Incognito

*blink blink*  It sucks when you can't sleep.  After tossing and turning for an hour I finally gave up, got up, staggered into the kitchen like a zombie to make coffee and plunked down in front of the computer to work in Photoshop while the coffee brewed. I started at 5:50 am and after an hour and one HUGE cup of coffee I'm finally ready to upload.

I had fun doing these shots - for once I was actually into playing dress up. Not to mention a friend had dragged me out to various places and of course we just couldn't leave any store without picking up at least two outfits.  I had this style (called Incognito by the way) already done so I had it firmly in mind when I was choosing things for the photo shoot.

As you can see it's a kind of spastic updo with a couple of asymmetrically placed hair spires. Please don't tell me you were expecting a more grandiose description at this time of the morning!  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Style Notes:
Skin - Elena Pale by Laqroki
Jewelry - Chandraki by Earthstones
Black Dress - Megan by Bliss Couture
White Dress - Mumie Dress by Vindi Vindaloo

Play List:

"Incognito" & "Dancing With Mephisto" by Enigma
"Strict Machine", "Crystalline Green", "Slippage" & "Lovely 2 C U" by Goldfrapp
"The Seeress Prophecy" by Achillea

A couple of new ones

I'm a binge buyer.  I won't buy anything for months and then I get pent up consumer frustration and go on the prowl.  On one of these binges I was out shopping with a friend and inevitably the store owner shows up. I had to laugh because I know full well she's checking me out to see exactly who it is that's running wild through her shop.  My friend couldn't believe it but as a content creator myself, I know how this works and believe me, I make my fellow content creators nervous when I shop. A lot of the creations out there can be inspiring so below are a couple of what I've been working on.

 This is called Warrior and the above picture is shown in Grave from the Zombie Pack.  It's a mix of flexi, prim and sculpties.  The face armor is included and attaches to the chin but I'll get to that.

The first image above shows the hair in Grimoire from the Wiccan Pack and displays one of the face armor options while the second is shown in Arcana (also from the Wiccan Pack) and as you can see the face armor is optional.

Now for the face armor.  While the hair is copy, modify, no transfer and contains resizer script, the face armor is copy only.  The script system it uses allows for placement (and you may have to pull this out from your face), resizing, alpha, color, glow, texture change, shiny and bright. You have some options there to customize it so play around to see what you come up with ....just remember to take a copy of it first!

Style Notes:  Dress - Enchantress by Deviance
                    Dark Grey Skin - Cabal: Hollow in Steel by House of Ruin
                    Light Skin - Envy by Red Queen
Playlist: "The Creeps" - Camille Jones; "Bad Attraction" - Brad Sucks; "Pepper" and "They Came In" - Butthole Surfers

Next up.... Kenzie

 This is the base hairstyle.  I couldn't decide on bangs on this one so I made three bangs options to go with it. It's shown in Miste from the Voodoo Pack.

The images above and below are shown in Desire from the Seduction Pack.  The above left image is Bangs #2 and the right is Bangs #1.

 This is the Bangs #3 option and I like this style because it gives me mix and match options like the image below:

I had fun with this just playing around mixing bangs colors to the base hair color which gave me ease to mix my black and white hair :P

And on a side note - after four years I'm finally wearing an AO. Yes, don't faint. I came across some funky stands on one of my outings and just had to have them. My friend was laughing at some of the stupid ones I have but hey...it suits me. Of course once you have the stands you just have to continue on from there. :P

Style Notes:  Skin - Elena Pale by Laqroki
                    Clothing - Love Game by Delirium
                    Nose Piercing - Minotaur by loulou & co (yes, this is one of my favorites

Playlist: "Never Get Out" - Brad Sucks; "B*tch, Please!" - Jeffree Star; "Chemicals Between Us" - Bush; "Blood Rave" - The Crystal Method

Three new releases

So there you are...wondering how your niece got to be 10 already and you think, "Why can't I find that time warp to ride while I'm at work?"  If somebody knows the answer to that one, please! Do share. :P
I'll try not to screw up this post too badly.  While I'm writing it, I'm in world chatting while simultaneously chomping at the bit to do another style.  So without further preamble, here they are:

Who says the 20's have to be dated?  Below is the style called 1921

Add a few punk accessories and you get something with a twist.  To tell the truth, I wasn't going to put this one out but I thought 'meh. Why not.'  It's got an optional head band with 3 different attachment points - nose, mouth and chin.  The one that's included with the demo attaches to the chin.  The above color is Haunt from the Goth Pack.
Style notes:    Skin - Jade by Tuli
                     Clothing - Deco Doll by Haute! by Cleo
                      Lip piercing - Nornir Lip Pierce 2 by Rozoregalia
                      Necklace - Lace Choker by Fairy Tail
                      Bracelets - Vinca by Rozoregalia
                      Earrings - Relations by PERTURB/ation
                      Tattoo - Yin Yang Dragon Tattoo by Indigo Ink
Playlist:  Lebanese Blonde by Thievery Corporation

This one is Symbiosis.  It's got three ponies and the hair is pulled back and held by insect legs.  It's shown on the left Capricorn from the Zodiac Pack 2 and the right is Oracle from the Voodoo Pack.
Style notes:    Skin - Jade by Tuli
                     Clothing - Dusk by Vampart
                     Necklace - Rock n Rolla by Nait Smith Design
                     Nose piercing - Minotaur by loulou & Co.
                     Lip piercing - Kali by loulou & Co.
                     Earrings - Nornir by Rozoregalia
Playlist: Bad Attraction by Brad Sucks

Finally is Vecona.  I love the bangs on this one.  There's a slender pony in back and has a tendril of hair that snakes over the left shoulder. It's a bit more of a laid back style from what I usually do but then again...what really is my style?  Doing the same thing over and over gets dull, not to mention the obvious which is repetitive and I know it's time to do something else when I start looking for the sharpest pencil to drive into my forehead.  Vecona is shown on the left in Ghoul from the Zombie pack and on the right is Beast from the Wolf Pack. (Ha! small joke there. Okay...nevermind.  I said it was a small joke.)  
Style notes:    Skin - Jade by Tuli

                     Clothing - Queenie by DE Designs

                     Necklace - Rock n Rolla by Nait Smith Design

                     Nose piercing - Minotaur by loulou & Co.

                     Lip piercing - Kali by loulou & Co.

                     Earrings - Nornir by Rozoregalia

Playlist: Samba Tranquille by the Thievery Corporation

Anyway, so there you have it for now.  You'll be the first to know when I get more styles completed. :)

Voodoo

I was in such a hurry last time I forgot to mention those cute little dresses - the peacock and the red one are from Haute! by Cleopatra Xigalia.  The one in red is Velvet Touches and the other is Peacock Baby Noir.  My hubby also brought up something interesting while I was creating the promo shots for my new style.  Music is such an absolutely enormous influence on what I build that he figured I should do a play list for my hair.  I thought that wasn't a bad idea.  So to back track a bit, I remember I was listening to "Pretty Toy" by Velvet Acid Christ when I created Machine and "Caustic Disco" also by Velvet Acid Christ when I created (what else) Caustic.  Darby was "Misery" by Maroon 5 and Onarra was "After Glow" by Phil Thornton. That's as much as I can remember; the rest is pretty much a blur. Some of it I wasn't listening to anything which probably accounts for the frustration level on those.

This is Voodoo Child and it's shown here in Grave from the Zombie pack. This one is poofy ponies...kinda.  It's got flexi tendrils hanging along the sides and a skeletal hand as a hairpin.  I had actually created this style for Hair Fair as an auction piece and as we know, there was no auction this year soooooo......  It was that skeletal hand that took me ages to find.  I had pretty much given up and had resigned myself to a fight in zbrush when I was out poking around and came across it.  I'll get this out in the store tomorrow.  I'm still working on promo shots so I'm dong this whole process a little backwards this time.
The playlist for this style is "Voodoo Child" by Rogue Traders

New Hair

So I switched from XP to Windows 7 and went from 2 gig of ram to 16 gig plus a 1 gig Nvidia graphics card. Surprisingly, it went very smoothly. I haven't had any problems. However I also went from CS 3 to CS 5. Problem. I couldn't get the marching ants to appear, did a little digging on the net, sorta found an answer, got frustrated and went and lay on the couch with a book. When the hubby finally got back, I showed him what was wrong, what I had found on the net and he (being a programmer) made the leap to the anti-alias under the advanced setting for the OpenGL. I knew I had an OpenGL problem but wasn't sure exactly what. So let that be a word of advice for anyone else. If you have disappearing marching ants and your drivers are up-to-date and your OpenGL is turned on...check the anti-alias. Which is why this post is late :P Anyway, on to the hair.

This is Auroral Lace. It's got a twisting roll in the front, a weave on the top, a short braid on either side, two ponies and the lacey weave in the back.

This is Auroral Lace V2.  It's got two extra ponies and it's with out the lace weave in the back as you can see and works well with hats.

And of course Lady Antonella and Darby have both been completed into their texture packs and are now out as well.  I had also intended on doing a longer post but I gotta dash and figure out a lighting set up for tomorrow.

Good things come to those who give up

Wow!   The universe truly has a warped sense of humor.  With Hair Fair this year I took the Zen attitude of what will be, will be or I suppose you could say I took a defeatist attitude this year as I didn't bother doing any promoting at all.  Depends on what side of the fence you view this from.  I didn't send out any of the designs to bloggers.  I had a look down the list and saw that most were interested in natural styles which is not something I really have a taste to do.  I therefore concluded that rather than waste their time and mine I wouldn't bother.  Instead, through a little bizarre twist, a couple of things fell into my lap which left me looking like the village idiot with my stunned reaction. Stunned in a good way.  There is one other thing that popped up - this one NOT in a good way.  I'll have a better idea tomorrow and I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed on that one. Until then I'm not going to spend my time worrying about it.
     On a side note, it did spark a project between myself and another to give a little fair play to the alternative designers.  So among my current things on the go, I'm doing research to ferret out those hair designers who don't like to play in the mainstream.  I must admit I got a little crusty when I had my list of designers to check out on a notecard when SL decided to have an embolism and refused to save it.  I lost about an hour and a half of work.  Sooooo...after that I decided I would save it as a document on my desktop and make notes from there.  In the past couple of days I've heard complaints from other friends that are designers saying they have lost hours of work when they log back in to find SL has reverted what they spent the day doing.
     Anyway, I've got the Lady Antonella and Darby styles done in all the color packs.  I've got another style called Auroral Lace done as well and am working on getting Version 2 done of that.  I've also got styles called 1921, Voodoo Child and Vecona almost ready to go as well.  Voodoo Child is going to take me a while longer than the others to get out as it's a little more texture intensive, plus I finally found the sculpt I was looking for.  I could just give Danuc Landar (the creator) a big, wet smoochie for it!
     I'll get four of the styles out in the store and posted here in the next day or so.  After that...I've got some styles I've just had a real burn to do.  I'll get those out as soon as I can!

It's Hair Fair Day!

I meant to get this post and a couple of others done a couple of days ago but things didn't quite work out that way.  After I get this post done I can spend a little time on cleaning my desktop. What a mess!
Anyway, in alphabetical order, here is what's at the Hairoin booth:

This is Caustic which is a punk fauxhawk kinda thing. And just because I spent a lot of time on setting up these sets for photo shoots I'm going to post them here otherwise they'll probably never see the light of day.  This is the only original shot I had done that's at the booth. Look below and you'll see what I mean.

I had a plan for the booth, got 4 out of 5 photo shoots done and then found out the theme for Hair Fair so I scrapped what I was orignally going to do and redesigned everything.  As I said, the above was the only original shot I had done that made it into my booth.

 This one is Dark Sun.  (You can click the image for a larger view.)  I wanted to do something a little on the grandiose side of things.  The headdress is part of the hairstyle and as a side note, I have another style in mind I want to do that's "regal".  It was one of the ones I had in mind for Hair Fair but this style was the one I decided to throw out there.  Now for the shot I had in mind...

First, I would like to say that no men were harmed in the creation of this shot.  It was, however, a bit of a challenge arranging 3 boys on poseballs like dolls to get this shot.  Again, you can click on it for a larger view.

This is Machine. Larger image, yada yada.  The accurate representation here is the image in grape.  I shot that one on white background while the other two had to be tweaked because of green screen.  What I was thinking when I did that I have no idea.  This style is what you get when you listen to too much Velvet Acid Christ. :P   The next two shots are what I had envisioned (but are not the final tweaked out shots):

And the one below is what I ended up with:

Ruina Kessel is the creator of those wonderful eyes and gorgeous skin.  The shots really don't do justice to the skin which has almost a soft shimmer to it that the photos just don't pick up.  Unfortunately, I hadn't found Ruina's skins before I had done the next shot because they would have worked beautifully for it.

Onarra.  That's the name of this style which I wanted to fashion in a kind of scorpion tale.  I'm not sure if you can see it very well in the pictures but there's a delicate metal twisty bit holding the hair strands back.

This was what I sorta had in mind for the shot for this. There was still tweaking to be done in photoshop but you get the idea. ;)

Finally is the men's style Tricksy.  I vaguely recall I had Lord of the Rings on the brain for some reason when I named this one.  This is the one style I didn't get around doing a photo shoot for because it was at that time I found out what the booths were going to be like.
     So there you have it.  Those are the styles that will only be found at Hair Fair for the next two weeks.  The styles are all Modify and Copy and come equipped with resizer. (Demos are also equipped with resizer but are copy only.)
The Hairoin booth can be found here at Hair Fair
I hope you all have fun and find many styles that make you go 'ooooo'.  ;)

Sneak Peek

...at the Hair Fair gifts.  This is going to be my final act for the day.  Then I'm going to see if I can navigate the 20 feet to the bedroom and find the bed.  At this point I'm 50/50 on if it's worth the trouble and could just end up sleeping on the floor curled up next to my fluffy orange boy. (My cat! My cat! Don't be getting any funny ideas. At least he doesn't snore.)

I've got two gifts - one for the men and one for the women - and since we can only put out one goodie box they're wrapped up together.

Behold! The gift box!  I even created the textures for it which is no small feat when you feel the onset of blind panic.

I was going to be a complete cow and just show little snippet pictures but right now I'm too tired to even moo so I figured I'd just post the images.  This one above is for the women. I thought I'd point that out in case anyone was confused on the issue which is entirely possible.  This is SL we're talking about afterall.  It's called Lady Antonella and you'll find the colors pictured above which is Abyss (black) and Cosmos (blond).

Meet Darby.  That's the name of the men's gift. Freaky (blond) and Abyss (black) are the colors that will be found in the box and speaking of colors...things are starting to turn into shades of yellow periodically so either my eyes have developed jaundice in the past 5 minutes or it's time to head out. I'm going with the latter at the moment because it's less work and I'll worry about the former tomorrow. :P

What's coming up

"Whaddya mean there's no coffee?"

This is how I'm feeling at the moment and you know it's a bad sign when you wander aimlessly around the house, not quite sure what you're looking for. I knew I was in trouble when I found myself in the bathroom to get a coffee cup.

A lot of things have popped up in the past 24 hours....it's amazing how many things can come at you all at once (all in a good way) but I'm beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.  Okay...that's a lie. I'm feeling a LOT overwhelmed but I'll get over it. (That reminds me...I forgot to pick up more 'liquid sedative' when I was out yesterday - I'm taking Bubbles' advice to heart :P)  A couple of opportunities have come up for me; one is immediate, the other is a long-haul kinda project but one that's just too intriguing to say 'no' too.

I'm currently working on getting the men's Hair Fair gift done.  I've done the women's and I'll post a couple of pics when I get those all completed.  I hope everyone likes it....personally I'm extremely happy with the way it turned out but then not everyone has the same tastes.

I also plan to post some teasers of the Hair Fair stuff but, again, time has a way of getting away from you so depending on how close it is to Hair Fair I may end up just posting the full images.

Once the Hair Fair stuff is done I'll have some new releases.  I actually made something like 10 new hair (not sure about the actual number sitting in my inventory) for Hair Fair including one for auction in case that happened but it looks like it's not soooooo..... I'll get those out once the dust has settled on everything else which should be the beginning of September.

After that....we'll see what I can get at.  I had certain projects I wanted to finish to get out but things have changed somewhat so now there's a reorganizing of priorities and some frantic building.  But if we didn't get these surprising little irregularities pop up things would be pretty boring.  Right? ;)

Hair Fair Bandana Day

Ugh. I've started this post 6 times and have ended up hitting the backspace key to erase everything. Apparently I need more coffee....or sleep. Something. At least it's cooled off and I no longer feel like I'm sleeping on the inside of a clothes dryer. I feel there's a nap in my future.

The hair I'm working on is driving me nuts so I thought I'd take a detour to the blog to do a post on the bandanas I've created.  I've done 6 - 4 women's, 2 men's but two of them could be unisex. So without further preamble, here they are:

Hairoin - Bad Dog

Hairoin - Elegant Goth Bandana

Hairoin - Grandma's Shawl

Hairoin - Red Feathered Bandana

Hairoin - Roses & Clover

Hairoin - Skull Bandana

 Bandana Day takes place on September 19th but they'll be for sale throughout the duration of Hair Fair. Remember that all proceeds from the sale of these bandanas goes to Wigs for Kids so find your favorite designer or just bandanas you like and grab them.  All the bandanas at Hair Fair (not just mine) are transfer, modify, NO copy.

And thus it begins...

Today is the opening of the Hair Fair Flickr contest. Woohoo!! This is one of my favorite parts of Hair Fair. I love browsing through all the pictures and seeing all those wonderfully creative and beautiful shots people submit.

Many already know about the contest but for those who don't here's the skinny:
- The contest runs from August 1st - 22nd
- Anyone can enter and you can follow this link for the rules Click Here
- You'll need a Flickr account if you don't already have one

There's a lot of prizes to be had (a listing of the contributors is at the end of the rules) and you can submit up to 8 entries but make sure they are the entries you want to submit because you can't swap them out after they've been submitted or you'll be disqualified. Keep it clean and your only limitation is imagination. Have fun and good luck!! I look forward to viewing the entries. :)

New Packs

I tried to get this posted last night but experienced some weirdness so I figured I would try it today instead.

I've been trying to get these new color packs out for a little while but kept getting distracted so I finally put on the headphones (and a thanks to Ruina for letting me perv her musical tastes - there's some really good stuff in there), flipped the busy flag and got all the packs updated. This is only for the actual Hairoin label - not the older Kiss styles.



So as you can see there's 5 new color packs with 6 colors each. The colors are more funky - my personal fav is the Voodoo Pack. I love the Venom color! The complete packs have also been updated and I've decided to leave the price on the complete packs as is - they're still $1750L but now with 114 colors. There's also color demos available which can be found on the right side of the entrance on the way to the big room with all the old Kiss styles.

Incidentally,some of the nuances of the Zombie Pack don't really become apparent until you see it in a longer style. For example, the blues and purples of the Revenant color or the blue and green of the Decay color show up nicely on the Demoria style.

I hope you enjoy them!

New Hair - Demoria

I've got several days off so I'm finally getting around to doing things. Although I have to make this a pretty fast post since it's a nice day and the hubby is laying subtle hints he wants to get outside like sitting on the couch ready to go with camera equipment at hand. ....I wonder how strong duct tape really is. It might buy me a few minutes.

Anyway, this time I have two versions of the same hair. One is more elaborate and the other is the toned down version.

This one is called Demoria and the first two images are the simplified version.
This one is a little different for me in that it's one of those super long hair styles. The long hair in the back is flexi with long bangs in the front and the hair is draped at the sides. Jeweled bands pull the hair into a series of buns and terminates in piles of hair and more drapes at the back of the head. The simplified version is shown in Bone from the Dead Pack.

Below is actually the original version of Demoria with all the bells and whistles.
This version has a large, jeweled spider on the top of the head and a metal spider web fan a the back with flexi tendrils. The picture at the left is shown in Lupa from the Wolf Pack and the right is shown in Fiend from the Goth Pack.

As I said, I'm doing this post in a hurry so I apologize for any typos or murdering of the English language that's taken place.

Finally! A new release!

Yes, believe it or not there's a new release out in the store. I know, I know...try not to faint. Between RL work, sleep deprivation and being vexed by texture creation things haven't been coming too fast in SL. Buuuuut...now that I figured out how to create alphas easily with my existing hair textures things flow much better, not to mention quicker.

This is Lenora. Short, sweet and to the point. A long style with bangs pulled back from the face (for the most part) with messy flexi tendrils trailing down the sides and back.
The image on the left is Spectral from the Dead Pack and the image on the right is Raziel from the Heraldry Pack.
The shot on the left is Aries from Zodiac Pack 1 and the right one is Anarchy from the Vamp Pack. And yes, I've finally embraced my inner goth. :)

It's Almost May...

And with it comes the May issue of SL Goth Magazine.

Marsha Warwillow - owner and editor of SL Goth Magazine - is back in action after an extended absence due to computer malfunction. The May issue has a sun and moon theme and Marsha hit me with the idea of doing a bit of advertising along that line. Then she hit me with the idea of doing a freebie to go with the magazine. Below is the result....
In keeping with the sun and moon theme this is called Blade of the Sun. It's the head piece only and is copy, no mod, no transfer. It's equipped with resizer script so there's no worry about getting it to fit. This is an SL Goth exclusive freebie so pick up a copy when it comes out in a couple of days. There's an SL Goth magazine kiosk at Hairoin which is beside the subcribe-o-matic at the entrance.
I hope you enjoy reading the magazine and I hope you like the gift!

More Hair

*wiggles toes* I took today off so I get to spend my day drinking coffee and getting some other things done. Hey, it's crappy outside so what else am I going to do? At least I'm getting some sort of light even if it is cloudy outside. At work I spend most of my time in a large, dark place where sound really doesn't travel. My husband frequently worries about me thinking that one of these days I'm going to be pinned under a large object and the one other person I work with won't know. That's why I tell him I'm careful because working where I do is a lot like working in space - No one can hear you scream. :P

Okay, okay. I know. I'm off track again but I think people expect that of me now. Anyway, I've got another new style out. This one is called Demona.Incidentally, I'm still trying to get that texture change script working on that one style I've got in my inventory. I almost had it...changed one little setting...and everything went to hell in a handbasket. At this rate I'm going to end up with permanent brain damage from banging my head on my desk. So, I took a break from that *#&$!%$ style and created Demona. This one has a bit of flex to it with the tendrils on either side of the face and a little bit at the back in the pony tail. The style it's self has resizer menu in it as well as the demo.
Top Picture - Left is shown in Gorgon from the Demon Pack and the right is Abyss from the Dead Pack.
Bottom Picture - Left is Argent from the Dead Pack and right is Sonnet from the Goth Pack.

As a side note, my "find" this time around is the jewelry is from PERTURB/ation (with the exception of the necklace in the bottom left shot - that's from Earthstones). She's got some gorgeous and different stuff at reasonable prices. You may have to do a bit of tweaking to get the earrings to sit correctly on your ear but it's definitely worth it!

New Hair

I've finally got new hair out. I've actually got three more in my inventory but at the moment I'm fighting with the texture change script. Haven't quite got that one mastered yet.

This one is called Empire and I had a bit of a fight with it too. Finally, I had to call it a draw. On the advice of a friend I decided to try the hinged flexi prim method of building again. Through a series of trial and errors and a couple of "doh"s thrown in for good measure I finally got everything lined up. The quirk came in when I tried to apply the tips textures. When I zoomed out a line became visible between the flexi and the static prim. I don't know if it's just my graphic card settings or what but that's the reason this style is only being released in solid colors. Therefore, the Dead Pack has only 3 colors in it and is priced at $125L and the Complete Pack for this one is priced at $1300L.
The style is pulled up into a single "pony tail" which is supported by a row of double braids. In the above picture, the colors are Aries on the left (from the Zodiac Pack 1) and Abyss (Dead Pack) on the right.

In this picture the one on the left is in Desire from the Seduction Pack and the one on the right is Cancer again from the Zodiac Pack 1.

This is just have to mention because it took me awhile to find a toga I was happy with. The toga is from Toga! in the Portabello region and is called Goddess Toga. The shoes (which I just love) are called Gladiator and are made by SLink.