Evolution of a wing design

I do not do custom work and one of the reasons is that I rarely succeed in having a wing design finish the way I intended it to look when I started. Oh, sometimes sure, I sit down with the pen tablet and photoshop and bust out an awesome design without breaking into a sweat.

Usually tho, I go through many many steps before I get something good.

For example:
I started out with a basic outline in illustrator, brought that into photoshop, added some blur to the edges. Ok, this is a decent fairy wing. I intended to make something in white with points of light in it.
So . . . points of light, where do those go? Not sure. So I made some bevels and added sparkles. Everyone needs sparkles, right? Ok. . . this design was not working. I knew that. I asked some friend's advice and got some. But still, not working.
I decided to go in a completely different direction - using some overlays from butterfly textures and a gothic purple gradient, I came up with this. Yes!!! Now, this is something that has potential. But it needs something else . . . . something on top.

Yay, little feathers on top. Very dark fae. I have a hard time doing anything that doesn't have a gothic feel to it. Don't know why. I had to muck with the size. I'm still mucking with some very small details on the alpha channel (one or two pixels wide each). But almost done! Now to do these in more colors - the fun part!

I wish more designers would share their design process. I think it helps people to learn what goes into a design - then they will be willing to protect their favorite designer's creations even more than they already do.

Upgrades Again

Upgrades are now available to everyone now, not just group members. If you have Material Squirrel wings to upgrade, please stop by our store and touch upgrade sign number 1.

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring Moody Blues Butterfly wings.

This and That

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring Autumn Rainbow and Jade Dragonfly wings.

The Dazzle Viewer - If you try to reposition your HUD (any HUD), it will snap back to the default position. The work around is to reposition the HUD in the regular client and then it stays there in the Dazzle client.

Yabusaka Loon is our featured sculpture this month at our sculpture space. He writes more about his setup and products in his blog (see previous link) and has pictures so go look there or better yet, go look at our main store on Winged Isle.

Elysium did a bunch of promo photos for me and they all rock. She has them in her flickr account, but I'll be featuring them here on my blog slowly but surely. Blog posts are just better with pictures and I rarely have time to take any but ad box shots. If you are looking for good photos, I recommend her. Just don't make her so busy that I can never hire her again, hehe.

I'm working on some new wings, but having trouble with them. And that's it.

Wing Upgrades

Photo by Elysium Eilde, featuring the Black and White Angel Wings

Wing Upgrades. Yes, we are now ready.

First, let me just say that I really appreciate everyone's patience on this. I have a lot of 4.0 wings out there, so we had to set up a system to make upgrades a bit easier on me. In the future, all upgrades will be completely automated. But this time, I am asking my customers to help me by doing a bit more work.

The upgrades signs are now up. And this is how it works:

1) You need to be a group member of the group - Material Squirrel. For now. In a week, I'll open it up to everyone but for this week, I am restricting it to my group as a group perk. (And yes, if you have a free group slot, you can join, get your upgrades and leave.)

2) Go to the Material Squirrel store and go over to the signs on the opposite side from the demon sculptie wings (SL URL at the bottom of this post too). Click on the Step 1 sign.

3) You will get a message giving you a number if you are standing close enough to the sign.

4) Wait until you get a notecard with further instructions.

5) When notified, you will need to give me a folder of the wings to upgrade. The notecard will have specifics on how to give me back the wings. Please do read it. If you give me the wings before you get notified, I will give them back to you. I really do need the process to be followed or it won't work on my end.

6) After I get your wings back, I will process your upgrade. You will receive another notification and you will need to go back to the Material Squirrel store. Click on the Step 2 sign to receive your new wings. If you have more than 10 wings being upgraded, click the Step 2 sign again (it processes 10 wings at a time).

Whew!

And one more thing - the upgraded wings will be NO TRANSFER.

SL URL:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winged%20Isle/27/127/47/

Dragonfly Wings

I think I am incapable of making dragonfly wings that look like normal pretty dragonfly wings. Mine always have to be, well, very different. This is my second attempt at dragonfly wings - at least this time I got the shape right! I do like these wings - they are wonderful colors!


If anyone is looking for more realistic dragonfly wings, I am going to refer you (and anyone else who asks) to Jen Shikami of Seven's Selections. She has a very nice set of dragonfly wings that are far more realistic than my fantastical colored ones.

We finished the upgrades to version 4.2.1 at the store yesterday. I think we finally re-opened at midnight. Thanks to Alexis Stapovic for helping me and to everyone for their patience. I know Saturday is a stupid day to close, but it's one of the days that Ziggy is here to help me with our baby. I detailed the new version features in my last blog post. The size change I think is the best - and you can see this feature via the pose stands!

If you have existing Material Squirrel wings to upgrade, please give us another week. We are putting a process in place to make it a bit easier on me and ensure that a ton of wings don't get dumped (and then lost to the SL inventory monster) on me at once. Which will also ensure that people get all their wings. We are shooting for next weekend to have this system in place. And then we will begin giving people numbers - like a lunch counter (mmm, ham wings!). The best way to stay on top of this is to join my update group - Material Squirrel.

News

All the news . . . well, first, I finally created a Flickr group for Material Squirrel Wings. I would love to have all my customers join and post photos. It's just me right now, kinda lonely.

Second, Ziggy and I are working on a new update for the wings. This one will have a lot of changes. My favorite is size change. FINALLY! I am testing our butterfly wings and they look so cute small. Really cute. And this will allow everyone to finally be able to have a custom size to fit their avs.

We are also moving to mod/copy/no transfer wings. This was a hard choice - I know there are people who really love the transfer option. But I feel no transfer is the best way to go right now. It will allow us to do auto-updates, instead of updates by hand, which take up my time and with our baby, time is precious. Especially since she has decided 4 month old babies don't need naps. Another plus is that you will be able to mod your wings and have several copies. So if you are in COLA, you can pull out all of the scripts in your wings to prevent lag, but still have a scripted copy when you want. Also, with the size change, think of the possibilities with a little editing, you could have winged ankles, arms, etc. I will NOT be honoring alt accounts, as I think that is just unfair to merchants and frankly, other customers as well.

Another new feature will be Xcite! message customizations. So your Xcite emotes can read whatever you want.

I've also redesigned the HUD to make it slicker and sleeker. No more tabs!!!

And the last new feature is the ability to turn flexi while flying off. This makes the wings look a lot better while flying.

I think that's it. I am hoping to have the updates out in February. We still need to test the wings further - if you use your Material Squirrel wings all the time and want to test them, drop me an IM. I look for people who can clearly describe the errors/bugs that crop up. And I really want people who use the wings - those are the people who find the bugs.

BTW, updates are always free - I'll be doing these by hand tho so I will appreciate patience. I'll have more info on how to upgrade when we are there. And group members of Material Squirrel (in world) will have first shot at upgrades.

Angel Outfit - New

Angel Outfit - includes scripted Halo (particle glow/on off), scripted Wings - and the dress. All for 499L. If you just want the wings those are available separately too.

Avalon Black Fairy Wings

New at Material Squirrel.
These look great with the color change option, you can really personalize your wings to whatever color you want.

Sculpted Prim Demon Wings - FINALLY

Ah, it's sooo much harder to get things done when you have a baby. Did I mention that Ziggy and I had a baby in September? A real-life one. Tomorrow she will be 7 weeks old!

So what does that have to do with sculpted prim demon wings? Well, nothing if you aren't me - but for me, these were a challenge to get finished, photographed, put up in the store, and listed. It took grabbing a moment here and there and doing a bit of a work at a time. Ziggy and I had these mostly completed before she arrived - but we've been putting the finishing touches on them for the past few weeks - in between comforting and feeding our crying baby. But they are finally done!

Available in world at Material Squirrel Store on Winged Isle.
Also on SL Exchange
And on
Shop on Rez

New Fashion Blog

Oooh, a shiny new fashion blog has arrived. Second Impression was started by Alexis Stapovic and her wacky talented friend Jade. Alexis did the build for my sim (awesome build). But you should go visit this blog not just cause Alexis is my friend, but cause so far it's really awesome. Go. Now.

Dark-Angel - Great Customer Art

Dark-Angel
Originally uploaded by Nyla Rossini

With a baby, sometimes I can compute with one hand while holding the baby with the other. But I can't type much or get on SL or make textures, so I was surfing around Flickr when I found this wonderful art feature the Material Squirrel Dark Angel wings. Very cool.

Free Wings!

To join the Material Squirrel group - go to Search, the group tab, search for Material Squirrel and join. There are no fees. The wings have all the features of our regular wings and are perfect for Halloween.

New Wings

New wing designs. These were designed by Rayl Graves. I don't usually accept other people's designs, but when he showed me his sketch, I knew they had to be made into wings. I did the photoshop work on these. I'm not very good at working on other people's things, it took me a while to finish them. But now they are done :)

Dear Lindens

Dear Lindens,

Please do the following before my head explodes:

1) Fix the embedded notecard link problems. 90% of my customer IMs are about this issue. Yes, I know the fix - You can drag the link/notecard from the main notecard directly into your inventory and it will open. But normal users don't know this. I've even put my help files online and I STILL get customer IMs over this. It's not their fault, they can't open them. It's not my fault either. This has been broken since JUNE. Get a move on!

2) Please teach newbies how to give inventory via the profile before they leave Orientation island. I cannot meet every newbie who wants to give me inventory in person and there seems to be no education in this before they leave Orientation island. Old timers laugh at me when I tell them I have a notecard with instructions, and then they double over laughing when I show them my illustrated guide to giving inventory. But newbies don't know. Again, not their fault.

3) Please teach newbies how to find people via Search-->people so they don't try to friend me so they can IM me. I feel horrid and mean when I decline friendships, but I don't friend unless people talk to me. Otherwise, my FL would be insane.

Thanks,
Kala Bijoux

Help Files on Web site

All Material Squirrel Help files are now online at our website.

I've also included screen shots in the online help files, which will hopefully be more helpful to people than just text instructions.

Angel Wings & Goth Wings

I actually released these last week, but with SL being so unstable, I didn't blog about them. But here they are :)

New Tattoos

I love this cherry set - but it was difficult to put the ad together. Hopefully it's not too hodge-podge.

And something for the boys.

New Wings

Several new wings were released last week. If you are a member of my update/support group (Material Squirrel), then you know that I had a treasure hunt for wings and also for the horns. If not, join so you don't miss out on future freebies :)

New Sculpted Prim Horns!

New sculpted prim (sculpties) horns at Material Squirrel. Many different colors, lots of different designs. Scripted with animations and particle effects. Only 99L each pair of horns.

Big Thanks!

Big thanks to everyone who bought the Relay for Life angel wings! Together we raised L 48,438 - that's a terrific amount for a great cause!!!