As readers of this blog will know, I don’t usually write about new releases from designers.
But occasionally, something much-longed for comes from a designer, and one definitely wants to shout about it.
Kayle Matzerath’s Dream Scenes – those wonderful interchangeable skyboxes – are always stunning in creation and detail, but sio much work goes into each and every one that new releases are few and far between. I was extremely lucky to win a full set a couple of years back in a raffle to celebrate the Garden of Dreams birthday. Since then, I have added the Library – a really sumptuous place. I use various of the Scenes for different purposes – the Piano Bar has been an actors’ hang-out, we have Golden Prim meetings in the Library – and the Library has also figured in The Blackened Mirror. I have entertained clients in the Village Cafe and the Field and the Roman Baths are my ultimate private chill-out spots.
Now Kayle has released a new Dream Scene – The Atelier – and as soon as I saw it, I was humming Puccini. Because this really is that Paris garret where Marcello, Rudolo, Colline and Schaunard live and work. You can see Narcello’s easel and a work in progress, as well as the (sadly) unsold canvases piled against the wall. And there are books a-plenty for Rudolfo and Colline – dramas and philosophical works piled on almost every shelf and table. There’s no sign of Schaunard’s fiddle – he must have taken it with him – but surely the wind-up gramophone belongs to him.
But there are other forces at work here too. In a couple of places you’ll find pressure boilers – and there’s a very workman-like work bench. Could it be that our artistshave a practical bent? And a taste for steampunk? Certainly that artist’s lay model looks a little … rusty. And there’s a telescope too – is that used for spying on the cigarette girls leaving the factory (yes, I am mixing my operas) or is it used for stargazing? And … is that an airship to be glimpsed through the upper window?
I have a suspicion that it’s New Babbage out there …
If you’d like to see more than my pictures can show, there’s a video which I’m embedding here.
Many of the elements of the Dream Scene are also on sale individually, so you can add them to your existing home. The Atelier uses the Advanced Lighting Model with normal and specular maps so to get the full effect you need the latest Second Life or Firestorm viewer.
The team at Garden of Dreams, to celebrate this new release, have also announced a competition with a really exciting prize:
They say:
We’ve never had a Dream Scene that was so detailed and while building it we had our own story in mind that might fit to the person who lives ..lived? there and what his life must have looked like. But instead of telling you our story, we want you to tell us yours. Who ever tells us the most funny or heartbreaking or whatever story of that atelier or its inhabitants is going to WIN a complete set of all 35 Dream Scenes available worth more than 60.000 L$. If the winner wants to, we will even publish it in our next notice.
You don’t even need to buy the scene, you can just use one of the Bubbles in the Garden of Dreams.
Don’t be afraid. Not a lot of people read that far into the notice and we might get only one story. Why shouldn’t it be yours? You got time until the 14th of February! Good Luck!
The whole scene is designed to Kayle’s usual high standards, but what makes this really exciting to me is that Kayle’s skill with mesh means that the whole Atelier has a land impact/prim count of just 156 – including all the furniture and furnishings – which come complete with a huge variety of animations; the bed alone has 113 (and no, I haven’t checked to see if dying piteously of consumption is one of those). If you want it as a single, standalone skybox, its footage is a modest 26 x 19, and it will cost you $2000, which is very cheap for worksmanship of this detail and quality.
So why not pop over to Garden of Dreams and take a look for yourselves? And definitely enter that competition!
Prim Perfect 
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