The second island developed by Designing Digitally, Inc. for Marshall University was completed in late 2009. Since the completion of the island many professors at Marshall have used the island for campus tours, small events, discussions, and classes. The faculty at Marshall wanted to create more insight and support campus-wide for the island and decided creating a machinima video would be the best way to achieve that.

As with all of our machinma videos we first start with general ideas and the intention of the video and work side by side with the client to create a full storyboard for the audio and visuals. After that we take over and record the audio and video which are then meshed together. Finally, we add background music and we end up with something like this:

Contact us today to learn more about how we can create and promote your Second Life presence.

We're proud to announce the development of a promotional machinima video created for our client Florida International University. The development consisted of our team developing the detailed storyboard along with the audio commentary. Once approved our team recorded each clip corresponding with the detailed sketched storyboard. Once we have all clips approved by the client we then mashed the video clips together using Adobe Aftereffects. Take a look at the finished development below: (take into consideration it's on youtube so it's lost quality in the conversion)! For more information on how we can create your promotional video contact us today!

We have completed the Victor Center for Jewish Genetic Diseases Second Life headquarters. This island will not only create a virtual presence for the organization, but will also set a precedence for the entire cultural health society. Being the first of its kind to offer health information and guidance through a virtual platform, the Victor Center will allow visitors to view videos, read articles and listen to audio clips from real world people that are faced with unfortunate circumstances in their everyday lives. The island will also allow those who wish to share their own stories and experiences with others the ability to submit video or audio of themselves and/or text articles.

The island is complete with an outdoor auditorium, conference meeting spaces, a private consultation room, a resource building which houses all the text, video and audio pieces, and a virtual store that will allow users to purchase a Victor Center t-shirt to wear in world and show their support. A sandbox area is set up on the island for hosting building contents, which the Victor Center plans to host monthly. The final area that was added to this island is our Second Life tutorial area, as with all of our islands we don't want new users landing and feeling lost and not knowing what to do, so we make sure to add our interactive tutorials so everyone has a solid understanding of using Second Life.

For more information on how we helped the Victor Center create their virtual space or how we can create your virtual presence, contact us today!

We are proud to announce the almost complete development of a music island for a university.  The university requested that we build serious game scenarios for their students to learn about music within Second Life. 

This virtual world provides the ability for students to take multiple choice exams that are sent directly to the client’s learning management system to track the students’ progress throughout each exam on the island.  

Not only are they able to take exams but we have built an interactive puzzle game in which they can put together the pieces of a musical instrument. By doing this they are awarded with that instrument which they are able to play virtually in Second Life.  Each instrument is customized to play for every avatar in world once they have completed assembling the instrument correctly.

The virtual music island building was based off of a previous development we built a few years ago for the Disney Concert Hall. This building holds many interactive quizzes, puzzle-like games, and even a “name that tune” game for students to learn more about music appreciation.

Contact us today to learn how we can build your serious game in Second Life.

Andrew has been asked to be a guest speaker at the 8th Annual Information Assurance Forum held at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. The conference will be held in the Winebrenner Theological Seminary TLB auditorium on Wednesday, October 28th from 9:00am to 4:00pm. Andrew is presenting on The Future of Virtual Worlds and Learning. This presentation will explore the current trends in the virtual world industry and what is to be expected of the next generation learner. He will also show best and worst practices of virtual worlds and how to strategically adapt a virtual world to achieve the initiatives of your organization. To learn more about the conference click here to obtain a PDF version of the agenda.

We have had many requests from people wanting to learn more about our new, innovative virtual world white board; therefore, our team decided to make a video showing all of the features that the white board provides. We are currently offering this tool to clients that develop their virtual space within Second Life and/or OpenSim through Designing Digitally, Inc. To learn more about how to be provided with this new tool contact us today.

 Featured Video:

It's that time again! Time for us to show you the progress of some of our current virtual world work (and by the way, we would like to apologize to the rest of our team as it seems our virtual world developers are getting the most attention on our blog lately. But don't worry, we're definitely proud of your hard work too!) For now we would like to show you work after 10 days of development on the virtual world college campus we are currently developing. Please see the evolved campus layout below:

Designing Digitally, Inc. is proud to announce the development of an innovative interactive whiteboard for Second Life and OpenSim. This board is one of the only boards that will allow users to do all of the following:

1. Easily change the video media (all-in-one) with a click of a button

2. Easily drag and drop PowerPoint screens on to the board with the board automatically arranging the items in the appropriate fashion

3. The ability to rez objects on the whiteboard such as pointers, boxes, circles, text, etc.

4. The ability to FREE DRAW on the white board in Second Life. This was a task that we were previously unable to do within Second Life. After extensive R&D we were able to develop a free draw tool that will allow users to freely draw on top of a video and/or PowerPoint slides. You can see pictures of the fully developed whiteboard below. This whiteboard is in beta stage and is only available for our current clients. We will be releasing it for the use to the general public in the future. Please contact us to learn more about our innovative developments.

It has been 1 work week since we last posted a blank sim telling everyone we have started another Second Life build. Our talented designers spent the days working with the client to provide an accurate needs analysis, planning interactions and scripts, and sketching the layout for the client to approve. We are now at the point where we are starting to lay down rough structures for the client to preview. Take a look at the evolution in 1 work week from blank island to what we have below:

Keep watching our blog to watch our team mold the sim into an effective and engaging virtual learning environment.

Contact us today if your school or University is interested in having a virtual campus!

We are proud to announce the development of the Virtual Clearview web based portal / virtual world counseling center. This web based portal is used to register their mental health patients for the virtual counseling center, as well as to provide resources, agendas, and even the ability to launch the virtual world from the web site in order to have a private counseling session with their mental health facilitator. This service is currently only available to the current members of Clearview Recovery until the start of the year where they will be opening the service up to the general public. This system is fully integrated into the virtual world so that users can post questions and comments to their counselor and it will show up in the web based system. They are able to schedule appointments with their counselor using the automated system that is tied into both the virtual world and into the web site allowing for synchronization between both systems. We are proud of this development and look forward to watching Virtual Clearview provide a virtual counseling service to their clients.