My Baby Blue Whale: I’m in love

This is what I love about virtual worlds like Second Life and Kitely. I can’t think of an easier way to put myself in a character’s head when it comes to experiences I’ve never personally had.Now while it’s true that the virtual experience isn’t quite the same as actually standing on an ice floe getting sprayed by a baby whale I’m trying to teach to swim, it has that quality of wonder. It gets me close enough that my imagination can take me the rest of the way, and when I imagine scenes, the picture in my head doesn’t come close depicting what this animation did.

Moving beyond putting an avatar on an ice floe and being able to interact with this scene, I spent several hours learning how to create the whale model and how to animate it. The sense of accomplishment that came with launching this little guy into the water and watching as it splashed and spouted the first time was something akin to giving birth. This was not easy and at a couple of points I thought I should just give it up, but there he is. And despite his imperfections, he’s beautiful to me.

If I can get this winter world to load I’ll put him on Kitely so you can drop in and play with him yourself, take a copy if you have a world to put him in. I’ll make a list of my public Kitely worlds and post him there, so check back in a few days. For those who don’t have bandwidth to watch the video, some pics:

***This is an animated baby blue whale I made and animated following the instructions from Ferd Frederix’s Blue Whale Project @ http://metaverse.mitsi.com/Secondlife/Code/fish/sculpting-a-fish.htm. Mine is not a perfectly smooth animation, nor is it a perfect replica of a whale, but from the first spout and splash I was in love with this little critter.

Thanks to: Ferd Frederix for the wonderful tutorial, Linda Kellie for her beautiful winter oar, Sim-on-a-Stick, Opensim, Freesound for (http://www.freesound.org/people/schluppipuppie/sounds/7999/) and Freeplaymusic.com for Affair of the Heart