Interview in Koinup Blog
Pier (AKA Koinup Burt inworld), one of the creators of Koinup, interviewed me some days ago for the Koinup Blog. I think is an interesting conversation, so wanted to share it with you all:
Raul Crimson is one of the best known Second Life photographers.
He is a acclaimed Metaverse Artist and he is sharing his creativity on Koinup since some time. Some Raul Crimson photos are camping in the coolest sections of Koinup. He’s also managing a cool blog, that I suggest to have a lookKoinup interviewed Raul about his art, tips and projects. Continue to read it….
Here’s the Interview
Q: When you’re creating new art and photos, where do you draw ideas and inspiration from?
A: Normally all come from my imagination, or the things I’m interested in, or fascinated by… Some other artists inspire me too, some modern photographers like David Lachapelle or Pierre et Gilles are really an inspiration to me lately. Also some “classic” artist, like Bronzino, Velazquez, or even El Bosco or the Old Dutch masters are really inspiring. Watching at their works always give me ideas or inspiration. Don’t use to “pre-draw” my works, I have them in mind and work on them, mainly because sometimes the concept grows or changes during the process, so i prefer to work “on-the-go”.
Q: What advice would you give to newcomers and beginners with Second Life art and photography?
A: First, watch and learn… learn new techniques, watch to see what others do helps a lot to learn…
Then, experiment, don’t be afraid to try new ideas, the important is to express yourself, to create the images that are in your brain.
For me the most important things in an image are light, composition and story. Techniques, filters, brushes.. are not an end themselves, are only tools.Q: Which are your fav works on Koinup and why you love them (if you can, please give me the links)
A: Oh! I have a lot! But will talk about some of them:
Tattered Memory by Bkiddo
This one is wonderful, is not only wonderfully done, has story, is evocative, full of sensibility.Tandem by Prad Prathivi
Lovely work on light and composition, also evocative, even melancholic.Lash BlueGirl by lashxevious Another jewel, just wonderfully done, inspiring, imaginative…
Self Portrait by Pilgrim
Really good concept, and lovely work in exploration of the “dark side”.I have a lot more… but well, don’t want to bore you.
Q: Which Koinup artists you should recommended for the next Koinup Interview?
A: Well, is hard to recommend when you see so much great creators, but I think to interview Ryker Beck would be a great idea, she is great in sharing her knowledge and techniques with people. Also Kimberly Mirabeau, who has a wonderful sense for beauty… and also Lano (Lano Ling), he is just someone full of sensivility and with a wonderful technique.
Q: If you should make a reportage from the Metaverse, what places you would love to photograph and share with your friends?
A: Oof! Hard one too! Well, I love some places around, I specially remember Las Arenas Doradas, Crimson Shadow or Creamshop as beautiful places, but I think I’d love to portrait also welcome Areas, Mainland, Infohubs… they are Second Life for many of us. It is always great to go there and see the imagination people have with their avatars.
Q: What are your upcoming projects in Second Life?
A: Projects… he he he… well, I’ll just tell a bit, I’m part of the team for a new magazine for SL, a really new concept with a great team, but can’t talk much about it for the moment… is a secret!
Also some projects of working a new line of furniture with someone, mainly for photography, and also have a plan for a new art and creation area, but this may take a bit…Q: Are you already exploring other worlds for creative ventures? What have you found there?
A: Well, I’m exploring some other virtual worlds or MMORPG like World of Warcraft, vSide, or the OpenSim new grids, but for the moment I’m more exploring than creating them. I feel comfortable with the tools I have in SL, so for the moment I’m creating more here.
From here, thanks to Pier and all the Koinup team for your great work, and for this interview, of course!
Koinup goes to Opensim too
The team of Koinup, a webpage-social network has created a special area for images taken at the different grids using OpenSimulator software. In an old blogpost i was telling my experiences on some of this “other grids”.
Koinup is some like a Flickr for “virtual worlds”, they have areas for Second Life, OpenSim, The Sims, WOW, IMVU, Lively (a world that is actually being closed, anyway they are keeping the images as record), vSide, Kaneva, There and Other Worlds.
Koinup Places project
The great people of Koinup has released a new feature on their page, Places project.
Some time ago, in a chat with Koinup Burt, one of the founders of Koinup, we were talking about you can geotag RL pics in Flickr… but not SL pics. After some time they developed this Geotagging system for Second Life, using the SLurl system. With this system if you post a pic sending it from SL as a postcard then it will be geotagged automatically, anyway, if you prefer to edit a bit the picture, you can add an SLurl later. The system will group the pics taken in the same region in Widgets one can post in his blog, Facebook, etc…
Anyway, go to Koinup and take a look, they are doing a great job in that page.
One second of reality… a photo contest
I’m not a big fan of what we can call Corporative Sims (a sim used by a RL corporation for advertising normally), even they use to be nicely build by some of the in-world building companies, like Metaversatily or Electric Sheep Company, normally they are just 3D advertisement, boring, empty and the only interactivity you can find use to be just to look at some signs or to have some freebie stuff (with the logo of the corporation, of course).
In my opinion there is one exception to that, and is Orange Island. Orange is a french communications corporation (they are also my ISP… maybe now i should ask them for a discount 
). They have some sims in Second Life (SLurl), but even they may have a bit of advertisement (what is understandable in my opinion) they organize (together with Metaversatility in some cases) a lot of events and stuff for the community of Second Life residents, specially about art and creation. Courses, conferences, debates, exhibitions, … Take a look at the Orange Island blog and you will see.
Orange Island and Koinup announced the photo contest “One second of reality”. The objective is to make an image “as real as possible” within Second Life, not only with photo techniques, specially with the expression of how real emotions are involved inside our metaverse, also you have to share your technique in the image. Well better take a look at the rules at Orange Island Blog or Koinup.
This is my first entry to the contest, if you have an account in Koinup and you like it, please, visit the photo page here and tell me your opinion. In the work page in Koinup i also explain what i did to make the image look this way.
Even i like my images to look “real” but always as part of Second Life i think is really interesting the idea of try to push a bit to reality, just to the frontier between SL and RL. I’m really excited about the images people will post in the contest, how the participants will try to approach to “reality”. For the moment, if you take a look at the entries you will be really surprised by some of the images.
Walking around… in the movies
Machinima is growing a lot in Second Life, and that’s a good thing. After Flickr opened the possibility of posting video a lot of people is experimenting and trying new things. Flickr, as a place to share creativity, helped a lot of people (including myself) to learn and explore with SLphotography, and now is doing the same for machinima.
Anyway, there are a some places where you can find SLmachinina, here you are some links:
As i said in a previous post, there is a lot of awesome creators doing awesome stuff.
This one was specially fun to do. I used that “rolling” background by four Yip (she makes really interesting stuff, look for her in Search into SL and visit her gallery, it worth it). Special thanks to Eric Quimby for his help and for the work of his legs.
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