Explainists

i thot Willy WOnka said that. LOL

Probably told by people insecure in their own creations... hoping to discourage a new competitor too. Ignore them.

IMHO: Talent just let's some people produce results with less practice.

Make a mess. Clean it up and make another. Experiment.

Some people take longer than others to find their voice or preferred medium of expression.

You may have a talent for something you haven't discovered yet, keep trying until you find it.

Then you should quit, and go work at McDonalds, because if that stops you, than you probably don't have the desire to succeed at it anyway.

When you fall and it gets too much, press "f" on your keyboard and go into fly mode. Then you can use short taps on the "page down" key to geeeeently lower your virtual self to the ground.

(If it is an area in which flying is not enabled - go into fly mode before you tp in, you'll stay aloft.)

"An artist must have contempt for his materials." - Man Ray

Don't ever let that keep you from picking up a brush and painting. Anyone who tells you that you shouldn't pick up a brush and paint because you have no talent deserves a good stabbing.

If someone tells me I shouldn't do something that I want to do because I won't be able to do it to their satisfaction I'd tell them to sod off.

There is real potential to do actual commerce through Second Life. There is no sane investment in that aspect, however, because there is far too much risk involved for any real investment. That is part of the unrealized potential of Second Life.

I think what people miss when reading about a success story like Anshe Chung was the amount of incredible luck involved. This incredibe luck comes in the form of all the things that could have gone wrong but didn't. (And I'm not disregarding her vision and hard work- but to have her success required not only vision and hard work, but luck and timing that probably is no longer available for anyone who wants to emulate her.)

Also, not readily apparent in the press surrounding Second Life is that the companies that do the advertising campaigns, for example, aren't companties that deal exclusively in Second Life. As I have recently read, the stable companies also do marketing and graphics work for other non-Second Life projects. They aren't getting rich off Second Life (and, despite how good a million-dollar contract sounds, probably not getting rich period), but bringing an established business into Second Life. If Second Life is just one piece of your business, you are better able to weather all the risk and instability that presently plagues the Second Life economy.

thanks. i'll try it.

Why, pray tell, would you or anyone else care in the slightest what other's have to say about your skills at painting when you're painting for fun?

If I had a new friend in SL I'd take them to every goshwow amazing build in SL I could think of. We'd be busy for a long time!

A loooong time, because there is so much good stuff that you can't find in Search. The resident sites are a better place to look to find it. There have also been threads in here about where the good builds and hangouts are.

Another way to get started is to find a clique and get immersed in it. I had to over do it by having two: bi group and Gorean roleplay. But whatever your interest is, odds are good there's a group devoted to it here in SL. If there isn't, anyone can start a group. I did that with bi group and now there's over a thousand of us!

At one extreme are people using SL for roleplay or combat gaming; at the other extreme there are real colleges and businesses using SL to teach; in between there are real religious groups, fan clubs, etc.

The best part of SL for me (and the reason I turn off voice most of the time) is the way everyone from all over the world is on one equal level. I have had friends from all over the planet. It's amazing and I would not give that up for anything.

Seems to me you're looking but just not seeing TC.

What I was sort of trying to say is:

The vast majority of new users who I meet, I also try to _encourage_ to try to make things. In fact I've been running an event for nearly two years now (!) where they can show off the things they made compared to other beginners and earn L$. But very few of them take up the suggestion, because all of them say, "No, I can't do that", or "No, it's too hard."

The truth is that in some simple _culture_ is telling most people they can't be creative. We have parents pushing their children into as many afterschool classes as they can in the hope they'll find something they're talented at. But the side effect of that is that by the time those children grow up they have the perception that they've already tried those things and failed.

That's started to happen on SL too, as the professionals have arrived, and the efficiency problem comes up too. There are artistic things I've wanted to make but have never gotten to because they'd be a huge amount of work for me, I can afford the L$ to buy something that's adequate as a substitute, and I couldn't produce anything of comparable quality just because of lack of talent. It means SL becomes full of adequate substitutes, but honestly what life isn't?

After posting my reply I looked at your profile Yumi and had a hard time reconsiling what you said and your stat of 3000+ posts. It all makes sense now. Thanks for you clarification. You don't need any encouragement, you are encouraging.

Well, I try to encourage, but that doesn't mean I don't need some encouragement myself from time to time. And unfortunately, I have had a few people tell me "it's talent, if you can't do it, you never will" when I ask for help building things. But I've had some people be really helpful too

I found out through second life that I am just as useless a business person here as in rl.

The fact that all that stuff IS there is what makes SL what it is. It's like you're saying "football wouldn't be exciting if you take away the players and the pigskin".

For me, building and scripting, as well as trying to conduct a profitable business (albeit just slightly profitable) is the challenge. All too often people in SL who don't build and script stand around and say "I'm bored". I'm not saying everyone should build and script, as, they have no interest in learning it, but it seems to me the same people in SL are the same people in RL who dont do SOMETHING to challenge themselves, hence, they're bored.

It falls upon YOU to find something "to do" in RL as well as SL. Do you like music? If so, learn how to play an instrument instead of just listening to it. I always thought knowing how to play guitar would be "cool" and impressing friends is where the enjoyment would come from, but, I learned that the process of learning is where the true enjoyment is.

SL is not a passive form of entertainment like television is, you need to find and develop something to keep yourself interested. Otherwise, you're gonna be bored with "nothing to do". If you seek passive entertainment, watch TV.

If you just keep picking up the paintbrushes, eventually you will learn from your mistakes and will become better at it.

It just takes some people more tubes of paint than others, and some people don't think it's worth the time to learn how to do something if you're not naturally suited for it.

I dedicated 4 years of my life to the pursuit of a career as a choir teacher. 3 years in high school where I took triple choir periods and private lessons, hours every night locked in with a piano trying to keep up... a year in college with 2 private instructors and a 16 hour course schedule. I knew going in I had a mediocre voice. My parents told me to study computers instead. Sure enough, after a year of college- I got booted out for a voice that simply refused to conform to the standards necessary in a vocal student. I'd love to tell you I stuck it in their eye and I'm a choir teacher not, but I'm not. But I sing lullabies to my niece and teach her the piano and I sing carols at Christmas and I don't *regret* that I learned to make the best of my voice- even if it wasn't good enough to be professional. Those were some of the best years of my life, I was doing something I loved with all my heart. I still haven't found anything that I enjoy quite as well as singing.

I also oil paint. It's a disaster of a mess and I've only made 4 canvases in years of attempts that I'm willing to show to other people. I rode a bike in a race once. I lost. I play the piano about as well as a 6 year old, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. I bake cookies and they're usually half burned and half raw, but my husband seems to think they're the best cookies in the world, and that's good enough for me.

If I were limited to doing only what I'm great at, the only thing I can think of that I'd wind up doing is cooking soup. I make a fantastic homemade beef soup and my chicken soup is to die for.

Whats the worst that can happen if you create something to sell?

No one buys it. Trust me, you won't be alone! Half the people that come into my shop don't even bother taking the freebie =P So what! It's not the end of the world. As long as you had fun in the process.... the results don't matter.

Actually, there is. Yes I agree many are here trying to make money, but there is a great social aspect as w ell.

I have no idea what point you were trying to make in this post.

Secondlife is more than just a place to spend your money, if you think that, you should have titled the post 'My Oppinion'

I can relate to that, Yumi. I got lucky in SL by being the first person to start making and selling full body skins. I didn't do it because I wanted to make money. I did it becuase I wanted to learn how to be a better texture artist, and I had a lot of fun figuring out what was possible here. My skins were very profitable due as much to lucky timing as anything else. Over time a lot of other extremely talented people came along who worked harder, marketed better, were more in touch with fashion, or any number of other factors, and I watched my sales decline by about 75%.

For a while I tried to compete. I stopped creating because it was fun and started doing it because I felt I had to protect my place in the market and because I felt obligated. What was joyful became drudgerous and I started to lose motivation and the fun I had when I was driven solely by my own creative exploration. Now I don't worry about trying to compete anymore. I still do okay, but I don't decide what to create based on what I think will sell well. I create things because I want to challenge myself, or I want to figure out how to do something, or I take very long breaks from creating anything at all if I don't feel inspired, without feeling guilty about it or worrying about profit or marketshare. I'm back to treating SL like a sandbox and I'm happier for it.

I think maybe the way the media always focuses on the competitive entrepreneurial money-making aspects of SL instead of the fun creative sandbox nature of it predisposes people to think that creating to compete is the goal here, and if they don't want to or can't compete then there's no point. That's a shame. Creating should be for the joy of it, and people don't need to be a Rembrandt to experience it. Having tier covered and making profit can be a very nice side effect, but when it becomes the driving force and the raison d'etre, it can really suck the joy right out of it. Capella's wonderful post really says it all.

Basically SL could be reduced to avatars that are simple coloured spheres moving across a grey, featureless graph-paper like landscape. In fact I believe the first experiments in what became Second Life started just like that.

But that would be boring. SL is a dynamic work of art created by its members. LL provides the canvas, brushes and paints and we do the rest. The work of art can be used for making money or playing war games or whatever.

I hope my reply doesnt get shunned BUT my SL partner said this to me the other night before he went to Paris in Real Life.
This is a great experiment. In the first time in human in history we can actually communicate in near-instantaneous "immediacy". On Thursday I had myself (in a country of distance from ...) a person in London, Australia, San Salvador and California all talking together and LOOKING at each other (even if we are "cartoons" - I take some offence at that description) A chance to share ideas that even Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton would be dumbfounded to behold.
Please let's make this place "work".

I agree completely with this.

But there's a catch! Second Life isn't alone as a piece of creative software. At first glance, it's easy to say that the big advantage of Second Life is that you can create your own 3D objects and worlds to explore... but actually, that isn't true. Because there are already tools that let you do that. Some of them are expensive, true, but some of them are free. And you don't have to pay more, per month, based on the size of what you wanted to make.

The big difference with Second Life is that it's _social_. You can make a world that's not just for you, but for others as well. But that brings a problem with it. Because if other people can interact with your world and your things, they can judge them too. Whether by actually making comments - or by just absenting themselves.

So for folks who're already established in Second Life, and especially who are already making tier or land, going back to sandbox roots can be fun. But for new folks coming in, who're considering whether to buy their first land or not (and having to pay a lot more for it than older users did), it's a bit more of a mixture. This is why I like doing show and tell (I'd love to say it's the reason why I started, but, um, it isn't) - because it provides that social venue. But even that isn't enough for some people, and I don't know what to do about that..