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Mardi Gras in Cyberspace or Let's Have a Parade!This parade is open to all builders/citizens with the time, talent, and inclination to join us.
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 | Original parade "floats" (worn as Avatars) built by the guild members and any other creator that desires to build a float. Maybe colony or neighborhood entries etc. |
| Maximum file size of 75K including textures. Please be considerate of others and try for smaller file size. |
| Keep the floats realistically scaled, 3-4 meters wide 6-8 meters long. |
| Submitted floats will be entered in a contest. Contest classes, prizes and judges are yet to be determined. Floats will be judged on aesthetics &/or technical merit. |
| Floats may be group or individually built. |
| A practice session will be held the weekend before the actual parade to help everyone understand what will happen during the actual parade. |
| We will be building blimps, planes with trailing banners, or their futuristic equivalents as avatars for advertising the parade, carrying sponsor banners and generating interest. This could benefit the parade, sponsors and Blaxxun because it would demonstrate how VRML can be used effectively for advertising in a 3d world. This may become a separate contest on it's own if someone takes up the lead on it. |
The World Builders Guild is very interested in making this parade become a large event with many entries and many watchers. We believe this could be a very successful event and a yearly occurrence if we do the this one right.
There will be a two tiered system of awards. The major categories and the lesser categories.
There are 3 major...
And other lesser categories....
All entries will be judged for the lesser awards. These winners will receive cc's and/or VRML "object" prizes.
Major award winners will receive merchandise that CT lines up, and a VRML trophy.
Judges will be asked to vote on one winner for each lesser category, and hopefully winners for each can be determined from that. Then they will also vote the same way on the major categories from the lesser award pool.
Judges need not be present at the time of the parade. All entries will be posted in one world in the Suburbs where they can be viewed any time between the entry cut off date and the parade.
We plan on taking a couple of laps around the perimeter of the plaza...
As for the parade float and riders. The float will be an av, that you can wear in the parade or someone you choose can wear it. The idea with riders is that...well floats sometimes have riders. If you put a viewpoint on the float, anyone can ride along, or as someone pointed out, it is possible to make it so you can designate a persons name to ride in a certain spot on the float and no one else would be able to ride there.
[In regards to using ViewPoints on the Av floats, it is possible to be selective on whom you want to ride. All you have to do is write the person or persons name in to a script. When a person clicks the float the name in the script is matched to the Browser.myAvatarName function and if they match, set_bind = true. This controlled access viewpoint will not show up on the console either. (at least in Contact 4.0! ) Here is MrPhillip's biplane reworked with the controlled access ViewPoint : http://members.aol.com/Pyth7/biplane2.wrl Only MrPhillip, Paden, and Pyth7 can be riders and all we have to do is click the plane. Of course it would be possible for all float riders to have their own seat just by adding a viewpoint per rider with their name in a script.]
Mardi Gras literally means Fat Tuesday, it is also known as Carnival. Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday which is the beginning of the Lenten season. For Lent, the faithful abstain from eating meat for the 40 days until Easter. Carnival means "farewell to the flesh", signifying that it is the last day to eat meat before Lent begins. What this means is one big party before this fasting begins and everyone is all pious and holy for 40 days. Like God is not going to know that we all had this big blowout of drunken debauchery prior to being so repentant. I personally do not think he is fooled, but I do not need much of an excuse to party either.
Since Easter is based on Lunar cycles and the Gregorian calendar it is on a different date every year, hence the date of Mardi Gras also varies.
Both have ideas you can exploit and draw from in your parade creations. In particular, if you were to go to www.mardigras.com, you would come across this page soon enough: http://www.nola.com/mardigras/galleries/ Which has lots and lots of pictures.
Epistomolus says...
I have now figured out that Mardi Gras is an event where cross-dressers who have been
drinking non-stop since Hallowe'en assemble in groups and attempt to stagger home. At
least, that's how it looks in the pictures. :-)
Rose parade floats
As a reminder that there are many types of parades and floats you may find some inspiration here. Don't forget the inflatables! More inflatables.
I live in New Orleans, so when I think of a parade, it is probably different from what you might think of.
When is the next Mardi Gras? Tuesday, March 4th, 2003.
I looked and looked for Mardi Gras sites which had good pictures of floats. To my surprise they were harder to find than I thought they would be.
Here is someone's personal site A View From a Float (specifically, this page)
Here is another of floats in the crowd.
How about "Most Humorous," "Best use of color," "Best animation."
How about a couple of strange categories? "Best Float Involving Chickens," "Best Float Using Only Shades of Grey (or purple or green)," "Best Idea for a Float That Didn't Work."
Several of us could pick an awards category, create the trophy, and judge it ourselves (reducing the burden on any one person). The Rose Parade does something similar - corporations and institutions sponsor particular awards. "The Epistomolus Award for Greatest Contribution to the Understanding of Cultures Outside of Northern California." Stuff like that. Categories and awards should be submitted by February 1st, so that they can be reviewed for good taste, then posted with enough lead time to allow people to react.
We should keep in mind that we may have some crowd pleasing floats that are comparatively simple from a VRML perspective.
Cordially,
Epistomolus
Hypocrates wrote:
How about "Best Representation of a Block, Neighborhood, or Community theme"?
Also, perhaps a "most artistically appealing" and "best VRML
application" or something to that effect.
Regards,
Hypocrates
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