It’s been over 5 months that I’ve been quietly working nights & weekends to learn Blender and make proper mesh animated fairy wings in Second Life, and they are now complete!
Below is a quick peek at them in one of the colors (from the gender queer flag) from the Pride edition.
They aren’t ‘my’ flag colors - those would be the demi / ace, but this matched my Magnolia dress from Caverna Obscura too perfectly!
The Pride flag inspired pack of Iridescent Teasel 3.0 Bento Fairy Wings is now available, exclusively at the Androgyny Event at an introductory price through July 28!
25% of each sale of these is automatically donated to Second Pride & the It Gets Better non profit.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Calico%20Bay/165/58/2504
Here’s the product photo for ya
The essentials pack is also available there, as well as at my in world store and Marketplace. They cost 50L less in world, and current pricing of $350L is a lower introductory price.
Find them at the MP here:
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Teasel-30-Iridescent-Bento-Fairy-Wings/27294913
Here’s the vendor image for them:
These are 100% original mesh and design. You may have seen this design on the grid (and a whole lotta places online) from people who've copied them in various forms without my permission, but I created this design way back in 2008 for SL and RL.
I made wings, clothes and skins back then before I dipped out for years due to outdated hardware & life struggles.
In 2017 I made some wings that used the bento bones and animations I made in Blender, but the wings themselves were flexi prims because I was so attached to the way flexi prims move in SL. But now I’m calling them ‘franken-flexi’ because of the issues that crop up with them - they required specific body heights & didn’t work for all avatars, and the big square prims would have a lot of alpha glitch with other partially transparent items, which was way more noticeable when a whole square area is glitching.
This time, I worked my fairy butt off nights and weekends learning how to make a proper mesh in Blender and made my own wing rig that allowed me to animate the upper and lower wing panels separately. Something I wish was possible in real life!
I also had help from an old SL friend, Siyu Suen of Illusions to get me up to speed on Blender and other things I needed to know about SL along with a lot of encouragement. I don’t know if I could’ve done it without her!
Here’s video of the animation HUD that’s included with the wings so you have a lot of control over what they’re doing:
My designs have often been copied without permission in SL
Many of my designs have been copied in Second Life, some ripped right from my SL wings and others used my RL wing photos as their designs & textures. Some made their own mesh but still copied the design itself rather than come up with something on their own.
This Teasel design was copied vein for vein a few years ago & became a best seller, by Aenea Christensen, who admitted to copying them but was still terrible about it all, and has been lying about me and the situation. Now on the changed version they state that their previous edition was ‘removed due to a malicious DMCA report’.
That’s pretty laughable seeing as how they’d already admitted to copying mine, specifically the veins, which is literally the core of the design. I had left comments in response to the claim that it was ‘malicious’ as I was upset they were lying about the situation, and this below was their response.
These days I wouldn’t bother to interact at all with an infringer’s content this way, and give the facts if necessary in my own space instead such as my own blog. Maybe I shouldn’t have left a review at all, I can acknowledge that. But it’s still upsetting to think someone is out there lying about my business & possibly harming sales when they were the ones to do something illegal.
Their links to wings they claim are the same were literally nothing at all like my Teasel design, but I’m sure they tell people I copied a nature design to deflect. They may be generally similar to fly wings, but there’s no duplicate of these in nature.
I’m also SO tired of the argument “you can’t copyright fairy wings” as if I’m trying to claim ownership of every single fairy wing out there, which I’m absolutely not. It’s a strawman argument I get all the time when people have no other good excuse.
I know, there’s the whole ‘you shouldn’t care what other people say about you’ but when it comes to someone’s reputation as a creator selling their art, especially when they’re just returning to the market & having to compete with people selling copies, I’d say it does matter.
Brands who’ve copied multiple wing designs
My Colette wing design was even offered as full perm in SL by Les Sucreries De Fairy, with only the inner veins changed a bit, but the unique outer profile was fairly exact. That shape is specific. They were also selling wings that copied pretty exactly the outer shape of my Fauna wings, and exact copies of my Acorn wings, and some that copied a lot of the outer shape of my Nimue wings. I sold the Nimue wing in SL, they might still be in my in world shop, and the others are all newer wings whose photos are always watermarked by me whenever posted anywhere online. You can see them for yourself if you click on the design names.
So the fact that they were selling that many copies of my wings is not cool. I reached out after reporting a couple of them and asked her to remove the remaining ones & not to copy mine or anyone else’s wings again. Although she did remove the remaining wings I never got a reply or an explanation at all. The lack of an explanation or apology and the number of designs they copied, one of them full perm plus the size of their store and prevalence in many in world market events, warrant mentioning IMO. If I bought a stolen design I’d want to know myself.
Their latest wings look like they could be using someone’s photo as a texture but I don’t know that for sure, so take that with a grain of salt. If anyone sees more copies of additional designs please let me know. Below are screenshots of the copies except for the Nimue, which I didn’t grab screenshots of in time. They might still be in her Flickr somewhere, the texture inside was like a bright mozaic.
I've also recently discovered my Pansy, licensed Amy Brown Bubble Rider, Bee fairy, and Nimue wings sold by Cherry Evergarden of Enchanted Delights & had them all removed via DMCA. As you can see, she used my actual photos and in the case of the Nimue wings she even used my texture from the SL wings I sold. These screenshots will show today’s date in the metadata because I originally took a PDF screenshot of the listings as it captured the entire page that way, but that won’t work for posting to this blog. I never heard from them, they simply relisted the costumes with different wing designs.
I also found my photos of my Painted Small Lizette wings copied & used as a wing texture sold by Faunus, and they used my Fly fairy wings photo for wings in an event hunt.
This was really disappointing, as I had admired their work and they’re a pretty well known brand for fantasy costuming & accessories in SL for fairies. I took a chance & reached out to them on Facebook to ask for removal since the hunt item would be tough to report. They replied and apologized, and they did remove the items.
Then they asked if I’d let them continue selling them & give me a percentage of sales. I politely declined, and after they acknowledged that, they blocked me. I appreciate that they did remove the content and apologized, but why on earth did they block me? That soured things when we could have possibly carried on as professional acquaintances & I was even planning on buying some of their outfits had they left things at the apology without blocking.
But not now. That’s a deal breaker for me, being blocked after getting caught infringing is always a bad sign leaves no room for trust. I don’t think I said anything that warranted that. Receipts below.
All these infringements may cause confusion to the customer who will question which one is the original, especially if the infringer sweeps it under the rug without notifying their audience of their removal. There are only a couple instances where they more than made up for things & even paid me without me asking, so all is forgiven and I won’t ever need to mention them.
I’ve never received a penny from any of the rest, most never bother with an apology either.
I am a staunch supporter of copyright, and creating something brand new is the fun part for me, so you won't find purchased stock photos or art in my wing work. I also don't enjoy using designs straight from nature as much as I do creating a fantasy design, so wearing my wings means you won't have the same stock designs that many other creators offer.
I may dabble in drastically re-texturing & styling full perm mesh clothing for fairies to go with my wings while I'm still working on my mesh skills, since making fitted mesh clothes from scratch seems like some kind of torture I can't wrap my brain around yet, but I'd have to be sure they're reputable & will state who the mesh is from if that happens.
I hope to populate my store in the coming months with more new wings, to bring all the fairies back to SL.