One thing that I’ve always wanted done are portraits of mine (and Elio’s) various MUSH characters. I’ve toyed with the idea of commissioning art, but the kind of artists I tend to really like have a habit of being rather far out of my price range. I also have such specific ideas for my characters that I’ve sort of resigned myself to the fact that the only way I will get what I want is if I learn to paint really, really well myself.

That still holds true when it comes to ‘real’ art, but in the mean time (while I am trying to learn to paint, that is) I have found one way of at least what I think are pretty good representations of my characters: Second Life.

It sort of started with GRRM’s Second Life appearance. Elio already had an account, though he had only used it a few times to check things out, but for this event we spent a few Linden dollars to make his avatar look more presentable. And it was then that it hit me that this could be a really neat way of creating character portraits. As a result, I ended up creating an account, and now I’ve spent more than a few hours the last few months creating a custom avatar shape for each of my characters. In addition to that, we’ve purchased skin, hair and pretty clothes, and the first few portrait pictures are now up in the Art gallery.