With a new quarter upon us, a new continued adventure is upon us. Following the Digital Storytelling course that I, amongst many others, have contributed towards the previous two quarters, bring the curious audience towards another recording of my adventure working within this virtual world. This time, I had to work more with applications that can create 3D objects to be placed within the world of Second Life—Second Life being one of those programs.
In Winter 2025, this is where I am at in my Digital Storytelling Journey.
If you want to check out the previous quarters where I recorded my progress for this project, you can check them out on this page:
The Hero’s Journey
As per the previous two quarters that this story has taken place, I use the Hero’s Journey as a way of documenting my process with the things that I create, the emotions I was feeling for this quarter, and to explain the things that were added and the story behind them. These things will be sporadically filled out as we continue the storytelling journey for this quarter. I will always make sure to try and mention anything that relates to an upcoming or previous step of the journey (for example, if I say anything in Step 4, and it was added in a later step, I will preface the section by saying something like, “I had mentioned this in Step [7]…”, and so on and so forth)!
Step 0: Onboarding – This welcoming step is where the hero enters the world via the pirate ship, learns about the journey, and suits up to head out.
I was already familiar with the idea and the process of creating a 3D object for our world—it was something that I had done for my first quarter stepping into the world of Second Life for the first time! This was documented for the Digital Storytelling Management Report and Projects, if you so desire to check it out:
This was the quarter where we would expand on those idea and the process, and create our own objects using programs that can create 3D objects. For this quarter, I have been switching back and forth between using the in-world creator for Second Life (using the Firestorm viewer), as well as Blender, which is a free application that many professionals use to create art and videos in 3D. I was excited to try and create my own objects this time—but better!
Step 1: Ordinary World – This step refers to the hero’s normal life at the start of the story, before the adventure begins.
Since this is my third quarter into the Digital Storytelling chapter of my college degree, I am already quite familiar with the process of this overarching adventure, and have an idea of what is to be expected from it. Just like every quarter that I have taken, I was excited to see what we would be getting up to, and what we would be doing on this chapter of our adventure.
Step 2: Call to Adventure – The hero is faced with something that makes them begin their adventure. This might be a problem or a challenge they needs to overcome.
Step 3: Refusal of the Call – The hero attempts to refuse the adventure because they are afraid.
Step 4: Meeting with the Mentor – The hero encounters someone who can give them advice and ready them for the journey ahead.
Step 5: Crossing the First Threshold – The hero leaves their ordinary world for the first time and crosses the threshold into adventure.
While I wouldn’t call working with 3D programs to be a different sort of threshold in terms of familiarity, the functions and layout of these programs are much different compared to the programs that I am familiar with (aka: photo editing apps and drawing applications). Especially with Blender, it takes a while to get used to the concept of editing in 3-dimensions, having to take into major consideration of the position of your object.
In Second Life, there is a simpler UI and approach when it comes to building objects in 3D. In order to access the ability to build, you would have to pull up the “Build” menu, where you can access things that you would need to build in a simple fashion. The program is build in with simple objects to build upon, as well as edit in more detail depending on how you want it to look in structure and in texture.
You can also import objects from other 3D programs into Second Life to edit in there; however, the files have to be specific, otherwise it won’t load into the world properly.
Step 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies – The hero learns the rules of their new world. During this time, they endure tests of strength of will, meets friends, and comes face to face with foes.
Most of the time, for me, learning a new program or structure proves to be something that I get excited about; there’s a certain air of curiosity and excitement that I feel when I get to try something new. I like to consider myself a quick-ish learner, as well as enthusiastic to learn when it comes to things that I am interested in.
This time…learning the medium was a feat..to exaggerate myself a little bit.
Since I have almost always worked in 2D environments, it took a minute for me to get used to the idea of using a third dimensional plane to work with my objects. I definitely struggled with making sure that I could get everything to work properly as I wanted it to. In Blender, there are features within it that made it overwhelming to work in the program simply because I wasn’t sure of what I was going to use, and I wasn’t sure I would have time to learn how to use them. When I say that there are a lot of features…
There are a lot.
And that is just on the surface. Diving into each section, there seem to be a million other things that you can do to further enhance the object that you are making. I won’t go into the intricacies of Blender, since there would be much to talk about if I just stuck to discussing it—I still don’t know what everything does, anyway, so I would be repeating myself and giving a bullet-point explanation of what I do know.
Step 7: Approach – Setbacks occur, sometimes causing the hero to try a new approach or adopt new ideas.
When I struggle to learn something new, or curious about a specific thing I want to make, or am watching videos relating to things that I am interested in, I tend to pick up on a few new tricks to utilize for future projects. For this quarter, I am spending my time watching videos so that I learn specific things that I want to add to my creations and such.
Step 8: Ordeal – The hero experiences a major hurdle or obstacle, such as a life or death crisis.
Step 9: Reward – After surviving death, the hero earns their reward or accomplishes their goal.
Step 10: The Road Back – The hero begins their journey back to their ordinary life.
Step 11: Resurrection Hero – The hero faces a final test where everything is at stake and they must use everything they has learned.
Step 12: Return with Elixir – The hero brings their knowledge or the “elixir” back to the ordinary world, where they apply it to help all who remain there.
Achievement Award
I, so far, have only created one previs moodboard for an achievement award object for our world. I thought it would be a neat idea for people to be given flowers that were made out of gears and metal to fit in with the idea of 1) flowers gifted after an event, or as a gift for a special occasion; and 2) to fit within our Neo Pirate Steampunk theme within our world in Second Life. At this point of writing this section (February 20, 2025), I haven’t created the actual object just yet.
(February 28, 2025) I have since created the object for the gear bouquet for this project; however, it did not come out as I though that it would. I want to try and revisit the object soon.
The colors are not part of this specific render, as they have been applied separately within Second Life using UV mesh models.
Since getting into Dungeons and Dragons—and finally playing my first official campaign!—I’ve been wanting to try and incorporate things from the tabletop roleplaying game into my creative works. The dice are clearly not the most perfect dice in the world (the d10 dice can definitely use some work), but I am happy with how they turned out nonetheless! I’m going to go back and fix them, as well as, hopefully, have some color and textures for the whole set.