Kat Johnston

Tag: love-heart

  • Sanu in SL: Hairbows and Shoes and Hearts, Oh My!

    Sanu in Second Life: Hearts are just adorably cute. They're even cuter when you pair them with a hairbow!

    The Albero Gatcha Festival has just launched its second half, and once again there are a bevy of awesome designers from Artilleri to fri.day stuffing prizes into gatchas for your enjoyment. These cute heart hairbows and heart flats are brand new fro Sanu and are currently only at the festival!

    Sanu Stuff: Pretty little hearts sit on pretty little flats.

    Some of the other items I have up you’ve already seen: there are the love letters and poems, as well as the chibi-heart pets. Since the hairbows and flats were specifically designed to match these other items, I just thought it right to set them all up together. Now you can be coordinated from top to toe!

    For those who aren’t sure what a gatcha (otherwise known as gacha, gachapon or gashapon) is, it really isn’t all that mystical. You remember those little machines that were around when you were a kid? The kind you stuck 20c (or a quarter, I am assuming, for the American among us) into, and turned the crank to receive a gumball or a toy or something? Well, a gacha is pretty much that, though the term is most often associated with the high-quality capsule toys of Japan, for which the term was originally coined.

    Gatchas have become rather popular on Second Life – and why wouldn’t they? They’re fun, largely affordable (although I have seen some that go as high as L$1000 a go! Eep!), and the prizes are great to collect. There’s an element of fun and surprise, not to mention that they make excellent gifts when you get more than one of the same kind.

    Anyhow, you can get these great items and many more at the Albero Gatcha Festival from June 28th though to August 14th. Go! Quick! Check it out!

  • Sanu in SL: Give someone your heart.

    Sanu in Second Life: Chibi-heart pets... give someone your heart in SL with these adorable little pets - they fly around you, blink, and you can name them too!

    It was so hard waiting off on releasing these until the weekend. They totally made me laugh with barely contained glee when they were all done and finished. Here’s why:

    It almost feels like something has been made whole – a cycle has somehow been completed and come back to the start again. Funny that I should say something so monumental about cute little hearts that people can gift to each other, but it is true!

    You see, as a child, I used to draw. I drew a lot. And one of the things that I drew a lot of, was love-heart people. They weren’t all that complicated really – their main shape was a heart, and they had eyes, a mouth and a pair of legs. They were sometimes pudgy, sometimes skinny; sometimes they were smiling and sometimes they wore expressions of anger. It all came down to who the heart was, what their personality was like and how they interacted with the other heart people. Occasionally they had arms, but not often… eyes, mouth and legs were the only necessary elements.

    Anyhow, when I completed this little chibi-heart pet, I thought, ‘Wow.’

    As a six year old kid, happily drawing on the back of scrap paper and inventing entire societies of love-heart people, I could never have imagined where that would lead. I always wanted to be an artist, but to even think that one day I might be creating a derivative of those first simple characters to sell in an online virtual user-led environment to people all over the world would just have been unfathomable. Kinda makes me wonder where things will be in another twenty year’s time… and whether I will still be creating love-heart characters to make myself smile.

    You can pick up your own chibi-heart pet in Second Life now at the mainstore! Go ahead… give someone a heart and brighten up their day.

    Oh, and please ignore any errors with the site right now – I’m just doing a bit of an update, and a few things have gone a little wonky. I promise I will get them sorted as soon as I can!

  • Sketch: Something is missing… poor bunny.

    Kat Johnston – It’s a bunny. A bunny with a patch where her heart used to be… I wonder what happened?

    Yet another sketch-book started… this time one that I picked up from Ikea. It currently contains – you guessed it – bunnies!

    Its going to be a short post today… I have Chasing Amy to go watch. Its just past the ‘What’s a nubian?’ part, which just happens to be my favourite part of the entire damn movie. I’ve watched Clerks and Mallrats in the past couple of days – time to watch the rest through.

    Ok… off I go!

  • Pip’s Quest: an epic tale of love, loss, and bunnies.

    Kat Johnston – Pip’s Quest: an epic tale of love, of loss, of bunnies and pretty little love-hearts!

    So, since I’ve started integrating the Second Life me and the Real Life me into one nice big mega-me… perhaps you’d like to see what I’ve been doing, huh? I know I sent you onto my Second Life flickr account yesterday, but hell, this deserves a post of its own.

    One of the fun things about Second Life is its ability to set up events such as these: hunts. With the opening of my new online store, I set up an interactive story which leads participants towards fun prizes, while following ‘Pip’s Quest’. Long story short, Pip is a bunny whose heart has been broken. It is up to the hunt participants to comb over an island I’ve created to find the pieces of his shattered heart and put it back together again. Each piece of the story gives a clue as to where the next piece is hidden. Fun, huh? Well, this is the signage which was done up for the event… a little rushed, but not tooo bad, either.

    The story itself is presented in 10 parts and does come with the obligatory happy ending. It was written on the go, so its not as polished as it could be… but its just a bit of fun, really – never meant to take the world by storm. Since most of my current readership here probably won’t ever get the chance to read it in the game, I’ll post the first part here just for you! Please enjoy part one of Pip’s Quest.

    “There is a tale among rabbits which is unlike any other, about a young buck by the name of Pip. Pip was a shy lad of tender years, still learning what it was to be a rabbit of his kind.

    Though fully grown, he was still unsure of himself; had never revealed to his childhood companion Chloe that he adored her in more than a friendly way. He thought Chloe was the most beautiful doe in the warren, and for that matter, the world.

    The moon rose above the water one evening, as he sat perched upon one of the over-sized toadstools that dotted the green of his home. His ear twitched, and drawing in a deep inwards breath, he bounded across to his secret love who was picking wildflowers nearby.

    ‘I love you!’ he cried, his little heart fluttering wildly in the hollow of his chest, ‘Chloe, I love you and I want you for my own!’

    Chloe raised her head, a smile curving her mouth, her laughter dancing upon the evening breeze. ‘Oh Pip, you are a joker. Thank you so much for making me smile. Here. A little blue wildflower for your coat.’

    Pip feigned a half-smile as he accepted his gift, pretending as best he could that his confession had been just as she said, a silly joke to make her laugh. But it had not been. His heart had been shattered.

    ‘I must go,’ thought Pip. ‘I must go, and gather them together again, else I shall never be complete. But this is no small task. Perhaps if I think on it, I will know best where to go next. I know this quest is urgent, but perhaps some meditation is in order before I continue on.’ He spied the zen gardens just a few hops away – Pip had started his quest.”

  • I swear, I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth.

    Kat Johnston Art – Look! Its sushi, and it has a little heart in it. Cute, huh?

    No really, I swear. I’m still alive, able, and back. I have been nigh on beaten by my husband (figuratively, not literally) to hurry up and update my blog. For someone saying ‘I’ll post a thing a day,’ I have left a rather large gap in my posting, haven’t I?

    Lets blame the holidays or something, shall we? Ok… no excuse. It just isn’t allowed. Truth is, I missed a couple of days because things got busy, and then afterwards, well… I let it slip. I’ve had my mind so much on something else that I’m doing, that this slid by the wayside for a couple of weeks. But… I’m going to make up for it!

    I’m not sure if this is a good move or not, but I’m going to clue you in on a little something. You know how I’ve posted a couple of images of things that I’ve made in Second Life? Well, I’ve started actually getting half-way serious about it. Since October last year, I’ve been toying around with setting up my own little Second Life business, and the past few weeks I have been absolutely absorbed in what I’ve been doing there, which has been setting up a proper main-store for my shop.

    What do I make? A little of everything, from suggestive food, to jewelry, to, well, bunnies! Just a little of anything that has come into my mind – I’ve been creating it and have been just enjoying myself far too much for words. So, with this post, and to make up for the fact that I’ve not posted here in far too long, I’m going to give you a link my flickr account for the Second Life me, where I post pictures for my store Sanu, among other things. I’ve done the internal debate as to whether I should combine my ‘real’ identity with my avatar’s, but the fact of the matter is… they are the same person, and I really don’t mind people knowing one, the other, or both. Besides… i

    So, without further ado, please let me present Sanura Sakai, the Second Life me. There’s heaps of pictures that I’ve submitted here, and this flickr group contains pictures submitted by both myself and others regarding Sanu products. You might also want to check out something like this, one of the recent blog posts where my items have been featured.

    Ohhhh, I know its geeky… but… well… maybe you might find it amusing! And at least it lets you know that I’ve been doing something creative, huh? That’s all for today folks… I’ll be back again tomorrow. This time, I promise it.