Saturday, July 29, 2006

Suzanne's Guitar

In August 2006, Suzanne Vega will become the first major recording artist to perform live in Second Life avatar form. This forms part of a larger project sponsored by The Infinite Mind, a public radio show which has hired Infinite Vision Media to create a permanent presence in Second Life.

I was commissioned by Boliver Oddfellow (CEO, Infinite Visions) to make the Guitar and animation for the Vega avatar (created by Munchflower Zaius).


However, I decided to use this opportunity to also make a short (3 minute) video.

This is Suzanne's Guitar...



[View it here, 21.8Mb lower quality]
[View it here, 54.2Mb mid quality]

(A High Quality, 121.2Mb version is also available upon request).

* Music on the video is Prelude No.2 (V.Lobos), performed (well) by my good friend Steve Bean.

Suzanne Vega will perform live on August 3.

(Edit: embedded YouTube Version now available below:)



(Edit: Suzanne's Guitar is broadcasted as a backdrop on Japanese TV:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVRQXAlR8zw
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17 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 July, 2006

    Hey Robbie, I really enjoyed this; virtuoso in every way :)

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  2. AKA Robbie Dingo30 July, 2006

    Thank you Henrik, and as we agreed in world, lets keep in touch.

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  3. TORLEY 🍉🎹31 July, 2006

    The timing of that was remarkable! And the very PROCESS of showing your BUILDING. SO VERY KEWL!!!

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  4. Anonymous04 August, 2006

    Wow! So amazing.

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  5. Anonymous04 August, 2006

    This is amazing!
    Did you make parts before, or is this all real time - its amazing anyhow...

    Is there some possibility off seeing you build something ingame ?
    That would make an amazing show - im sure.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  6. Anonymous04 August, 2006

    Beautiful work on that guitar, and awesome speeded up movie showing the process. Sadly, Suzanne had some trouble putting on the guitar in concert, but eventually it got righted and all was well.

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  7. AKA Robbie Dingo06 August, 2006

    lol, yes rik, actually she wore the wrong guitar, and then was given another one... this guitar never saw the light of day.. hehe.

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  8. TORLEY 🍉🎹09 August, 2006

    I'm still curious, Robbie--this looked so fluid how you put it together. Do you have more of a story you'd like to share behind how it came together? It looks like you put every prim to the right place so perfectly! Were there any rehearsals or is this what bloomed out of your imagination? :)

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  9. AKA Robbie Dingo11 August, 2006

    Hi Torley, I had an alt preparing the pieces, getting the positioning right etc, then the main AV would move into position. This way I did not move the main Camera and cut out all of the very long pauses in the video edit. Believe me, it took a lot longer to make this guitar that it looks! Thanks for the comment tho, hope this explains OK?

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  10. TORLEY 🍉🎹20 August, 2006

    Thanx--it's so amazing how you did it! You sure make it look easy. Your blog is so educational AND entertaining. :D

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  11. Anonymous16 November, 2006

    Hi robbie, I think the video was amazing, is the image of the guitar a .tga? or is it a pane cut to shape? thanks keep up the good work!!!!

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  12. Anonymous08 December, 2006

    hi robbie, amazing piece of work ...i was confused though by the base that you created about 40 sec into the video...

    you seem to stretch a rectangle or something, and it immediately matches the shape of the guitar frame.... camera trick, or a building tip you can hand out :)

    thanks adec

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  13. Calade27 February, 2007

    Couldn't find an e-mail, so I'll ask my question here. I am making a school project about Second Life with Microsoft PowerPoint, and I it's still missing a video which I would like to include. First I thought of a trailer, but I think a video like this would be a lot better. So, is there any chance of getting the video in the best possible quality (because it's going to be shown on a very big screen) and in a PowerPoint compatible video format. I think at least .wmw works, maybe .avi too. I don't have PowerPoint on my home PC and I forgot to check last time I was in my school's IT class :). But anyways, if you can do this, I would be most thankful!

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  14. AKA Robbie Dingo27 February, 2007

    Hi Calade, try this link:-

    http://blip.tv/file/get/RobbieDingo-SuzannesGuitarMidQuality965.mov

    Although you may need to covert to avi

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  15. Anonymous28 February, 2007

    Yea, converting is one of the problems I got... Can't find a program for it that doesn't leave a watermark, let's me convert the whole video and is free. I was thinking you might have a paid version of such a program or so. But if you don't, thanks anyways. :)

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  16. Anonymous03 March, 2007

    Hello again. I now found a free converter (called MediaCoder, I highly recommend it to everyone), and the video is in the right format now. So, Robbie, would you mind if I translated the text in the beginning of the video to my own language, so that everyone watching the video will understand it? I will not change its content in any other way :).

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  17. Anonymous03 April, 2008

    Great video, you make it look so easy :) Quick question though, I've been making guitars recently and I can make the frame, but I'm having trouble making the cover. The bit I'm talking about is at 0:40-0:42 and at 1:51-1:57. Can you enlighten me on how you got that shape from (I assume) one prim? Thanks in advance :)

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