Masterpiece Theater

My esteemed co-founder of the Virtual Artist Alliance, Rezago Kokorin, was kind enough to share this “bit of inspired insanity”. As such, I would like to share it with all of you. Thanks Rez!

LEGOs+Steampunk+Star Wars=Nerdgasm

Photo and nerdgasm courtesy of gizmodo.com.

While I am not the most profound Star Wars nerd you will ever meet, you will find upon getting to know me that I am particularly rabid for all things Steampunk. As such, combining the awesome starship design of Star Wars with the Victorian flare of the Steampunk subculture and the infinite building capabilities of LEGOs results in an instant winner in my book.

The above TIE Fighter was entered into a contest called “Steam Wars” in which LEGO enthusiasts were invited to redesign the ships and vehicles of Star Wars to fit into the steampunk genre– while the TIE was my favorite of the entries shown, all of the others were stunning pieces of work that you will simply have to see for yourself.

Flight of the Conchords in Brew City!

I am pleased and excited to announce that Flight of the Conchords is going to be at the Riverside theater in Milwaukee on May 11th– and I’m totally going to see them! Weeeee! I was informed of this by my former flatmate, Tara, while I was working a later shift at work, and she offered to get some tickets for me the next day when the box office opened. She scored some sweet center-right, fourth row tickets, the lovely woman! Apparently the line wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be… I guess FotC is not as popular in Milwaukee as it is in other places. Uncultured swine!

Since Brent’s birthday is coming up, the tickets also double as a gift~ so happy birthday to my favorite geek <3

Oh yes. This excites me.

Beijing 2008 Adidas Ads– “Impossible is Nothing”

Say what you will about the Olympics this year– Adidas has some kick-ass ads that embody the true spirit of the event: togetherness. Illustrators Luming and Lance Ma drew the backgrounds by hand and added the athletes in later… amazing:

Shit shit shit…

God fucking dammit… I missed Photohunt tonight. What an awesome host I am :\

I’ve had to play some serious catch up at school because of my surgery, so I apologize to everyone who participates in Photohunt– I was consumed in homework! We will resume next week, hopefully with no memory snags on my end… until then, keep snapping, and I look forward to seeing you all again real soon!

P.S. In light of my gall bladder removal, I would like to thank everyone for their support and well wishes– the road to recovery would be considerably lamer if I didn’t have so many friendly comments to keep me afloat!

I Got Stoned

That is to say, I got gall stoned.

Went out to have a nice dinner with Brent, got back to do a little homework and BAM… sharp, stabbing stomach pain! The pain was bad enough for me to want to go to the Emergency Room to get it checked out, because I was not keen on suffering that way for very long.

A few blood tests and an ultrasound later, the threat was located– an inflamed gall bladder and pancreatitis (which apparently is an inflammation of the pancreas) caused by gall stones. This, of course, had to be taken care of surgically, so I was moved from the ER up to a very nice hospital room with an awesome view. Brent was there the entire time, and only left my side to either go home and feed the cats, or to get me a fresh set of clothes in which to leave the hospital. This whole weekend would have been considerably lamer if Brent wasn’t there to help me and cater to my post-op whims… thank you baby!

All that said, I’m home now and I’m doing quite alright… the lacerations still hurt, obviously, but they are slowly getting better– Brent is helping almost as much as the Vicodin is :D.

You Suck at Photoshop

Harsh words, but it’s probably true

Here’s a series of hilarious tutorials that offer to remedy this problem. Hilarious and (surprisingly) useful!

Haiku Speedbuild- 13March08

Lots of new faces today, both builder and spectator alike… I don’t quite have the ability to write goodly about this particular build because of some long work/school hours… so I will just share a few pictures and do the normal archive-thing

By the way, doesn’t Callipygian Christensen look lovely with a handlebar moustache?

This week’s theme haiku:

Geranium cliff
To understand my life now
Beautiful puzzle

-Misprint Thursday

1st Place- Ransom Silverspar

2nd Place- Ego Essex

3rd Place- Corcosman Voom

Runners Up- cinnamon Daniels, Peli Dieterle,  McGroarty Playfair, Misprint Thursday

     

Troubles with the Ballet

This might not be common knowledge to a lot of people, but until recently, I served as the Second Life Ballet’s resident artist– that is, I designed some sets for them, made art for their playbills, designed their performance posters and, most importantly, I designed their logo.

Upon resignation of my position with the Second Life Ballet, I decided to draw up an agreement for the director, Inarra Saarinen, to look at and sign to insure that the ballet would use the art that I created exclusively for non-profit endeavors (which, as I understand, would not be a problem, since the SLB is a non-profit company to begin with).

This is the first email I sent on February 28th, 2008 at 9:25 PM:

Hey there Inarra:

The following is a quick and painless agreement in regards to using the posters, playbill images and the logo that I’ve created for the Second Life Ballet. Please read and send a return email indicating that you agree along with your RL name and contact information. Thank you!

The Second Life Ballet hereby agrees to use all materials created by Cyanide Seelowe (posters, playbill images, the Second Life Ballet logo, etc.) for non-profit purposes only. If any for-profit endeavors wish to be made in the future, royalties must be paid which will be agreed upon if the need ever arises for it.

The Second Life Ballet’s CafePress site (link redacted) must therefore cease the sale of its merchandise containing any content created by Cyanide Seelowe by March 31st, 2008.

Copyrights to the posters and logo can be found at the following web addresses:

~”Les Fleurs Rose” poster: http://cyanidebutterfly.deviantart.com/art/Les-Fleurs-Rose-poster-75811469
~”The Nut” poster: http://cyanidebutterfly.deviantart.com/art/quot-The-Nut-quot-Poster-71859393
~”Windows” poster: http://cyanidebutterfly.deviantart.com/art/quot-Windows-quot-Poster-v-1-0-56441425
~Second Life Ballet logo: http://cyanidebutterfly.deviantart.com/art/Second-Life-Ballet-Logo-55885634

Sincerely,

Cyanide Seelowe/Jackie Steffen
(RL contact information redacted)

A little more than half an hour later, at 10:07 PM, I received this notice in my email:

[20:06] Inarra Saarinen: You have been ejected from ‘SLB Productions’ by Inarra Saarinen.

48 hours later, I had not yet received a response from Inarra, so I sent a follow-up email:

Hey there Inarra:

If you would be so kind as to sign this agreement (by “sign” I mean just sending a return email stating that you agree with your RL name and contact info) by sometime on Monday, March 3rd, that would be fantastic. If you have any questions or concerns in regards to the agreement, I’d be happy to clarify. Thanks!

~Cyanide Seelowe
Founder, Virtual Artist Alliance
Admin, VirtualArtpedia (http://virtualartpedia.wikisite.com)

Several days later, without a response, I sent Inarra a Second Life IM (she was offline at the time, unfortunately) requesting that she respond to my emails:

[2008/03/05 14:35] Cyanide Seelowe: Hey Inarra: I need you to sign that agreement that I sent you in email. If you didn’t recieve it, I’d be more than happy to resend it, or if you have any questions or concerns about it, I’d be more than happy to discuss them. Either way, you need to respond to me. Thank you.
[2008/03/05 14:35] Second Life: User not online - message will be stored and delivered later.

I understand that offline Ims are not the most efficient way of getting a hold of someone in Second Life… but I was left with no choice at the point, since I only have one email address with which to get a hold of Inarra.

As of this point, I still have not received any communication or response to these mails from Inarra or acknowledgment of my rights to the work.

This whole situation is making me regret not drawing up the agreement when I first started working with them. The lack of attention, the ignorance of an obviously important issue for any artist– it’s one of the reasons I left in the first place. There was no apparent appreciation for the volunteer efforts, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that I will have to take legal action just to ensure that a simple agreement that is beneficial to BOTH parties gets signed.

Tonight I will be crafting emails and sending take-down notices to Linden Labs, Cafe Press and the hosting service for the Second Life Ballet website asking for the removal of my copyrighted materials.

Now, I realize that there may appear to be a dichotomy between my situation and my previous comments on Richard Minsky’s trademark of the term “slart”– the difference, as I see it, is that the Second Life Ballet logo and all other materials that I created are unique creations. The term “slart” was and continues to be a commonly used term within the Second Life art community that predates Minsky’s attempt to trademark it for his own purposes.

The lesson here? Whether you are a volunteer or an employee, always-ALWAYS- draw up an agreement to protect yourself and your art.

Flight of the Conchords

If you have not yet discovered New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk/parody band, allow me to open the gates of your musical tastes: