Kat Johnston

Tag: strawberry

  • Sanu in SL and Photography: Tastes of Summer.

    Kat Johnston Photography: A photograph of plump, juicy strawberries, with one dipped in home-made white chocolate ganache.

    Let’s start with a nice little photo I took last night! I really need to get a better camera, better lighting and some reflectors if I plan on doing this all that often – but I still think they turned out pretty great. For a post-baking snack I had some plump, juicy strawberries dipped in some left-over white chocolate ganache which I had made up to top some very tasty cupcakes.

    If you’d like a recipe for the ganache, I’ve posted one with this picture on flickr. Ganache is really rather simple to make, is very versatile and tends to impress, too! You can also find the rest of the strawberry pictures there in the set ‘sweet treats’!

    Sanu in Second Life: A peapod lounge, bringing together the awesomeness that is peas and lounging!

    And here’s the Sanu update for today. There’s actually three colours of the peapod lounges available – all nice, fresh shades of green. This lounge has been in the works for a little while, actually – they were built soon after the yummy peapods were made. I just had to wait a little while to get the perfect system for adding the animations.

    Rather than having to rely on pose-balls, these lounges use low-lag scripts which have a menu, allowing anyone who sits on it to adjust their position perfectly using movements in all directions and rotation where needed. That means that it can fit almost any avatar every time! Certainly an improvement on needing to have the owner around to adjust it for you if needed, don’t you think?

  • Sanu in SL: Time for a skin (and a chat about resources).

    Kat Johnston/Sanu in SL: A gorgeous pink skin made with a hint of strawberry inspiration for Second Life.

    So, for today’s image, I’ve decided that I’m going to put up another Second Life item. I know it seems as if I am doing that a lot lately, but I swear it isn’t just because my scanner had an unfortunate run-in with some unidentified liquid and isn’t scanning correctly… it is also just because I think that seeing Second Life from an outsider sort of perspective is fun.

    Today’s item is a skin I put together – one inspired, in part, by delicious strawberries. Mmm, strawberries… *drools*

    Skins are an incredible and popular item in Second Life, as you can well expect. As in real life, they form the whole basis for snap-decisions and first impressions about someone when you meet them in person. They range from the photo-realistic to the hand-drawn and detailed, from the avant-garde to the downright quirky.

    Now onto the interesting side of things.

    This skin that I’ve made here would probably not have been created if it were not for another content creator on the grid. A content creator who made an absolutely massive impact to Second Life by giving people a number of open-source tools with which to learn, grow and experiment creatively without the added barrier of starting from scratch in skin and avatar mesh texture production. Eloh Eliot released skins she had created full-perm in-world, with detailed Photoshop source files also available for download back in 2008. Since then, an incredible number of people have used those resources to springboard into content creation, from casual creativity to professional, from modding for personal use to setting up businesses to send the final results.

    So I guess this is what I’m getting at: creativity begets more creativity.

    In a creative economy, knowledge and creativity are not necessarily (or even often) diminished by sharing. There was some measure of outcry when Eloh released her skins and templates for anyone to modify and redistribute. They allowed even the most unskilled to lend their hand to giving skin-making a go. The sky inevitably did not fall, talented artists and designers were still able to design, market and sell their own lines successfully, and the ability for more people to access information and resources surrounding a particular skill-set did not cause the demise of the ‘high priced’ skin industry as we know it. Not only has it opened up the doors to anyone to try skin-making, but it has also given others the opportunity to step up their game and improve their own processes. Competition isn’t always a bad thing!

    I’ve found watching the evolution of the Second Life skin industry over the past couple of years to be absolutely fascinating. To me, the way people in Second Life have reacted to the release of those skins has mirrored the reactions I see around me to the creative commons movement – some have thought the sky was falling, and still do… others did, but have slowly changed their opinions… and still others have absolutely welcomed the influx of opportunities provided to both the casual and professional creatives to be inspired by and build upon what others have created. I, for one, am excited by it.

    So yes, that is my post for today – long though it may be. I hope I haven’t bored you to death!

  • My first real sketchbook… done.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: This is one of the pictures from my first fully-completed sketchbook… I’m thrilled.

    This morning I did the final few sketches in what is my first real completed cover to cover (though I do only draw on one side of the paper) sketchbook. Yes – good, bad, inbetween, from rough to refined, it goes from cover to cover with sketches by me and I haven’t torn out one single page. How’s that for progress?

    Its funny, you know… I can’t wait to get into the next one. I have another little sketchbook the same size and make as the first, but with green pages… and I have a green pen… it hasn’t had one thing drawn in it yet and I am itching to go. While I have started in other small sketchbooks like the first, I haven’t yet completed them. One has a focus – I have to come back to it. Another I started to draw in, but it hasn’t taken off yet. This little green one though, it hasn’t been touched, and is therefore just full of ready-to-go potential.

    I’m really happy with the little sketchbook… I have to say, some of the pages are just pure ‘bleh’ but going through it as a whole, it has something special. Perhaps it is just because it reflects the meandering trail of my thoughts – I actually find my flittering thought patterns to be interesting to map throughout it. Cherries here, berries there… a rabbit over here, then another further along… one thing fascinates me, then as quick as its come I am onto something else… though believe me when I say that when one thing is dropped away, another is taken up just as quickly and the first never strays all that far.

    When I get a chance, I am going to go through and scan it for you all, and post it up on Flickr. I really have to through and put up all the images that I have put on this blog there as well, scan in some other things, put up photos of dandelions I promised ages back… I will get around to it, I promise.

    In the meantime, enjoy this one extra page from the little sketchbook… I’m sure there will be many yet to follow.

  • Fruity.

    Kat Johnston - 'Stalking me' actually has nothing to do with this picture...

    The line up the top of this one actually has nothing to do with this actual little sketch… it was two incredibly different thoughts on the same page. These two came about because I saw an interesting crease in one of the business shirts hanging to dry – this was drawn on a corner of my page soon after. Just for fun, I’ve included the other picture after the cut.

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