Let’s Get Small – and Greenie
by Pixeleen Mistral on 15/07/07 at 11:44 am
Are the rumblings true? Is Starax back?
by Tenshi Vielle, Fabulous Fashionista
Starax sculpture depicting a Linden staff meeting?
“Wanna see something cool?” Arabella Steadham whispers in my ear, hushed tones suggesting something a little bit adventurous and secret.
“Of course.” I’m always up for the adventure.
Instead of a teleport, Arabella drops me a landmark – and at that landmark, I land in a dark, dank tunnel. Above my head are rows of boards. “I must be under a house,” I muse. Following the instructions, I nab the nearest adventuring gear (Boots, helmet and jet pack) and crawl my way to the main floor.
At first, I thought I was just in another regular old house build – no furniture, just a fireplace. “What an odd thing for Pavig to build,” I thought. Pavig normally sticks with her steampunk builds in the Caletta Hobo sim.
Not this time.
“This be a sim I built with Mis Littletoe Bartlett. It’s open for preview now if you want to have a look. Everythin’s big and yer real small… but that not the only secret it hold. To find out th rest tho you gotta get yer hands dirty and poke about. You fancy folks lookin from afar with yer opera glasses ‘ll miss half the fun.” Pavig’s profile offers a small glimpse into the propulsion behind the build.
Arabella Steadham – with Tenshi in the background
Pavig has been silent on my buddy list for quite a while – turns out she’s got his own sim now, and he’s been furiously building this new sim. It’s not the first of its kind – apparently, she built something quite like this a while back – and that build stretched *two* sims. Except… she may have ran under a different avatar.
Is Starax back?
Quite a few people think so, and all of SL has been muttering about it this afternoon. Aimee Weber contracted the Starax alt for a few of her builds. Aradia Dielli and Popfuzz Bamboo, both avid Starax followers, have both stated that they heard something akin to the rumor just this week.
Starax Statosky’s account disappeared mid-2006 due to the sudden influx of SL glitches that frustrate all of us and affected his wand – a device that would rez any of his sculptures simply on keyword command. Starax was frustrated. He sold his property and left Second Life. For what we thought was forever.
…what?
Now it appears Starax has come back, taunting fans of his work with builds under a different name.
This particular build was contracted by Rezzable Group, an SL group that claims members such as Vint Falken and my own buddy Pavig Lok. Group founder is Vega03 Straylight.
“They’re launching as a company so when this build was proposed they pulled us (LittleToe and I) off another one that we were working on, which was also built around Lightwave’s work,” Pavig says. “RightasRain Rimbaud runs Rezzable. This is the first sim of theirs to open to the public, but not officially launched yet.”
Tenshi at work typing an article
I finally got tired of playing beat-around-the-bush and just asked Pavig if Starax was at all involved with this build. “There’s always rumors about Starax,” she said, grinning. “People talk, and if Starax can’t be found its probably because he doesn’t want to be.”
Crystal clear answer, don’t you think?
“I ain’t Starax, I’ll tell you that much,” she says. “He builds with the same prims as they give to newbies, as we all do. There are a lot of gifted artists in SL – they’re just stunted by time, money, and space. That’s what keeps things like this from happening more often.”
jetpack power!
Anonymous
Jul 15th, 2007
Typo much?
Tiffany Wilder
Jul 15th, 2007
The article is interesting, even if poorly written. The best part for me though is the last picture, that of Tenshi blowing purple farts – explains a lot I think.
Tenshi Vielle
Jul 15th, 2007
Exactly WHICH typos are you pointing at? Mine, or the direct quotes from Pavig’s profile?
Jessica Holyoke
Jul 15th, 2007
Pavig has been silent on my buddy list for quite a while – turns out **she’s** got **his** own sim now, and **he’s** been furiously building this new sim. It’s not the first of its kind – apparently, **she** built something quite like this a while back – and that build stretched *two* sims. Except… **she** may have ran under a different avatar.
I’m not certain about this Starax person…but are they androgenous? intersexed? tran-spectrum? or were the pronouns above typos?
like_ummm
Jul 15th, 2007
well – you know that scientists recently discovered that some specie of something or other can change gender spontaneously. yea well – some humans thought that was a pretty bright idea…
like_ummm
Jul 15th, 2007
yea – farts are usually the highlight of my day.
a greenies fan
Jul 15th, 2007
There are three very talented builders involved with this project, along with plenty of others making avatars, accessories, games and animations.
As for gender and rumors about long gone great builders- seems a lot of the “facts” in this story are a little skewed.
don’t believe everything you read.
The greenies home is a wonderful and truly fun experience- and I hope that future press will focus on the quality of the build and what it brings to the community, rather than trying to “scoop” the other media with sensationalism.
Tenshi Vielle
Jul 15th, 2007
Now therein lies the problem. The discrepancies between sexes is because while Pavig is a flat-chested female-esque figure in SL, he is a male.
That’s where it runs in to a problem. I tried to be consistent, but Pavig confuses me.
If you meet Pavig, you’ll understand.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 15th, 2007
Nice piece, and intrigues me to make a visit, which is a successful story!
But linkies would be nice:
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/08/poof_lls_smoke_.html
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/08/starax_the_sour.html
Lumpy Butterskin
Jul 15th, 2007
*yawn* Tenshi, I liked your articles better when you were a bitch.
Tyffany Flintoff
Jul 15th, 2007
There is nothing to yawn about the expererience of visiting this build. Walking out into that room is one of those all too rare moments when you glimpse what Second Life can offer. The creativity, imagination, skill and attention to detail is simply stunning.
In a world full of cookie cutter, crappy, gothic malls full of flickering textures selling shockingly textured slutwear, this build is a revelation.
Whoever built it, they deserve our congratulations.
Bobby Troughton
Jul 15th, 2007
Pretty damn good & fun. I enjoyed flying around the house in my fly avatar (Tooter Claxton makes fly and cockroach avs). Felt like being in Toy Story or those Army Men games. It was great to watch people’s reactions when they come into the sim. For once the joy of a good build in SL.
Tenshi Vielle
Jul 15th, 2007
Yes, Prok, I forgot to pat your head when I wrote this article. Seems you can do it yourself.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 15th, 2007
It’s not about patting me on the head, hon, it’s about patting Pixeleen, Uri, and me, all of whom reported on Starax’s leaving in the past. It’s just the collegial thing to do in a newspaper. You know, collegiality? I realize that’s not taught in schools or the uh early workplaces where you young kids get your first experiences these days. But…consider it taught here.
Prokofy Neva
Jul 15th, 2007
>In a world full of cookie cutter, crappy, gothic malls full of flickering textures selling shockingly textured slutwear, this build is a revelation.
Hehe, well, said. Why don’t they hire YOU as the architecture/new builds critic lol.
Inigo Chamerberlin
Jul 16th, 2007
Not the best of articles I’m afraid – but that sim was definitely NOT poorly done!
It probably won’t mean a thing to the newer people out there – the majority in fact – but that build was a step back in time to the days before all the tourists appeared. When people did neat things in SL ‘because they could’.
Not ‘for the community’ (spit), or ‘to help the newbs’(there weren’t that many) – but just because they had a marvelous mad idea they could realise in SL, and nowhere else, so they did!
A build full of wonderful whimsical touches, more than you can possibly imagine. After an hour or so poking about I actually felt like I was some tiny creature exploring some one’s kitchen.
I was there with an old friend, wandering about, just enjoying the place – and they unexpectedly voiced my thoughts – that this was a breath of fresh air. Somewhere that could reaffirm their battered and dwindling faith in Second Life.
I know exactly what they meant. I’d been getting more and more turned off by SL of late, the endless grind of Linden generated drama, inworld technical issue, boredom… Last night though I logged off with very different feelings.
Oh, and IF that place has Starax input, and certain things make it look that way, please don’t make a big thing about it.
Starax went away for his own good reasons. People do.
He finally killed the Starax account off a month or so ago. I think the message there is quite clear.
But it’s nice to see someone who has that level of imagination, flair and ability has emerged in SL. Let’s just watch and enjoy? Time to move on, OK?
My only worry is that the Lindens will hijack this for their own purposes – in the same way that a Starax wand was used as a ‘LOOK! Shiny!’ presentation aid by Corey during Philip’s presentation to Google – at the very time Linden Lab was constantly breaking it update by update…
shockwave yareach
Jul 16th, 2007
Lots of people are inventive and clever enough to do such a production, be it for their group or the newbs or just a need to show off. What lots of people cannot do, however, is own an entire sim and pay the monthly tier on it. I would love to see a sim cut in half with two sides, A and B. For a month, side A is open to the public and side B is under construction by the winner of a monthly “build your dream” contest. See what our underfinanced builders can do when free to do anything. Then next month, B is open to the public while A is torn down and a new winner gets to building.
StallionSeven
Jul 16th, 2007
Uh, Starax never left SL folks, and “he” certainly didn’t leave for Pixaleen’s imagined reasons.
Morgana Fillion
Jul 16th, 2007
don’t confuse Pixaleen with Tenshi. Tenshi wrote the piece, Pixaleen posted it.
Tyffany Flintoff
Jul 17th, 2007
>Hehe, well, said. Why don’t they hire YOU as the architecture/new builds critic lol.
Because if I wrote what I really think Prokofy, they wouldn’t print it. Actually, that’s not true. Maybe they would, but nevertheless, I’d like to think that this build, given the attention it’s garnered over the past few days, will throw down the gauntlet to the many other talented and creative residents of Second Life.
I make no claims about possessing such skills myself, I can, however, recognise a quite special achievement like we have here.
pavig lok
Jul 17th, 2007
Hello. Just thought I’d clarify some of the misunderstandings in the article.
Years ago, before my time ol starax made a giant house himself, so researching this build we looked into it. Starax’s build was maybe 50x scale, phenomenally huge, but ours was scaled to fit the greenies which is about 28x. The old build was so big that evidently it had an entire small snow covered house in a forest scene concealed inside the couch. Ours is not even the only giant kitchen in left in SL. EGO Terra – Giant House, Toon To, Saphira (91, 112, 113) is still around I believe, and a wonderful inspiration to us in developing our own. Even though it is only about half the scale of ours, the oven’s still big enough to roast an elephant, though that sounds like a nasty thing to do.
Unfortunately little of that or many of the great builds of SL survive any more except for in pieces in some peoples pockets. It turned out that there was a surviving copy of a giant dollhouse by starax at that scale, which we considered putting in, but when we looked it dwarfed the rest of the sim and looked very wrong. Instead we rebuilt the original prim by prim(with a few tweaks) at our scale as a cultural reference to SL art history. Oldbies have identified it as such and got the reference. It’s been fun to note that the “crappy house” people have been describing is a copy of the kind of art that was once the pinnacle of the sl experience. Not a great deal has changed since then, imagination is still the most important tool, but the toolbox techniques of the sl artist has grown substantially.
Thus the surviving part of starax in that build, and probably the cause of some confusion, is a reference to history. It’s also a comment on secondlife in general – we all live in doll houses here, something we often forget. We hoped it would be a reminder that your avatar really is a toy and secondlife can be an imagination playground.
It’s true Littletoe and I have worked here and there, but this is the first time we’ve been given an entire sim to build so this is a first for us. We started out like everyone as prim pushing grunts contributing to other builds and as trust developed were pulled into larger things. Light waves is well known from dropping early greenies builds on sandboxes – where most of the poor starving artists in sl ply their trade. Matching the build quality and style of the greenies (by pulling them apart and figuring out their tricks) was a large part of our learning process. None of the tricks by the way are particularly tricky, but careful building is time consuming.
Unfortunately one of the few places people have the time and resources to produce quality work at scale is in commercial builds. Thankyou whoever did that car sim I was looking at – though the build wasn’t very interesting due to the corporate constraints put on the content, me and Orhalla Zander spent hours staring at the shadows of a few plain boxes and the care that went into the effect was an inspiration.
Hopefully the existence of greenies home will give SL artists who have so much to give, the inspiration to stick at it. If the corporate world realizes that it has much to gain from acting as a benefactor to SL’s strengths and community rather than treating it like other media, we may see more sponsorship of projects such as this. Surely that’s a better marketing strategy than making a sim so dull you have to pay people to be there.
Thanks to Tenshi for the article, surprised thanks to Prokofy Neva for such kind words, and my gratitude to the artists of SL both corporate and community, you are an inspiration to us all.
Vint
Jul 17th, 2007
I agree with the other commenters. You see a great build and initiative and all you can say is ‘maybe Starax build this’?!! Besides, as for the ‘Greenies_008
Starax sculpture depicting a Linden staff meeting?’ title, even I know Greenies are done by Light Waves! :p
Madeleine Duvall
Jul 17th, 2007
Hey Tenshi…you forgot to pat Prok’s head when you wrote this article.
Nina A
Jul 17th, 2007
Who gives a f**k about your silly vendettas, you’re all legends in your own head and computer game nobodies.
HOWEVER this is wonderful work, the attention to detail is brilliant. Incredibly well done. The ‘super intelligent’ griefer types couldn’t do this if they tried. Thanks for finding it.
anon
Jul 18th, 2007
>>HOWEVER this is wonderful work, the attention to detail is brilliant. Incredibly well done. The ‘super intelligent’ griefer types couldn’t do this if they tried. Thanks for finding it.
Niether could the ‘low intelligent’ blingfags who roleplay gangsters and buy expensive shit to feel superior. Which is about 75% of SL…
bah humbug
Jul 20th, 2007
Starax has never been truly gone from SL, he simply started using his alt, Light Waves.
Verde Raymaker
Jul 26th, 2007
We are closing sim soon — on 29th July at 0800SLT
just the preview! Will Open to public on 31 July 1500 SLT!
We will have a new–MOST SENSATIONAL SCULPTURE ever made in SL to launch Greenies will into SL.
Thanks to everyone for kind words and hope to see you in our home on your grid.
Love, Verde