It was at about this same time a year ago that the great amount of creativity of SL that had found a home on Flickr really hit home for me. At that time, I knew I wanted to participate in that creativity even if I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. If I did nothing else, learning to use the tools available to capture images similar to what I saw others doing would be enough for me.
As I followed more people and saw even greater variety I got pulled in further even as I wandered aimlessly looking for an answer to a problem that didn’t exist. Overnight, that changed for me in an event that changed my life in several ways, including a desire to truly jump into a creative mindset.
Besides creating images, I felt a desire to start writing. There was a story that I wanted to tell, complete with illustrations from SL. After it became clear to me that this would be a solo project, Christi, whom I had created for assisting in setting poses for furniture that I built so long ago, was pulled back out of the closet. In the illustrations for my stories, she would ‘play’ the female roles while Aedan would play the males. And so was born the VReam Team.
Until today, I’ve struggled with how to deal with images created of them that weren’t part of any story. Christi has her flickr page and Aedan had his. This brings awkwardness and repetition on top of the concern that some people are offended by ‘alts’ and feel they are a tool of deception. As of now, any images either of them create, whether it is related to a story in progress or not, will be shared on this account.
As for this particular image, it is actually a composite of 5 images but that was the easy part. Most of the time creating this was spent trying to make Christi’s hair more realistic. I can only say, it is getting better and like everything else I’m doing, I expect it will get better with practice.