-Whystler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfUqVa-Y3go

-Whystler

What you haven't seen, and many of you will see at DevCon1 this month, is the Virtual Me. The body that my personality inhabits. Alas, at 38 with strong Northern European genetics, the Virtual Me is not a twink with antlers. So here it is, the spoiler This is what you see if you view my shell while I'm working on IMVU:

See you at DevCon1 !! You won't be able to miss me now, even without antlers

-T. Shawn Johnson (Whystler)

I found a tiny crack of time in my schedule to come here and write this, because I have something very very important to say. I think it's actually impossible for me to tell you exactly how much I appreciate the support you've given me as an artist in these past couple of months. Your praise, and your buying power have truly helped me focus my life on art.

Before I discovered IMVU, I had been doing quite a few different 3D things because of my passion for it. Unfortunately there was not much money to be made for me in this realm, so really it was a hobby at best. I was also trying to eke out a living producing pottery and clay sculpture. It's so hard to make a living at such a thing. And before I came to IMVU, I was just about to give up a lot of my time to find a part time job to help me live.

But then you folks opened your arms to me! You liked my schtuff enough to pay for it, thereby allowing me to spend the time developing in IMVU that I normally would for a part time job. I am MUCH happier this way. And I owe it to you.

Thank you!!

-T. Shawn Johnson
(Whystler)

(and now back to Faery Fest

I guess since this is my own personal space to write whatever I like, I will share with you some thoughts I've been having lately ...

I was sad to see a culture evolving in IMVU where people found it necessary to point at others and say "look at them, they're corrupt, they're bad, they're not talented, they steal meshes, they pick their nose and eat it!". Whenever you see people doing this loudly in public, instead of taking their complaint through official channels, it's important to realize that their aim is not to bring justice of any sort to that person. Instead their aim is truly to divert attention away from their own faults and somehow increase their public image. Alas, it has been shown that to do that in our new IMVU community actually has the opposite effect. People are not stupid. They are recognising that is not cool to diss others.

So, I was happy to see IMVU's posting in the forum recently stating just that. It's now unnacceptable by IMVU standards to engage in such activity.

Most of all, don't let yourself be manipulated. It's really easy for someone to spout out bad things about another person, but in the majority of cases they are either completely wrong or exagerating their claim. Don't believe someone just because you want to be looked on fondly by them or the people around them. These are highschool clique tactics. Look into the matter on your own. If you're going to have an opinion, educate yourself.

Here's a good example. I could try and tell you that this person copied a mesh, but unless you actually looked at the two examples side by side, you might believe me. (Note: the pictures that follow are shown here with the permission of a gracious friend of mine who made the IMVU scene shown on the left. The image on the right, is a mesh that is available on Turbosquid for members to legally use in their commercial products. She did not cut/paste or steal the mesh on the right, this is simply an example to show how you could possibly be manipulated into believing she did)

Unless you took time to look at both of these pictures, you would not have noticed the following things:

1. In the TurboSquid model on the right, you will notice there is a V dip in the balloon basket in the front and in the back. The scene model on the left has no such dip. It would be actually harder to flatten out the dip by hand if you were to take the model on the right and scale/morph it in a 3D program, than it would to just make a new basket altogether.

2. There is no prominant lip around the basket on the right. The edge you see on it, may well even be textured on , it's hard to tell. The basket on the left however, has a very prominant lip/edge in blue built very obviously in 3D, and vertex shading has been added below it, which doesn't exist on the basket to the right.

3. The basket on the right has a white tank in it with two sandbags. The basket on the left, has four sandbags and no tank.

4. Look at the frame that attaches the basket to the balloon portion. It looks very similar in both models, but look closely. The frame on the right tapers drastically, so that the four posts are much closer together at the top than they are at the bottom. The frame on the left, however, has a considerable difference. It's taper from bottom to top, is much more subtle. You cannot simply take the frame in the model on the right, rescale it in a 3D program, and come up with the frame on the left. The left one had to be rebuilt from scratch.

5. Look up a little more until you see the vessel where the flame comes out. The image on the right shows you a vessel that is a tapered cube. The image on the left, show you a tapered, elongated rectangular shape.

It would have been quite easy for me to type something out in text and manipulate you into believing one was copied from the other. Maybe you thought I was popular and trustworthy and so you believed me, but you have to realize that allegations of this sort are serious and you absolutely have to make up your own informed opinion about such things. If you don't, then you are putting your own reputation on the line by supporting a faulty allegation.

All in all, remember my grandmother's words:

"If you can't say something nice ................ you better make darn sure you can prove it"

And I will add to this: If you can't say something nice about someone, then evaluate how important that thing is to you. How will it affect the person you're talking about? Is it all worth it in the end? Isn't it all around better to talk to the person directly if you have a problem with them? But then ... I've always been more long winded than my grandmother.

-Whystler