Queenbrat’s log

queenbrat

my awesome day

oh my gosh that's me again

    Today was a great day for me. My hubby went out-of-town so I can stay online and play tonight. Just kidding, that’s not why it was great. Today was great because it was one of those few modelling days where everything went right. I competed in the Le Charme Fashion contest and made it through to the semi-finals. I was second actually out of the 8 of us which is not bad. I was chosen for the week for the JCNY Showcase and I was picked to be a finalist at House Of Beningborough for the November Model Awards. I was also looking around JCNY and found a second picture of me on the wall! I was shocked. There are two pictures of me on the wall now at the store. I had to take a picture of course lol. Who knows how long it will be there.

    I had show practice today and it went well. No lag for me, which is unusual. I didn’t have much of a lag problem when I competed either. That’s quite unusual. With 8 girls competing and an audience I expected more, but wasn’t too bad. I have found that closing out everything on my pc except SL in these situations and reducing my draw distance to 64 has helped tremendously. Out of all the tips that I posted last week, those 2 things are what works the best for me. I always restart SL too,but that’s a given.

   As I said before days like today are rare so I will enjoy it while I can and be thankful and grateful for every opportunity. Oh, and don’t forget if you read this to please vote for me in the MRI competition. TY http://wp.me/pyh5c-uw

queenbrat

How to get the best lighting

   In real life, professional photographers and models know that things like whitefill reflectors are flattering for people, and take advantage of this in their photo shoots.

   Advances made in SL graphics allow residents to have their own ‘whitefill’ without having to use a face light.  Follow the steps below so that you can get optimized lighting conditions, too.  These tips are all over SL so not sure where they came from and can  have some slight variations. Once you enter these settings, play with it until you achieve the best look and are happy. If you are like me, you don’t like the ugly gray shadows. See your avatar the way it was meant to be seen!

1.  Open your Environmental Editor.
(Menu bar > World > Environment Settings > Environmental Editor)

2.  Go to Advanced Sky settings.
3.  Click the New button.  Type in Nicelight or whatever you want to call it and click OK to save your new lighting preset.

4.  In your new  preset, go to the Atmosphere tab.  Make the following changes on the sliders:

Blue Horizon:
R:  0.10
G:  0.32
B:  0.66
I:   0.66

Haze Horizon:  0.00

Blue Density:
R:  0.04
G:  0.04
B:  0.04
I:    0.04

Haze Density:  0.00

Density Multiplier:  0.19

Distance Multiplier:  27.0

Max Altitude:  1315

5.  Go to the Lighting tab.  Make the following changes on the sliders:

Sun/Moon Color:
R:  0.29
G:  0.28
B:  0.32
I:    0.32

Sun/Moon Position:  1.000

Ambient:
R:  1.00
G:  1.00
B:  1.00
I:    1.00

East Angle:  0.00

Sun Glow:
Focus:  0.17
Size:     1.75

Scene Gamma:  1.15

Star Brightness:  0.00
6.  Hit the Save button to save your new settings. That’s it! The light on your avatar should now appear even and smooth, making your avatar look its best!

queenbrat

MRI Challenge #3 and you go girl

    Well we got our assignment number 3. The last for the semi- finals. We have to get votes for our picture from last week. Our before/after Miss Refined picture on the MPI website. 100 votes for max points. So I’m not above shamelessly asking anyone who reads this to please vote for me. If you know anyone else who would vote, that’s great as well. 100 votes is a lot. The other task we can do is have a friend interview us and post it here. I will do that too and post it. Here is the link to vote for me.  http://wp.me/pyh5c-uw

  I’ve been looking at my schedule for the next few weeks. It is going to be crazy. I have an average of 3 shows that I am in a week. I did 3 last week too. I love it though. Runway is still my favorite thing to do. Auditioning for a show and being chosen is always a thrill. Not to be arrogant, but I get picked the majority of the time I audition. But, whether I am picked or not I always give it my best. I can’t do more than that. 

   I was given a notecard on what to do about lag in a show. One of the suggestions was not to complain about it. I told the guy who sent out the tips that, thats not going to happen. I have no problem at all with another model saying wow lags bad or watch the lag, work the lag or anything else. Obviously if someone was complaining constantly it might get annoying, but that’s never been the case that I have seen. As I told this guy, women might complain but we root each other on, cheer for each other. That’s a bonding experience. That’s being a team for women. We give each other pep talks. We don’t talk about it killing morale to mention an issue. I don’t think that talking lag is a contagion that spoils the whole show like this guy told me. We know lag is a part of shows. I don’t think people blame their performance problems on lag when it isn’t true. I know lag does crazy stuff sometimes, so I would never think someone was faking it. I think guys can learn from us girls. Don’t worry, we will cheer you on too.

queenbrat

marketing me

QueenBrat on the runway at JCNY

   Well here I am again on the JCNY runway right after our show today. It was laggy but went well. This beautiful gown was from our sponsor this week Miamai. This is the third week in a row I got a great gown. Gowns are my favorite things to wear. Probably because I can’t recall the last time in rl I wore a gown.  A customer told me once that I lived in the wrong place because I don’t wear gowns much. She was from NY and I am from the midwest. I agreed with her lol. 

    So I submitted my entry for MRI challenge 2. I am worried about it though because I have never in my life done anything marketing related and am not sure I was even in the ballpark. We had to create a 10 point marketing plan for our blog. This is all foreign to me. Two weeks ago I did my first blog and now I am trying to create a marketing plan for it. But the idea of basically marketing myself, marketing my blog which contains my thoughts, is not something I had ever thought about doing. It was an interesting challenge. I like challenges. Challenges are how we learn and grow. I won’t say it was fun though. Marketing is not fun to me. Which I hope isn’t insulting to business people. I don’t mean it to be insulting, it just isn’t for me. But I am sure there are things that interest me that other people would find uninteresting.   

    I was picked for the show where I wear the darker skins. I am excited. I love being in shows. I did 3 shows in 3 days this week. Fashion shows are my favorite modelling job. I was called a show hog by an agency owner once. I try to get into every show I can. I don’t see what is wrong with that. Does it upset other people? Maybe it does. I thought it was rude when he said that though. I would think most models try to do as much as they can. Agency owners should be happy that their models are out there and working and encouraging them.

queenbrat

unprofessional behavior

   If there is 1 thing I really dislike ( ok there are many things, since I’m easily annoyed), it is unprofessional behavior. I’m talking about agencies that plan things and then don’t show up. Today, I get ready to go to an audition that I spent a lot of time and money on I might add, only to find when I get there that no one is there.  The agency owner isn’t even online. One other model showed up to audition, which also shows an appalling lack of interest, but that was all. I waited 25 mins to see if the agency owner would come but it was a total waste of my time. I am just the kind of person that when I say I will do something, I do it. If I make a committment, I follow through to the best of my ability. I might not be so annoyed if this was the first time because rl happens and I understand that and rl comes first, but this is not the first time the agency owner failed to show up. Now I am intentionally not leaving clues to who this agency is because that will not help. But, I am quite annoyed with this.  

    I went to  rehearsal for a show today and it went well so I am happy about that. The show is on Friday and we have this rehearsal and a dress rehearsal tomorrow. I am always a tad bit nervous when I go to a new runway and learn a new walk that I will totally mess it up. I wonder if other SL models feel this way too. I have been in a lot of shows and learned fairly complicated walks many times so I am not sure why I still get nervous. Unless maybe it isn’t nerves as much as excited energy at the new challenge and opportunity I have. I do love new challenges.  I also take notes to make sure I don’t forget the walk, especially during weeks I am in more than 1 show. I am in 2 this week. I think being prepared is important so I review, in my head, the walk and have the notes to refer to if I need them.

queenbrat

It’s me again

   It amazes me sometimes how being a model in SL is like a full-time job but I don’t really get paid for it and in fact have to spend money to do it. lol Only on SL does that make sense. And even though it takes inordinate amounts of time I still love every minute of it. Maybe in the future I will ask myself why I spend so much time at this and want to do it so much but for now, I am going with it. I know there are people who in rl are models and also model on SL and I think that’s awesome. But in rl I am a 39-year-old woman. Those days have long passed me by. And thats ok. In rl modelling was never a dream or a goal, but in SL it is. I’m lucky that in rl, I have a husband who doesn’t understand why I want to do this but supports me anyway. I’m very lucky. He even fixes technical issues I have in SL when they crop up. I recommend that anyone thinking about modelling in SL seriously think about the time factor involved. There are days that I’m doing modeling jobs, rehearsals and preparing for jobs from morning until night. Then there are all the other things that need to be done such as shopping for things I need and working on pictures for contests. These are just some of the time-consuming activities. So make sure if you want to model that you you think about not only the cost involved, but the time requirements as well.

queenbrat

ooh I want that

Well today we found out that the 7 finalists of the  MRI competition get a professional video model portfolio. That would just be awesome to win. Imagine the surprise when asked for my portfolio if I had a video portfolio to give.  A very valuable prize. Although just being one of the finalists would be great in itself. When I think of what being refined means; great style,polished,professional, pleasant attitude, fashionable, I feel I have these traits. I do my best to always look put together and stylish. Like I said in previous posts I feel looking my best at all times is important. Finding photographers to do a normal portfolio of pictures has proven problematic for me because I’m very picky and don’t care for sloppy,bad pictures. To have the opportunity for a quality video portfolio would be the best thing ever for me. To me being refined means having quality work done that makes you look your best. This prize offers that.

The MRI competition is being done by the MPI agency. Check out the website for MPI. It is just full of great information.http://modelpages.net/