Zombieville Chapter 2.1: "Persistent Kitty"

Zombieville is back! So is everyone's favorite character, Muggins the cat!
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Possibilities of skyboxes

Flipmode just came out with a nifty digital product, Easy Environments: Autumn. It contains a road, bordered by a stone wall, a fence and some turning deciduous trees, surrounded by a 360-degree skybox that makes the set "[gleam] and [gloom] / 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass." [Thank you, Dante Rossetti, for Silent Noon, which contains the best description ever of such dramatic clouds.] Quick-rendering light sets were also included, promising to duplicate the type of light pictured in the skybox.

When I saw this set, I felt an involuntary pang, as the dappling of shadows across the landscape epitomized for me the melancholy of fall. I bought the set for the lovely panorama, but then couldn't get over the fact that the mountains contain no trees whatsoever. There should be some fall colors on the distant hills too, right?

I tried to rectify the barrenness of the background with the help of a Wikimedia Commons panoramic photo from the top of Mount Mansfield. I spent hours dividing up the panorama into four pieces [one for each side of the sky box] and blending it with Flipmode's sky. I even made a texture for the bottom of the skybox, which originally showed more parched, treeless ground. After all that, the result looked like a bad overlay, despite all my hard work. I thus concluded that I could not get a forested skybox out of Easy Environments: Autumn, so I returned it.

Not all is lost, however. I still have the Mount Mansfield overlay panels. I have another idea. I got a great discount on Dreamland Models' Movie Sets: 81 Blocks last night. Regularly $24.95, it was down to $7.48, so I picked it up. It's marketed as a huge city environment, but I snagged it because it contains a skydome, low-res forest props and low-res deciduous tree props with several materials. I'm thinking of rendering some panoramic shots in this set and making my own forested skybox.

Lana Wachowski has hair like Anneka's!

Her vibrant pink, knotty hair looks like the 1:1 equivalent of my 1:6 scale action figure Anneka's. As cool as I find the color of Wachowski's hair, I seriously query her white woman's appropriation of dreadlocks. >_>

Scorpion therianthrope problems

I never gave a detailed description of Hattie, the scorpion therianthrope who attended the mini universe's Xmas party last year. I'm not sure if she's mostly human, but with a scorpion tail, like Soom Vesuvia, or if she's half-human, half-scorpion, like Impldoll Colin. If they're like Impldoll Colin, do they have claws and pincers?

EDIT: Okay, I just checked. Apparently the scorpion therianthropes are more along the lines of Impldoll Colin, although I didn't specify whether they had pincers and/or claws. If I want to make a digital version of Hattie [which I do], I'll have to purchase a scorpion and modify it to be a lower body for a therianthrope.

As an aside, I notice that Impldoll's sculpting has become more refined over the years, but I think their sculptors still struggle to find a signature style. The sculpts and concepts, especially of the Star and Idol lines, smack strongly of Iplehouse to me.

Chittenden County Vermont Doll Club meetup: 08/23/2014

Yesterday CCDC welcomed its largest complement of attendees ever! A whole dozen of us attended, including newcomers Pink and their husband [from Maine] and Pink's friend from Quebec [who doesn't have any dolls...yet]. We spent the entire extended duration [noon to 4:00 PM] talking dolls, posing and photoing them, in between side conversations about mutual interests such as Monster High, Internet-based cartoons and fursuits. As far as I can tell, everyone enjoyed themselves. :D
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