.

bougainvilleagate-RFLvendor

This is an arched trellis covered in bougainvillea vines and will be the first of Organica’s contributions to this year’s Relay for Life campaign for the American Cancer Society.

On Scripted Trees
I have long debated about the use of scripts to control tree textures since folks have a tendency to use so many trees at a time. Particularly in light of the lower prim offerings many tree stores offer today, the potential for increased lag server side is certainly there.  I’m not going to say the scripted trees I have begun offering are ‘lag free’, since no scripted object can ever claim that no matter how many times those words are bandied about in all-caps.

With that said, the scripts in each tree presented thus far have been found to average 0.03ms each, which is quite reasonable on a sim that is performing properly.  For those who are a bit more script conscious, non-scripted editions will always be provided for every foliage texture used in the scripted edition.

Photo Contest!

takingpictureAs part of the fun going on at Organica this month, I’m please to announce Organica’s first ever photo contest!

The Basics:

– Submit up to three (3) of your best photos taken in Organica Sim.

This contest is FREE to enter and the first, second and third place winners will receive the following prizes:

1st place: L$10,000 prize

2nd place: L$5,000 prize

3rd place: L$2,500 prize

– Contest ENDS at 12 Midnight, April 21, 2010

– Photos will be judged by three independent, impartial judges, and winners announced no later than  12 Midnight, May 1, 2010.

The Details:

– Photos must be sent to organicaphotocontest2010@spacylittlecowgirl.otherinbox.com no later than 12 midnight, Wednesday April 21, 2010.

– Photos can feature anything as long as they are recognizably taken in Organica, don’t contain adult content and are not defamatory in any way to any party or individual.

– Each contestant must submit ONLY photos of their own creation.

– Each contestant will be entitled to win only one of the three prizes, despite entry of several photos. The allowance for up to three photos gives entrants the opportunity to display the breadth of their work and allows the judges a larger pool to pick from. The selection of one photo for a prize will immediately invalidate the contestant from any other prize. This is to keep the contest fair and fun, while allowing folks the freedom to display their creative ability.

– By entering this contest, you consent to the publication of the photo (attributed to you) on the Organica blog, in Organica’s Flickr Contest pool, and in-world. All intellectual property will be respected and the photo will not be used in any way shape or form except to discuss the contest.

– There are vendors on the grounds, situated near some items. You will not be expected to photograph these – in fact I would encourage you not to. You can remove these vendors from view prior to taking your snapshot by opening up your Advanced menu (if you don’t have it revealed already, it’s control+alt+shift+d on a PC and command+alt+shift+d on a Mac), select Rendering>Hide Selected.  Then right click>edit each prim from the vendor (there are usually 5 in total) to erase them from view on your screen.

– Photo-editing IS permitted as long as the content is recognizably taken on Organica sim. Understandably, not all viewpoints and shots will be optimal and you may wish to tweak your visual treatments.  This is fine!

Updates, fixes and news!

Updates and Fixes
Mod/Copy Owners of the Cherry Trees 1 & 2, Japanese Maple 1 and Spruce 2 will have received updates to their products this week. These updates include some feature updating, bug fixing, and expansion of available sizing, depending on which set you bought.

Mod/Transfer Owners who wish to update must send their mod/transfer editions of these trees to me (Aki Shichiroji) in a folder clearly marked with their name in ALL CAPS. I will send the appropriate replacement as soon as possible.

News!

opening-promo
Yup, I’m pretty close to the official opening of the new sim! There are still many things i need to take care of, but I really hope you can make it to this exciting event for Organica!  There will be music, there will be shopping, there will be fishing, prizes, great scenery and more! Join us on March 21, 2010 from 4-6PM in Organica sim!

Winterstock! (and more)

Organica will be participating in Winterstock this year! Winterstock Poster TGA

Various new and coming holiday offerings will be available here for about a week to help promote the opening of the event, and will be placed at the main store after that point.

These are the first of a set of offerings that are on the way from Organica, along with some big changes and releases (hopefully) coming soon, pending available time.

The new spruce trees feature all new sculpts and textures and are between 3-4 prims each. The abstract pattern trees are new sculpts and textures, and are available either individually or by pack of all five. As always, these offerings are copy/mod.

spruce2-vendor

spruce2-xmas-abstract-vendor