AVATARS 2002

Courtesy of XelaG
aw-avatars@digitalspace.com

January 2003: Contact Consortium and DigitalSpace Corporation dedicate their annual Avatars conference to the celebration of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's eleventy-first birthday on January 3rd, 2003! We will celebrate this memorable date the whole weekend (Friday 3rd through Sunday).

On the ActiveWorlds platform, we are looking for world, object and avatar designers who would like to contribute to this event. Themes from the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, covering the age of the Valar, the Age of the Trees, and the Three Ages up to the defeat of Sauron and the beginning of the Fourth Age, are all welcome!

We will, as in previous years, have an Art Gallery. We would also like to cover areas like JRR Tolkien's languages, especially the High Speech of the Elves, Quenya, and their spoken language in Middle-Earth, Sindarin; the activities of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship and other organisations, as well as creative activities genuinely inspired on JRR Tolkien's mythology.

We need responsible people to manage the worlds or sections thereof, to help plan, organise, build, etc. People with ideas are welcome too, and so are worlds, galaxies and universes that wish to join us in this celebration!  The main event in the Active Worlds platform is in the Active Worlds universe (https://www.activeworlds.com), but important events will take place on other galaxies and universes.

The annual AVVY AWARDS for best avatars on the ActiveWorlds platform will also be dedicated to JRR Tolkien's mythology. Although the categories have yet to be decided, you can expect such categories as Elves and Men, Dwarves and Hobbits, Orcs and other monsters to be included. There are a few changes proposed:

1. All entries will be *permanent*, i.e. the artist retains all rights on his/her creation, but entries remain as permanent exhibits in our worlds.
2. As a rule, only one entry per person per category will be allowed.
3. Vertex count will be limited to a maximum of 2000 (two thousand) vertices per avatar. A balance must be struck between geometry and textures, but oversized texture downloads must be avoided and may be rejected.

Note: please name your RWX and COB avatars and textures carefully, to try to avoid name conflicts on our server. A good idea is to start the name of the avatar file with your own initials, for example, if you are called Andy Brown, your Green Elf avatar could be called "abgreenelf.rwx".  The name of all textures must start with an "a" followed by an underscore and the name of the object, followed by an underscore and the rest is up to you.  For example, if the avatar is called "abgreenelf.rwx", the textures must all start with "a_abgreenelf_", like: "a_abgreenelf_face.jpg" etc. This is to avoid confusion in our textures directory, and to be able to localise them quickly without having to open the rwx or cob files.

Copyright issues:

We will be strictly enforcing copyright laws. JRR Tolkien's works are copyright, and his logo is trademarked. You may not use copyrighted or trademarked material without permission. Short quotes of his works are permissible under the 'fair use' clause, and you can make your own objects, avatars, pictures, worlds, botscripts, inspired on his work and mythology. If you are in doubt, please contact (as we will) The Tolkien Estate sollicitors:

  Mrs. Cathleen Blackburn
  Manches & Co.
  3 Worcester Street
  Oxford OX1 2PZ
  United Kingdom

  Phone: +44 (0)1865 722106
  Fax: +44 (0)1865 201012
  Email: manches@manches.co.uk
  Web page: https://www.manches.com/

For past Avatar conferences, see our web pages at:

  https://www.ccon.org/conf01/
  https://www.ccon.org/conf00/
  https://www.ccon.org/conf99/
  https://www.ccon.org/conf98/

If you are interested in helping us make this 3D-virtual party an exciting reality, contact us at the following address:

  aw-avatars@digitalspace.com
  (: please do not contact me through aw telegrams or newsgroups :)

Note that we do not have a budget for the Avatars events, we depend heavily on sponsors (for prizes, for example) and volunteers. All contributions are offered voluntarily and for free.

Alex Grigny de Castro (XelaG)
DigitalSpace Corporation