About Murgatroyd Zauberflote
Who Am I?
My name is Robyn Huffaker. My Second Life name is Murgatroyd Zauberflote (Murgy for short). I’m a woman in real life, but on SL I’m usually seen as a male avatar, mostly because I find it more fun to be a crabby old sailor than a pretty princess. (female crabby sailor you say? Ich. I don’t like that image at ALL.)
I am a student of Illustration, but I’m working my way into 3D modeling and game design. My traditional art background, however, has definitely affected the way I work in Second Life. I have a trained eye for certain elements of design and I’m a perfectionist, but not in the worst way.
How did you get into building in SL?
Building in Second Life is the ONLY reason I’m still here. Like many who venture into this game, my first experiences with it were wandering around aimlessly and wondering, “What’s the point?” I have no interest in owning a virtual, conventional house, I don’t like shoot-em-up games, I see NO point in watching my avatar dance at a club for hours, and I have no interest in gambling or virtual sex. (Back then, gambling was still legal on SL.)
I always wanted to create something in SL, but for about a month I was under the impression that you had to pay, even to build a prim. So all I did during that time was edit the freebies I had.
It wasn’t until I met up with the people at Strife’s Bar, a Final Fantasy Fan hangout, that I learned that I could build things without having much money on SL. So.. I started. My first build was the most horrific Cloud Strife avatar in the world. I went to a Bare Rose game-costume contest on the same day that I built it, and of course I completely lost.
About a month later, I returned to Bare Rose with a Squall avatar I had made, and won the contest without much trouble.
So you were always this good?
No. Nonono. Even though my Squall avatar won, this was mostly because there were very few game fans on SL who were very good at building, and even fewer who would bother with a Bare Rose contest to win L$500.
I’ve always been RATHER good, thanks to an artistic talent, combined with a good lot of computer geekness and a drive to experiment with EVERYTHING on my own.
However, I always keep my eyes out for ways to do things better. Sometimes improvement is slow, other times I inexplicably shoot up in quality over a very short amount of time.
How did you get good at making sculpties in Blender?
I’ve been using Blender off and on since I was 14. I’m not into piracy, and I’ve never had enough money to buy a professional 3D modeling program, so I insisted on using a program that was freeware. I’ve tried other freeware programs like Wings, but Wings can only do so much. The others I tried could do even less.
But as well as a previous knowledge of how to use Blender, I always will look for solutions to anything I feel is a problem.
If I can describe the problem in a few words, I’ll Google it. If there isn’t an answer, or if I can’t describe the problem well enough, I’ll work with things until I find a solution.
