Tutorial #1: Introduction to the Artiste Performance HUD & Suite for Non-Owners

Attitudes seem to be changing about the Artiste or maybe attitudes towards interest in ‘new dance-community technology’. There was a time when few knew or seemed to want to know about the Artiste or the applicability of modernized-dance-tools. I take partial responsibility because 1) its steep price-tag and 2) it not having a store presence or MP presence like my other products. However a store presence does not always insure a safety-blanket of support, as in the case of the Huddles and a few other dance HUDs. I have been in SL 8 years daily, missing only a few  days due to illness or internet availability. I am approachable, helpful, and very patient .

Due to its price and intricacy, it is preferred to have a short casual Q&A interview with prospective buyers to make sure the product has a fair chance to meet their expectations as opposed to people buying it off the shelf without having their questions  answered and have some confidence that their specific needs are cared for.

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Times have changed and people seem accustomed to a ‘process’ of using one or more tools, sometimes tools in concert with each other, to help aid in  presenting a cohesive and more professional solo or group stage performance.

Also there are so many new performers in SL that were not here a year or more ago so this is a good time to introduce the Artiste to the ‘new’ as well as reintroduce it to those who were or are vaguely familiar with it.

The goal is, of course, in presenting a comprehensive tool is to witness  and enable people to simply do cool, great, fun, and creative things via technological ingenuity!

I think there is currently an ongoing hunger for something new or a ‘next new(big?) thing’ as has been hinted in several interactions with people in the dance community.

Kat and I discussed what seemed to be a prevailing malaise of creative energy for many, but of course not everyone.

There are so many venues and so many acts and performers that there are a lot of recurring themes, sets, costumes, dances, songs…and all justifiable because they are learning firsts for those newcomers who have just as much right to travel down the roads of  discovery as their forebearers. It is hoped that a new tool might go a long ways to invigorating the creative process. I like to think of the Artiste as a tool able to help unleash the creative-centers  and amplify a person’s ideas to new heights and expanses. Something to kickstart one’s imagination.

We also shared the view that although new-technology is good and a timely ‘new shiny’, that without a passionate creative-center, few if any new cool-tools will make a person a ‘next performing-wonder’ nor bring a modicum of self-satisfaction.

And people also seem very amenable to learning new things as well as relearning what they think they already know, with the sudden explosion of training and classes on a wide variety of dance-related topics.

It seems the time is right for a ‘something else’. Not  necessarily a replacement but an adjunct to the tools one is already successful with.

Some have asked that I offer a class on Artiste along-side of other product offerings taught in classes that have been offered as well as future classes.

Others have offered to help teach the Artiste.

And more than a few people have suggested that I present an on-going digestible tutorial on the Artiste for non-owners who wonder what it is all about.

It appears all signs point to an emergence of information presented to help close the gap of knowledge about it.

And that is what this series of articles will be about. A presentation specially tailored for the non-owner of the Artiste.

So that means that it will be much less technical than previous offerings and more general.

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PRODUCT PRICING

GREAT NEWS!

First let me announce that there are now 4 NEW price-tier offerings lest you turn off now due to its former prohibitive lofty single price tag. More than a few people have requested partial-product offerings.

A-50: 1 NOCOPY/NOTRANS/MOD HUD      5,000L
A-75: 1 NOCOPY/NOTRANS/MOD HUD & COPY/MOD Palette      7,500L
A-100: 2 NOCOPY/NOTRANS/MOD HUDs & COPY/MOD Palette  10,000L

A-250: The Standard Artiste Performer Series. 25,000 L

The A-50, A-75, and A-100 are only guaranteed valid From December 1st, 2015 thru December 31st, 2015.

I will expand on the differences in a subsequent post.

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NOTE: The Palette is required in order to create object-movers and avatar-movers as well as all of the special-extended show-effects.

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The new pared-down package offerings are meant to be entry-level affordable and provide accessible and practical learning models. The HUDs and Palettes are fully functional and are not intentionally crippled in functionality. The Standard package may be more than what many people need. These product offerings allow people to ease-in to the Artiste mind-set.

You also get the same level of support, access to all information and educational sources including our: group, blog, website, classes, and unlimited one-on-one support.

All future upgrades are FREE.

And YES, what you pay for the 3 low-tier offerings are 100% applicable should you decide to upgrade to a higher tier-level at a later date. And YES, your upgrade offers survive the 2016 deadlin.e

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Who is the Artiste targeted for?

1) Advanced Choreographers/Performers who are ready to take that ‘next step’. Those looking for ‘a next big thing’. Those who like to position themselves on a leading edge.

2) Those who are patient and determined

3) Those who are reasonably technically savvy.

4) I don’t recommend the Artiste to someone who has never used any dance-hud prior and/or never edited a note-card unless you are very tech-savvy and accustomed to picking up new technoligies with ease and acumen.

5) Those accustomed to scheduling their in-show activities to occur at specific pre-planned times. This means everything is sequenced.

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The Artiste

Ok so what can be said about the Artiste to those new to it or unfamiliar that it even exists? The following descriptives come to mind:

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HUD-Centric

It is an all-encompassing precision performance suite for burlesque and cabaret stage soloists and groups, the heart of which is the Artiste Performance HUD. The HUD tells the other parts of the suite what to do, how to do it, where to do it, and when to do it.

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Features-List

The Artiste has an ungodly amount of features so I won’t even attempt to enumerate them as it would serve no good purpose now and likely do more harm than good.

I will attempt to highlight the most important and popular ones in coming tutorials.

The good news is you can do a lot with just a few features and pick and choose which of the various other features you want to focus your energies on.

Many are easy to use. You dont need to learn or master all of them or even most of them in order to find utility and usefulness from the product.

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Analogies

The Artiste Suite can be likened to:

– a science laboratory kit-experimrent with mixing chemicals

– a Lego-kit, with the Palette likened to a transformer-toy that can be a say, a robot or car or weapon.

– an iceberg. Only maybe 25% of its capabilities have been tapped, 3/4ths of it abilites remain unchartered.

– the difference between power-steering and the gas pedal in car. Some tools you may be familiar and comfortable with you expend very little effort, comparatively speaking, and get a many times the results, albeit that you are not moving forward but side to side. The Artiste is like a gas pedal.. The more pressure you apply the faster it goes and the farther it goes …but you need to keep applying pressure to keep going.

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Discovery

It is a discovery tool. You can make unique personal discoveries using imagination, experimentation, perseverance, and patience.

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Identifying Strategy

You can combine more than 2 or more features to create a new hybrid feature.

By imaginative ordering of the execution of 2 or more features, you can also create dynamic run-time cause-and-effects. I will demonstrate in a subsequent tutorial.

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Pre-Scheduler/Sequencer

While it does have some ‘press-this-button, make-this-happen-now‘ features it was engineered to pre-schedule a wide variety of activities in close coordination with one another. This is familiar with the way you sequence dances to occur one afte ther other by pressing a button. THe idea with Artiste is to sequence everything else as well, emotes, special-fx, outfit-modifications, etc.

To the dismay of some, it is not a primary-support-tool for those who like to dynamically make things happen during show-time, though there are some measures that can be taken to accomplish immediacy with some imaginative effort.

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Reminder

It is an all-in-one-tool by choice. The reason being that from the layout of the HUD to the concept of ‘Palette abilities‘ to the simple long laundry list of features and Palette-Actions, it is meant to be a constant reminder of ‘other things it can do‘. Its ever-present array of offerings is meant to help stimulate you into being more creative.

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Dedication

I strongly do not recommend it for someone ladened with having to put out 1 or more shows a week as others have fallen into the trap of thinking they can learn a cool new Artiste-technique and implement it in one weeks time ready for their upcoming show as an adjunct to what they were are already doing with other tools.

While it does have a history of playing well with some others, I would not expect to inject new coolness quickly. Allow time to learn and make way for typical growing pains. Give your self time for trial-and-error without the pressures of having to be productive almost over-night.  Patience.

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Familiaity

You will find many things simple (emoting)…

..and familiar like the way an animation is identified:

Example:
name-of-animation1 | time
name-of-animation2 | time

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Reliable Timing Engine

It has a pretty tight timing-engine that seems to perform consistently and reliably as you can see from some of the many show and demo videos. Many cool-things depend on reliable close-proximity-executions of various tasks in conjunction with one another.

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Plays Well With Others

It has been show-tested to have worked successfully with some other popular tools.

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Single-HUD Solution

One popular attraction is that those used to having a screen full of HUDs have found a lot of screen-space freed up because the Artiste presents as a one-HUD solution.

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Optimized Work-Flow

Our note-cards are grouped into sections so you only ever reload just the section you’ve made changes to. (i.e. dances, emotes, stripping, outfit changes, special fx, etc). This provides for very fast reload work-flow as we call it. (reading the notecard info into the HUD.

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Selective Testing

Using the buttons on the HUD face you can enable and disable functions so that you confine your testing to a limited set of features at a time…allowing you to focus with simplification and isolation of functionality.

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Time-Tested

The Artiste 5 years in the making.
The SILVER version, two-and-a-half years in test and live usage.
The GOLD version, just celebrated one-year live-usage.

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Built-In Redundancy

Users have found there are usually multiple ways to accomplish a given task or challenge which provides for flexibility when you run into a dead-end.

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Challenge

The Artiste is an advanced-performance-tool ideal for those who are
ready to ‘push boundaries‘ to paraphrase how Kat has characterized it.

It reportedly has a steep learning curve and I won’t argue with that majority opinion from actual users.

It is not a magic bullet. It requires imagination and perseverance to make it jump thru hoops so to speak.  However, it is an enabling suite of tools.

It is important to take baby steps, take pride in small accomplishments, and to persevere.

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FUN!

I really think its FUN to use and create with. Its a joy if you like experiment, solve  puzzles, and come up with solutions to your creative dilemmas.

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ACTION!

If at some point during these ongoing tutorials you find your interested peeked enough to take action in acquiring or at least investigating into an Artiste product offering as part of your creative compliment then send me an IM or notecard conveying your interest and/or concerns.

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