Ballet Pixelle
The Making of Olmannen - continued
Because of the lack of a costume designer. I spent a significant amount of time finding off-the-rack costumes and AVs that would fufill the artistic vision and then spent some time negotiating to make them "transfer ok". In this way, costumes can go out to the dancers and then are transferred back into the Ballet Pixelle costume department.
Once the story began to fall in place, I was able to animate most of my visions. What a wonderful release to be able to choreograph with dancers who have grand jete's that are full splits in the air, perfect "turn-out" and timely forever turns! This allowed me to really produce many of the effects I wanted. Of course, these are real dancers, so there was always the "I thought said you wanted me to come downstage?" kind of discussions. These dancers are not scripted! Rehearsals did take place in almost exactly the same way a First Life rehearsal would -- except for the "I need you to hover up a bit" kind of directions.
Technically, I used Avimator to create the animations. I began with some ballet animations and created quite a number over the course of the choreography. All in all, there are approximately 75 original animations in "Olmannen". The main difference between dance animations at clubs in Second Life and these ballet animations is that 90% of the ballet animations do not loop. The animations were put into gestures, which are I made akin to musical phrases in ballet. That way the choreographer and dancers and the composer were able to work in a normal First Life style. The gestures also allowed very precise timing between animations (in tenth of seconds but, alas, not counting lag) and compound animations.
That is, in a gesture if you do not add a "wait" step the two animations happen at the same time. The dancers mapped the gestures to function keys or could use "/gesture_name" to activate the phrase. It was up to the dancers to rehearse and time the execution of each gesture in order. There were two other serious logistic set-backs.
Olmannen Overview
Seraphette and Namon are happy and together as lovers, bound together by idealized love. However, they become threatened by evil. In order to save Seraphette from this evil, Namon battles the Devangs and agrees to join them. Seraphette eventually dies a broken-hearted, old woman.
Seraphette, dispirited and despairing, has been reincarnated as a dancer who performs with tarts in the public alley. Namon has waited for Seraphette's soul to be reincarnated and he returns to find her again. However, Seraphette has only a vague memory of him and Namon has to fight to remind her of their love. Finally, he reveals himself to her, and she falls in love with him again.
Their true love allows Namon to be released from evil, and Seraphette to return from her despairing life. Sprites herald their return. They reunite forever in the mystical garden and ascend into "Olmannen", happy in thier realized and true love for each other.