Die-hard fans of my Flickr feed may remember a series of photos I posted there in February 2014 entitled “No Marigolds in the Promised Land,” an homage to Steely Dan’s post-apocalyptic, after-a-nuclear-war ballad “King of the World,” from their album Countdown to Ecstasy.
The ever-so-inventive Strawberry Singh has given us a new meme to post about in our Flickr feeds and other social media venues – Second Life Movie Poster Challenge 2016! in which readers from Second Life are challenged to concoct their own homages to the art of the Hollywood movie poster (a branch of art with long and deep roots).
The cutting room floor is increasingly being replaced by high-end computers, and movie posters are also increasingly also done on computers (expensive ones with expensive Pantone® software packages to get that all-important color registration just right before the posters go to press).
That doesn’t mean we can’t take a hard crack at faking it on lesser machines at home.
So, herewith, my entry in Berry’s contest:
I didn’t pay homage to an existing film, but decided to play to the intelligent folks who usually see this blog, can recognize a Geiger counter when they see it (in my right hand), and realize I’m doing a movie poster about a “after something dreadfully nuclear happened” movie.
Not that I’m anti-nuclear myself, but the nuclear industry’s safety record, like the chemical industry’s record, farming’s record and every other human activity’s safety record, isn’t what it could be. Hollywood’s had a seventy-year solid run scaring people with radiation, so I grabbed for that low-hanging fruit.
Only a few Second Life designers still sell what I wore for this poster:
- the Geiger Counter was part of Reasonable Desires’ “Boiling Point (Sexy Nerdy Scientist Costume” L$99,
- Valentine Hair Basics made the “Hair Blonds Lucy Loose Bun and Side Bang w. Resizer,” L$5 and
- REDGRAVE Skins & Fashion, made the “Kiara pale skin” bundle, L$690
I had to track one of the retired designers down to negotiate private rights to the outfit which contains the camouflage “flak vest”. If she ever goes back into business, I’ll happily promote her work, but I assume she pulled out of MP because she prefers to spend her Second Life doing other things.
The flight suit’s designer, likewise, no longer sells in SL Marketplace. Pity, it was a nice outfit with the imaginative attention to detail we see so often in Second Life, where the merchants are also doing it for a feeling of accomplishment, more than Lindens.
As always, I treasure your thoughts.
Ars longa, vita secundus... 