Patch Lamington, in collaboration with The Photography Studio of Grignano and AngryBeth Shortbread, has put together an amazing little comic/cartoon studio and a machinima demonstrating its capabilities.

You can go try it yourself, the setup is at the top of the photography gallery. After you play around a bit, you can submit your work by entering the contest being run by Osprey Therian. A full set of rules (they are pretty relaxed) and some details on how to send in your work can be found on the Second Life Art News blog.

During the month of February, Millions of Us and Fox Atomic held a contest for the best machinima and photos of their horror avatars. It recently ended on February 26th, with judging taking place this past week. I'm excited to let you know that the results have been announced. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Machinima Contest

• Pierce Portocarrero - Grand Prize Winner receiving a round trip for two to Costa Rica
• Decomposing Monstre - First Prize Winner receiving 100,000 Lindens
• Osprey Therian - Second Prize Winner receiving 50,000 Lindens

Photo Contest

• Kronos Kirkorian - Grand Prize Winner receiving 25,000 Lindens
• Ina Centaur - First Prize Winner receiving 10,000 Lindens
• LK Roar - Second Prize Winner receiving 5,000 Lindens

I know there are those of you out there who are trying to conquer a card game addiction. This will not help. Combat Cards is an emerging game that you can play in SL, though it had its origins in RL. Without going into the mechanics of gameplay (which are fairly simple), the object of the game is to defeat your opponent by the use of your hand of available cards, each of which has a particular move to be employed. More akin to chess than, say, Street Fighter, Combat Cards nevertheless incorporates fighting animations, making the game more visceral than simply throwing cards down and shouting.

A rarity, Combat Cards is just as fun to watch as it is to play. In SL, the games take place in a special arena, and avatars are encouraged to bring with them their own weapon, as any can be used during the game. To pick up a deck, you may contact Doc Boffin or Osprey Therian, and for more information, go to the Combat Cards website, where you will find pictures of the cards themselves, which feature SL avatars on them! Photos after the jump.

Additionally, Doc tells me that they're working on Vampire and Zombie themed cards, so if you have an avatar that you'd like to see on a card that matches those descriptions, contact Doc or Osprey!

(Thanks, Adri!)

I am indebted to Osprey Therian's blog for the link to the report on the Le Monde website, about SL. I was expecting a newsprint report on the web, but in fact this is a slideshow complete with sexy-voiced Frenchman voice-over, featuring five SL residents.

Click into the thing which looks like an advert, and the slideshow for each of five residents begins. The person who did the "montage image" Jeremie Baruch, needs to learn how to let the textures load, although that may have taken more time than they could give it at present, come to think of it.

Yadni's junkyard has become more important to new people as the basic accounts now start with no money at all, and I think it is a good idea to gather together all the freebies. I still haven't quite forgiven him for letting NyteMyst Grace's poseballs into the wild, however. I come across people selling them at yard sales all the time, which is wrong on multiple levels. Her balls ought not to have got into a box at the junkyard as she has a designers' group and only people on that list are allowed to buy the copyable balls that she makes for other people to use in their furniture. Those people who accepted these as freebies from Yadni's and then put them up for sale at $50 each are also wrong: if they thought it was a freebie, it should have been freely given, if they thought it was charged for they shouldn't be selling them full permissions.

With many thanks to Osprey Therian ... if she hadn't posted her "aha!" moment on her blog, I would never have worked it out.

A new feature which starts to make sense of the new picture tool, is that if you take a picture and then hold down ALT and L, and use your mouse ... the scene freezes and you can adjust your camera view to get the angle you want. Of course, you could always do this before you took a picture.

I have heard people -- not least the Secondcast crew -- discussing their puzzlement at the backwards step making photographs less user-friendly and poorer in quality. It is true that it will take time to get used to, but for people who have problems with getting the right angle in their pictures, this could be a great help.

It still isn't going to fix your picture if you arrive late at an event, just before the star is leaving and textures are still not rezzed in the background, as here. However, it does start to make a little bit of sense.