Previz #71 - Avatar Parades upcoming!

After the success of last week’s VB42 – Avatar Pride Parade, and yesterday’s VB43 – Animal Parade, we’ve had a flood of parade proposals! From Animal Parade dramaturge Trill Zapatero comes the Noob Parade and from long-time VB/CO art director Agnes Sharple comes the Tiny Parade and the Demo Parade!

VB44 – Tiny Parade

Date: Saturday 26 January
Time: 10am SLT / 18:00 GMT / 5a Sunday AEDT
Location: Cica Ghost’s Black & White World at LEA13

Many peeps lament how “Barbie” a lot of avatar bodies in the virtual world of Second Life are. True as that may be, this world has always also had a lot of avatars at the other end of the stretched out scale, “Tinies” or to continue the metaphor, “Bratz.” There are Tiny sims, tiny clothes, animations, vehicles, furniture, toys, etc. For VB44 we’ve decided to bring our Tiny Parade to a very different, very starkly beautiful, very contrasting with the vibrance of many Tiny avatars, sim: Cica Ghost’s Black and White world currently on exhibition at LEA13. Ghost has created a world of sketchy, 2D black and white forms that you can navigate in 3D. It’s a visual, and immersive, mixed metaphor that is a delight to experience.

For this performance please wear any Tiny avatar. There are many free, and zillions of premium Tinies across the Second Life grid and Marketplace. If you have sources, please add them as a comment on this post. If you have full-perm freebies you’d like to share, please send them out to the VB Friends group. And don’t forget, everyone has one of the great, classic Tiny avatars right in their own Inventory > Library, The Cardboard Boxbot.

VB45 – Noob Parade

Date: Saturday 2 February
Time: 10am SLT / 18:00 GMT / 5a Sunday AEDT
Location: TBA

The noob. Love them. Hate them. Without them, none of us would be here today. Virtual space is continuously witness to countless acts of both generosity and cruelty toward noobs. Unless you have previous experience or a tremendous sense of purpose, I suspect that an awful lot of the people who stay in a virtual world do so not just for the beauty or creativity or mayhem, but at least as much because pretty early on, some stranger was nice to them. In VB01 – Girl Next Door, we all wore what I estimated back in 2009 to be the most common noob avatar, “Girl Next Door.” In VB30 – Born Again, we set out on a day-long odyssey to find noobs to help – it was harder than we expected!
• VB01 – Girl Next Door
• VB30 – Born Again

Now in VB45 – Noob Parade, we’re asking you to do the unthinkable! Turn the clock back, take off all those customizations, and walk down the street in your birthday suit, in the noob avatar you were born in! If you didn’t keep your noobvatar in your inventory, no worries, you can find them all down in Inventory > Library.

VB46 – Demo Parade

Date: Saturday 9 February
Time: 10am SLT / 18:00 GMT / 5a Sunday AEDT
Location: Mayfair Fashion District

Virtual Commerce carries with it the curious artifact known as the Demo: it could be a Demo for anything, but most typically they’re for apparel. The idea is to offer a “watermarked” version of a 3D product in a clear enough form that the consumer can check it for fit and appearance, yet degraded enough by watermarks, floating prims, etc, that they’re too ugly or embarrassing for anyone to try to use the unpaid demo as the actual product instead of purchasing it. Of course “ugly” and “embarrassing” are in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps no one in the virtual world has beheld the beauty of the Demo longer, more deeply, or more extensively, than our own Agnes Sharple. Back in VB31 – Demo Days, she helped us all join in to create a large Demo tableaux vivante in what would prove to be the last exhibition at the old Gallery Xue / Palestine. Now in VB46 – Demo Parade, we put the power of the Demo in motion as we walk proudly in our cobbled together bodies and clothes down the main street of the oh-so-chic Mayfair Fashion District!
• VB31 – Demo Days

Agnes will send out a list of places with lots of great demos, but safe to say, if you shop just about anywhere in the virtual world, you should find lots of demo clothes, shoes, skins, shapes, and accessories. Demo Up Peeps!

VB47 – Child Avatar Parade

Date: Saturday 16 February
Time: 10am SLT / 18:00 GMT / 5a Sunday AEDT
Location: TBA

In the previous 5 parades: Avatar Pride Parade, Animal Parade, Tiny Parade, Noob Parade, and Demo Parade, we have celebrated a lot of diversity and a lot of ways of being in the virtual world. Surprisingly, one of the ways of being that “creeps out” a lot of peeps the most, is the Child Avatar. We said of Noobs that without them none of us would be here, and it’s certainly at least as true that without Children none of us would be here. The virtual world is filled with many who choose to experience it as a child: perhaps to relive the joy of childhood, perhaps to “get right” a previously broken childhood, perhaps to be a part of a virtual family, or for various other reasons. Yet many of us are uncomfortable or disturbed or chauvinistic toward child avatars. Yes, it is time to test ourselves and become the beauty, the awkwardness, the joy, the horror, of childhood once more.

In VB13 – Peace, long-time VB/CO participant Zola Zsun invited us down to the University of Texas, San Antonio to conclude VB/CO’s inaugural year on a bridge between sims facing out to the ocean for the dawn of a new day, now in VB47 – Child Avatar Parade, we can summon forth our inner child avatars once more and walk together down the main street of a sim.
• VB13 – Peace
• Canary Beck / Second Life Families, Part 1
• Canary Beck / Second Life Families, Part 2

As with Tinies, Furys, and so many other virtual ways of being, the resources for child avatars are vast and there are lots of both free and premium items available. Once again, if you have sources to share, please add Web URLs and In-World SLURL’s in the comments to this post.
• Child Avatar Info Center
• SLC (Second Life Children)