Caoimhe Lionheart is an avid blogger, well known among the blogger,
fashion and modelling community in Second Life. She studied from O
Glam Advanced Modelling, Miss
Virtual World Academy, Passions Fashion Academy. She has
worked at the Vanity Hair and the The
Fashion Teller. She is a model at BLVD Model Management and Maneira.
She is an assistant manager at *SoliDea FoliEs* from SaliMar.
She is also the Blogger manager for *LpD*.
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart
Caoimhe Lionheart, through this podium I would like to welcome you to 4m my Eyes! and
thank you for giving us the opportunity to know you more.
Debby Sharma: Tell us something about Lil Cao. How much is she similar
to the real life Cao?
Caomihe Lionheart: My Lil Cao is very similar to the real life me, I am
her, she is me and we are we. We are both solitary in nature, bookish and a
little gawkish, we have a love of art, writing and creativity. Throw in to the
mix a little bit of fashion and our color palate is almost complete.
Debby Sharma: Who are your inspirations in styling and what inspires
you?
Caomihe Lionheart: I un-repentantly don’t really have any
particular “who” whom inspires me, a lot of designers seem to mimic one another
these days. (please come back Alexander McQueen) But me and Cao love colors you
can taste and smell, the orange of a citrusy orange, buttery yellow, chocolate
brown, the passion of a cinnamon red, the downy soft airy-ness of blue. We
adore playful shapes in virtual clothes, a skirt that looks like a drop of
fondant on a cake, or shirts made of cubes. Those types of outlandish outfits
that cause you to hold your breath and ponder their unique brilliance in a
mundane world and make you wonder how you ever lived without them before!
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart
Debby Sharma: With what mind set do you start writing? Do you picture
the theme before hand or does it just flows by?
Caomihe Lionheart: It depends, often I draw from experience those
around me or I am having at a particular moment in time. Though, when I am
stuck for ideas, I sometimes play “dictionary.” Do you ever play? Visualize
taking this really huge dictionary of all the words in the world. Close your
eyes, lovingly stroke the page, where your finger stops is the word you blog
that day. I find it mad about of fun. Here is a time I played this way.
And from one or two words, my madness of being in love with words flows from my
heart to “paper.”
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart
Debby Sharma: Your photographs are simple and yet speak louder than
words. Would you like to share your windlight settings with us or may be a
short tutorial?
Caomihe Lionheart: I am a poor excuse for a photographer, in all
honesty. I seldom do more than crop and upload, so I’ve not really any sorts of
photoshop skills to linger on. My biggest “grief” in Second Life is it just
seems to consume so much time. I typically use white backgrounds for two
reasons. First is the selfishness of time. I find I prefer to wander outdoors
in the real world far more than I want to wander the virtual planet, so staying
on my platform in the heavens is perhaps my wisest practice for my sanity. The
second is because I truly don’t want to be the subject of the photograph. SL
clothes are such works of art in themselves; it’s like wearing a Picasso! You
put on an item that some other artist has created and you get to showcase its
beauty. I think of my pics as more pictures of statuary more than pictures of a
retired Second Life Model wearing clothes. As to windlights, I love the
Strawberry Singh ones, and I use so many of the windlights that are available
in the Ctrl-Alt-Studio viewer. My one modification is I always adjust the “time
of day” setting and the sun’s angle until I find the sun hits just right or the
shadows create their own interest.
Debby Sharma: Do you use Lumi Pro? What are your thoughts on this add on
device?
Caomihe Lionheart: I do happen to use the Lumi-pro though I am
probably not a great advocate for it. I use it every single time to adjust the
eyes, but that hardly makes the price practical and I think there are much
cheaper products available for holding the eyes. It is a phenomenal product for
shots that require studio lighting. I love a night windlight with the Lumipro
lamps, so if a user is going to be a study of virtual world photography, I
would highly recommend it, if a person is just taking photos about the world, I
think using windlights is certainly enough, and using the Ctrl-Alt-Studio
viewer’s Camera tools leads to professional quality prints, with practice, and
it’s free.
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart
Debby Sharma: We see a little cow in the bottom of your pictures often.
What's the story?
Caomihe Lionheart: It’s no secret my name is a bit of a booger to
say. Add the mix to people who speak other languages and I imagine it can be a
nightmare. Although my name is Caoimhe (kee-vah), which is gaelic for “gentle,
beautiful, precious.” Early on, to make it easier to type in chat, someone
shortened my name to Cao (cho). But, well, I’m pretty sure quite a few would
write Cao and in their head they heard Cow. For a fashion model, I’ve always
been short, probably only 6’5” or so and in a world of 7’plus models I’m a
scrawny little thing. So somewhere along the way I just became known as the Lil
Cao (cow).
Debby Sharma: In an interview with SL
Enquirer, you said, you like outfits with "3 dimensional with
unusual shapes, quirky-ness or outlandishly different". Most people have a
little difficulty styling them, how is it a cup of tea for you?
Caomihe Lionheart: I’m not sure I would say they are ALL a “cup of
Tea” but for the most part I love to dabble in the different. The thing about
creating a look from a 3 dimensional outfit is to recall that less is always
more and the only focal point should be the outfit itself. These
outfits seldom act as “building blocks” to a style; they usually are the
only block. Most of the time if you take a quirky outfit and add wild hair and
jewelry; you tend to look like a hot mess when you are done. But if you take
the same outfit and wear minimal hair and makeup, and no jewelry, you find
you’ve created the eye-catching style.
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart
Debby Sharma: Do you make it a point to shop at the fairs in Second
Life?
Caomihe Lionheart: I actually don’t, by the time I can get into
these lag-fests most items have been seen by half the world. If something is
really cool though, I’ve often waited until near the end of the event,
purchased the item, tucked it into inventory in a “must try” folder and bring
it back out about a year later. In reality, I try to make a point to not shop
a’tall but that makes for a boring blogger. For the most part, I am probably a
blog shopper. I look at others blogs and if I see an outfit, or more likely a
part of an outfit, I write the name down and where it’s from and go
specifically for the one item to try with something else. For some reason, my
mind doesn’t see an entire look but instantly breaks it apart into its
segments. Sadly though, with the advent of mesh, this is becoming harder and
harder to do because a lot of outfits no longer have “attachments” but are sold
in one un-editable piece.
Debby Sharma: Do you visit other virtual worlds? If so, which are they
and what do you do there?
Caomihe Lionheart: A friend once asked me to, but no I never have.
I truly don’t wander about in any virtual world for very long but Second Life
has all of the world I need.
Debby Sharma: If you were given 5 minutes to think of a new styling
outfit, what would you wear? Could you share a picture too.
Caomihe Lionheart: It generally takes me about five minutes to
style any picture for my blog, if, I have them items in my inventory. Which
takes me back to my list and pieces and parts from other blogs; I usually have
all the elements to a style in my head (or on the paper) before I begin to
style. Although this isn’t one of my best pictures, it definitely shows what I
mean. Before I logged in Second Life, I saw these bracelets and the chest piece
(.aisling.) from the "We love Roleplay" event, on another bloggers blog. It struck a chord in me because I remembered seeing the Dragon Pauldrons from i.e., QED on another friends blog a few weeks earlier. Since everyone was blogging the "We love Roleplay" in the obvious way (as roleplay) I decided to blog it as a Couture. But for some of the more detailed styles I've done, like for Miss Virtual World or the fantasy pictures Skip Staheli creates for me, it can often take a week or two of steady styling to create because because there is a lot of studying, prim editing and shopping to find the perfect elements.
Photograph Credits: Caoimhe Lionheart ~ 5
Minute Styling
Debby Sharma: Which fantasy character would you like to associate with?
If you had to define yourself in 3 words, what would they be?
Caomihe Lionheart: I’m not sure I understand the first question,
but I would aspire to be like Katniss Everdeen. For the second;
bookish, adroit, and OK. Can I use I am OK?
Twitter: @Caoimhe_l
ROBLOX is driven by an ever growing player base of over 300,000 creators who provide an infinite variety of highly immersive experiences.
ReplyDeleteThese experiences range from 3D games and contests, to interactive adventures where friends can take on new identities discovering what it would be like to be a dinosaur, a miner in a quarry or an astronaut on a space exploration.