Illuminati Designs Updates’ Neighborhood

Emerald opens with a photo from some spectacular sim, and I love clicking "visit this location" before logging in. This time I landed in a sim called Sick (S.I.C49). And of course I took some sick photos for your viewing pleasure, because my friends are a bunch of sickos!!!

This beautifully rendered tropical island, Las Arenas Rosadas (the pink sands) showed up as an opening screen on the Emerald viewer, which features a link saying "visit this location" that transports you there upon login. The place includes a store, of course, that sells gorgeous ocean waves, beach houses, hammocks etc.
And since I kind of miss our lil beach house, it was fun relaxing and tping Spikey over for a chat. Thanks to Arta for finding the location, since I had forgotten to keep the LM. I especially love the last photo.

We traveled to the surreal landscapes of Templum to try more photos of Arta in his beautiful Lunil avatar.
It would be nice to post one or two on the Wraeththu sites, and I can't make a decision. The colors vary according to settings in the viewer, and we tried two poses: one just the normal "Fly" position, the other an animation I created.
Lileem first saw Lunil cavorting in a tree, so the impression of dance is important if we want to observe the sacred texts.

Some of the viewer settings get a little more weird - ranging from bleak to bloodless to hellish - for example:

On Kala's excellent advice I downloaded the Emerald Viewer and started messing with the various sky and lighting presets. Talk about your fun!! I revisited settings I have posted before, as well as some new ones like the Great Wall, Mont St Michel of Spikey fame, and some post-apoc locales with really good burning stuff.

The title of each photo includes the sky preset used in the photo. For this first post I display more "normal" settings where stuff still looks, you know, kind of normal.

Since I was quite amazed by the few Frank Lloyd Wright builds I've actually visited IRL (ex the Rookery atrium in Chicago), I searched out the FL Wright exhibit in SL. A bit less awesome than Mont St Michel, yes, but quite meticulous. In some ways one gains a better feel for the layout in virtual space - no, it's no substitute, it's just cool in a different way.
The weirdo in huge black pants standing in the Robie house is . . . well, you know.

  

I know I'm kinda goin post-crazy this week but don't worry, I'll soon revert to weeks of inactivity. I just took some snaps I like so there. Please IM if you feel like it and come on over, you can sit on the Tiny Planet or the swing or even laugh at Kyne's Comedy Sheep. And no you may NOT "wash" Arta in the shower!! Unless I can take snaps and video. Which I will use to blackmail you.

Since my missed and longed-for chesnari was not feeling well Saturday, Spikey consoled me with a tour of some lovely Asian builds, including the truly stunning Japan Kansei, Hosoi Mura. Spikey was taking snaps too with that new hot rod puter. I need no special occasion to post such lovely images:

Wednesday night I was maddened by a lightning-induced connectus interruptus because Kala had invited me to the "Midsummer Night's Dream" event at Seven Ultra Lounge. The connection resumed 10 minutes before the start and I hadn't even bought wings yet!!!!!!

To my amazement Kala was actually ready to go (Mat's jaw drops in astonishment), but so laggy the poor beauty couldn't even see my outfit.

After I finished whining and worrying, off we went - the setting was beautiful but full of scripty avs and wings and leaves and music and particle effects and god knows what all. Many more revelers arrived after I took this shot - mostly clever good-humored women, a pleasing crowd!

I didn't look very forest-y, not even very fae (the ancient word for fairy apparently), more burnt-in-hell demonic:

As for his outfit, Kala just "threw this together" from existing outfits you see. A tendril here, a silk there, and it gels by sheer luck into a Titania so ravishing Michelle Pfeiffer would burn with envy. I could say the same of Judi Dench, but she didn't really wear an outfit, just three skimpy leaves. On television.
 
[Yes the same Judi Dench who now plays wrinkly old M in the Bond movies.
But when she did Titania she was young, more or less nude, dyed green and nary a wrinkle in sight. A bit of Brit Shakespearean trivia for you.]

So as this herm Titania danced before me, I just gazed in mute admiration. Wait of course my admiration is never mute but you get what I mean. My dance partner rarely saw himself rezzed, but I took zillions o snaps and here's the one I added to Seven's Flickr:

On the recommendation of the trend-aware Mercury and Spikey, Arta and I visited Aina Yoshikawa's Shop of Good Playful Objects. Actually it's just called Aina's Shop, I was unsuccessfully imitating funny Japanese-English translations.
Aina makes whimsically scripted stuff - you should totally go there. For example, she built these translucent ramps where you can walk upside down:

The next toy was upsetting because I have been trying for a long time to help Arta get past what seemed like an irrational fear of trees:

Fresh graves are always a reliable source of fun, but Aina offers some new twists:

Most wonderful of all, Arta and I finally realized a dream we've had for a long time - our very own planet on a budget! Here we are rehearsing a long-overdue revival of Samuel Beckett's unjustly neglected one-act masterpiece, Diametrics: