Otherworldly

I’ve been aware of the pose store Del May for a a good while but for some reason I had not given it a closer look before this weekend. What a shame, is all I can say after Ran and I spent a few hours browsing through all the amazing poses and the amazing photos showcasing them. If you are looking for unique, expressive poses—singles, couples and groups—you absolutely have to give Del May a look. We found that the couple poses fit us unusually well even with our avatars not quite being the SL standard in size.

To see what we got up to with the poses we picked up, click through. It is all quite NSFW.

When Ran received the Etienne suit from A.S.S., one of their Culture Shock items, it inspired us to do a portrait for a pair of our MUSH characters. Not from our own game, this time, but rather from the now-defunct Cuendillar MUSH. I ended up digging out this opulent gown from Wunderlich’s for the occasion.

Over at Adam n Eve, sachi has been on a tear lately, releasing two new skins (and preparing several more for release). I am very fond of what she has achieved with her latest skins and I really wanted to try and get better at what I keep calling “fancy headshots” to do them justice. So, here’s one attempt, using the brand-new Natalie skin.

This particular photo was inspired by a group of people who apparently find it terribly amusing that some SL players like to take photos of their avatars. Indeed, sometimes even naked photos. Of course Ran and I had to make some special “pixel porn” just because.

Well, not just because. Good skins deserve to be seen in the nude from time to time and there are a lot of really good sensual poses out there.

Time for another set of MUSH-meets-Second-Life photos, this time featuring my secondary Dornish characters. She’s a bit of a saucy thing, so I needed an outfit that had something of an eastern flair without being either too demure or too much like something you’d expect to see in a harem.

Fortunately, I remembered that I had an outfit from Silver Rose Designs that might just fit the bill. The Fatima outfit isn’t a robe, of course, but it is noted that women in Dorne do wear dresses as well. No doubt a lot of these dresses look more like your typical medieval gown, but here at least you get a touch of something different and exotic with the colour combinations, the hip-wrap and, of course, the bold neckline.

Another bit of A Song of Ice and Fire-inspired photography, this time featuring my main character in Dorne. Rather than trying to represent the whole of Westeros on Blood of Dragons, we’ve built two very different cities: the royal capital of King’s Landing and Sunspear, which at the time we’re playing in basically is the capital of the independent realm of Dorne.

Fortunately, the gorgeous Kingdom of Sand roleplay sim offers a great place to shoot Dornish-inspired photos.

One reason behind the redesign of our blog and the rest of the site was a closer integration between our two virtual pursuits: Second Life and MUSHing. We are still very much active MUSHers and have been running our own A Song of Ice and Fire-based game called Blood of Dragons for several years. Text-based gaming is hardly a booming hobby these days, but for some reason, this little TV show called Game of Thrones has resulted in a lot more interest in the game this year…

In any case, today’s little photography and post-processing exercise started out as an attempt at illustrating one of my characters from our game, Lady Aisling Ryswell.

Elaborate pose props are a weakness of mine, and 1001 Dreams from chanimations hits all the buttons. So, Ran and I couldn’t resist having a bit of fun with it…